Apple’s decision this week to remove FireWire from all non-Pro MacBooks and switch to a single FW800 port on MacBook Pros has partly overshadowed what should have been a pretty popular product launch. Readers on Create Digital Music — Mac users, most of them, not PC users — have been downright irate.

Now, an email has surfaced that is allegedly from Steve Jobs himself, responding to a Mac user that: “Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2.

I’m not sure whether this was really a response from Steve Jobs, though it is as typically terse as he tends to be. But whether Jobs said it or not doesn’t matter. Various other parties have brought up the same argument, and I think it’s time to address it. Bloggers have looked up “camcorder” on Amazon.com and come to the same conclusion, but the problem is, the statement is only half true.

Increasingly-popular consumer AVCHD camcorders use USB, that’s true — and accounts for a lot of the new sales in the sector. Likewise, video cameras that use hard disk or flash memory for storage do indeed now generally connect via USB. (Interestingly, this confused consumers at first, many of whom complained that those AVCHD units lacked FireWire.)

The problem is the exceptions to the rule. There’s the installed base; the lifetime of a camera is obviously longer than two years. There’s the still-popular HDV format, including HDV cameras that can outperform equivalent AVCHD units. And most importantly, there’s the fact that pro and semi-pro cameras almost exclusively use FireWire.

The workaround: get a MacBook Pro with a FW800 to FW400 adapter. But you can’t use the MacBook to save a little money or get a slightly smaller unit, and even on the Pro you’re limited to a single FireWire port. And there’s no way to justify this as being an inferior format or something like that; in this case, Apple dropped the superior technology because it was unpopular. That may what is grating people most, because that’s generally not why people buy Macs.

Incidentally, the reason the audio people are so mad is that the audio and music side is entirely different. FireWire is actually far more popular for external multichannel interfaces than USB2, including the one audio interface Apple themselves helped promote, the Apogee Duet. The single FireWire800 port isn’t a great comfort, either. Because of peculiarities with controllers and the like, it’s possible some audio interfaces won’t work well on the new Macs. The “it just works” quality is the Mac’s main selling point in audio, not marketing or pretty cases as some people (on the PC side, no less) seem to think.

And I think we’re missing a bigger, underlying problem. We already know Apple has an aversion to buttons, one that has been largely benign. But it seems Apple and Jobs also have an aversion to putting holes in the side of their machine. Even the Pro has just two USB ports and one FW800 port. That means that juggling dongles, drives, audio interfaces, and the like can be a major challenge.

At the very least, it’s worth investigating using the ExpressCard slot to add more connectivity, like an eSATA connection. (Anyone tried this? Know what the Mac driver situation is like?)

I am very eager to actually hear hands-on reports and compatibility information as these machines get out in the wild, so don’t think I’m just ranting for the sake of it!

Updated: TUAW has an extended story on this issue. They confirm an even odder response from Jobs after a follow-up: “The new HD camcorders start around $500.” Yes, that’s … true. Except, of course, we’re back to the price difference with the MacBook Pro, we’re assuming if you want to ditch your current camera (which you may like just fine, thank you), it’s very likely to require a software upgrade to edit the AVCHD, Apple’s own Final Cut doesn’t edit AVCHD natively, many of those AVCHD cameras (certainly at that price point) are inferior to some of the better HDV cameras in picture quality and features and …

Well, more to the point, Apple’s answer is “so buy a new camera.”

Christina Warren at TUAW points out, rightfully:

It is also true that AVCHD is still not completely supported for native editing by most popular software packages. In fact, Adobe Premeire Pro didn’t even support the format until CS4, which was released yesterday. iMovie ‘08, Final Cut Express 4 and Final Cut Studio can edit AVCHD footage, but it has to be converted to the Apple Intermediate Codec on the fly (or batch converted with the VoltaicHD tool, which adds the bonus of allowing PPC machines to work with the format).

Furthermore, although it has lagged behind AVCHD in popularity, HDV cameras are still sold, and because HDV uses MiniDV tapes, it is a popular choice for consumers who either bought HD cameras early, or still want to be able to play back their MiniDV footage. XDCAM EX and DVCPRO HD have supplanted HDV in the professional market, but many of the better prosumer cameras are HDV, not AVCHD. Even with the USB 2 port found on most DVCPRO HD cams, you still can’t capture footage from tape with it; that’s a job for FireWire.

… and, of course, that’s before you even get to the question of FireWire audio interfaces, which is what has our Create Digital Music brethren grabbing torches. I think there’s no question that, for many, the non-Pro laptop just got a lot less appealing, not more.

It’s a small release number, but I expect Modul8 users will want to pay attention to this one. New in 2.5.5 are various fixes and improvements, most notably restoring Flash SWF support removed from QuickTime. I hope other VJ apps will be able to do the same.

Also in this update:

• Swatches, color picker for layer colorization
• Transformation knob for layer field of view
• Audio fading with layer opacity (neat idea!)
• Unlimited size for multi-output windows
• Media triggering by name
• Lots of other small fixes and features

Modul8 2.5.5 Feature Details

Read on in the forum, and you can find the fix that allowed GarageCUBE to restore Flash support: "Modul8 is using the Flash plugin of Safari, so you could load any file that loads in Safari. " Now, that sounds to me like even Java/Processing support could happen via the same hack. Any takers?

Let us know how the update works for you, ye Modul8 users.

The typical user likely has no idea that Flash is even supported in QuickTime. But VJ apps like ArKaos VJ and other applications (like Max/MSP/Jitter patches that use this support) rely on QuickTime to support Flash. Unfortunately, as of Leopard — or any Mac updated to QuickTime 7.3.1 — that support is gone, and will most likely never return.

What’s the reason? Security:

Multiple vulnerabilities exist in QuickTime’s Flash media handler, the most serious of which may lead to arbitrary code execution. With this update, the Flash media handler in QuickTime is disabled except for a limited number of existing QuickTime movies that are known to be safe. Credit to Tom Ferris of Adobe Secure Software Engineering Team (ASSET), Mike Price of McAfee Avert Labs, and security researchers Lionel d’Hauenens & Brian Mariani of Syseclabs for reporting this issue.

About the security content of QuickTime 7.3.1 (thanks to n0s10pm for the tip!)

In case this isn’t clear, this impacts only embedded Flash files within QuickTime, not Flash itself. But because some apps use QuickTime as a way of hooking in support for Flash animations, that’s a big deal — at least for someone. Windows users are impacted, too; this covers both platforms, though at least Windows users have the option of using Flash integration features available only on that OS.

Now, admittedly, the small niche pushing the limits of QuickTime and digital visuals is dwarfed by the potentially-enormous crowd who could be impacted by this vulnerability. But there’s clearly a philosophical problem here we’ve seen before: instead of fixing the vulnerability and providing a replacement, the entire idea is axed. Necessary? Perhaps, but I would love to see Adobe address ways of more easily integrating Flash technology with other applications. As the Flash/Flex platform grows, the potential here could be wide enough to justify the effort, especially as applications (not just VJ apps) add rich client features.

And in the meantime, if you use a tool that uses this support, you may want to hunt down an old installer or hold off upgrading. (Reverting to older versions is, unfortunately, really hard — you have to completely uninstall QuickTime, and you’ll only have luck if you’re on Tiger or earlier as far as I know.)

Via comments, Eelke (whose system is shown above) alerts us that previous video output problems running Windows in Boot Camp appear to be solved in Leopard — at least using the MacBook Pro. (Phew — get all that?)

See the ongoing thread on VJforums. Eelke says:

My configuration:
- MacBookPro 2,16, 2GB ram, with ATI X1600
- Upgraded to Leopard (OS X 10.5)
- Used the same Leopard DVD to update all drivers in bootcamp / XP
- Rebooted with DVI>s video dongle plugged-in, s-video out attached to small reference monitor

After the initial booting XP logo which we had all the time, I suddely saw my desktop cloned on the small screen. All I had to do is go to desktop>preferences to extend windows to the secondary monitor, and it worked.
After that I used ATI Catalyst control center to set the screen (now recognized as a TV!) to run in overscan, no problem at all, even during live rendering (with visualjockey).

Houray! Houray!

A sad side-note however is that regular macbooks with Intel videochips and mini-dvi adapters still don’t seem to work properly under XP. Maybe under Vista, who knows?

Okay, anyone tested MacBooks (non-Pro) on Leopard? Is there a way to make this work?

Certainly, booting the Mac side for Quartz Composer, Final Cut, Motion, VDMX, then switching to Windows for Resolume, vvvv, games, etc. has some serious appeal as a visualist dream setup. (Overkill? Sure. But a lot better than juggling machines or being forced into the OS by the hardware.)