Subsequent IBM and Apple computers leapfrogged each other. In 1983, Apple introduced Lisa while IBM introduced XT. In 1984, Apple introduced Macintosh with a graphica interface in January 1984. The IBM AT was added in August 1984 and Windows 1.0 came out in 1985.

From the beginning, Apple computers always bundled state-of-the-art communications. In the 1980’s, serial ports were state-of-the-art. The Mac Plus was amongst the first computers to incorporate a SCSI port as standard in 1986, as well as 2 ADB and 2 serial ports. This remained pretty much the standard package until 1999. The iMac offered 2 USB ports in 1999 and most of the desk top and portable macs offered 2 Firewire ports. Since 2001, they have offered ethernet 1000Base-T. Since 2003, Apple has provided USB 2.0 ports and Firewire 800 as standard on all their computers while airport and bluetooth were optional. By 2004, airport extreme and bluetooth were available on all Macs and standard on some. Bluetooth 2.0 was available in 2005 and standard by 2006. A built-in video was standard in 2006.

The only major competitor to USB is Firewire which now is standard on all Apple, some Dell, and Sony computers. The original iPod had firewire but switched to USB. Because Sony video cameras adopted firewire, most major brands of video cameras also include firewire. According to Wikipedia the more expensive hardware required for firewire is the main reason why firewire has not displaced USB.

Firewire can connect up to 63 peripherals and supplies up to 45 watts of power per port at 30 volts, sufficient for moderate-consumption devices. Firewire 400 and 800 respectively transfer data at 400 and 800 Mbits/sec. While USB 2.0 can theoretically transmit at 480 Mbits/sec, such speeds are seldom achieved in practice due to the server-client architecture of USB devices. Firewire provides peer-to-peer network operation and support for memory-mapped devices, which allows full-speed communication.

Firewire is particularly useful for networking computers and high speed transfer of data from one computer to another. That is why firewire is so popular for digital video. Firewire connections can also be “hot-swapped” without damaging the attached device. In the end, the increasing popularity of video will drive development of Firewire and keep it alive. For example, firewire copyright protection standards have yet to be broken and one of the latest developments is wireless Firewire (Source)

You connected RS232 ports, printers, floppy drives, and eventually even hard drives to the same serial bus in a daisy chain configuration.

People laughed and said “why would anybody want all those devices to share the same interface?” It’s too slow (which was true, but that was a different problem) and it didn’t solve power distribution problems either, but it predated IBM PC’s and AT’s by many years. Judging by your article, they were years ahead of their time.

For storage peripherials, especially when more than one device is connected, Firewire absolutely RULES! For mice and keyboards, USB 2.0 is OK.

I use both Macs and WIndoze every day. The Macs have FAR fewer USB problems then the Windoze PCs (mostly IBM and white-box). As indicated above, the Windoze drivers issues are a shame after nearly 10 years of USB being in use and still being clumsy and having only about a 50% chance of working as plug-and-play. Needing yet another driver for a simple mouse is just plain wrong!

Just my $.20 worth (adjusted for inflation)

The parallel interface was provided on the monochrome video card, if I remember correctly.

That’s not right. The Apple IIgs shipped with ADB before any Mac shipped with it. The Apple II team saw the ADB standard that had been developed by the Mac team, and decided to use it on the IIgs. It ended up shipping before the Mac SE and Mac II that were the first Macs to use the standard.

You said “none of the ports that served the same function that were used on IBM PCs and Apple computers were compatible with each other ”

That’s not really true either. An 8-pin mini-din serial port on an Apple IIgs or Mac was electrically compatible with DB-9 or DB-25 serial ports as found on IBM computers. You just needed the correct cable. Also, the 15-pin monitor connectors on both Macs and PC’s was electrically compatible; you just needed a DB-15 to HD-15 adapter or cable.

As another poster mentioned, you totally left out the impact that the original iMac had in jumpstarting USB. Since Apple was the only company with the guts to completely drop all legacy ports at one time, users were forced to buy all new USB peripherals. Anyone around in 1998 will remember all of the new USB devices and adapters, all shipped in Apple-like translucent fruit colors. As for PC’s, they only stopped putting the PS/2 and parallel ports on machines very recently, even though adapters have been available for nearly a decade.

It is about half an inch in diameter.

Also, there were MANY computers as far back as 1979 that were the size of the IBM PC (or smaller) that had external and detachable keyboards. I was there, I was programming them.

Please learn your facts before stating this type of mis-information.

The Universal Serial Bus, or USB, is right now the most common serial peripheral bus in existence. Allowing all the most common devices to connect to your computer, to each other, through hubs, and now even wirelessly USB has become the dominant method…

We’re not looking for ‘em, we just find ‘em.

| Between the two parts this is like the fourth for fifth.

More errors to follow:

> This plug [AT keyboard port] was about an inch in diameter, round, and had 5 pins.

With ~2.5 cm it is rather huge a port, isn’t it?

> PS/2 ports that used two small half-inch 6 pin plugs

And ~1.3 cm is rather big, too, concerning PS/2.

You mean centimeters[1], not inches.

[1] For just giving a qualitative impression about their sizes, the guessed numerical values are OK; for the records, I just plugged them out and measured and found their diameters are about 13 mm and 9 mm, respectively.

Just for the records: Don’t worry, it still makes for an interesting reading.

Imagine if you could just plug your USB device into ANY computer with ANY OS and the drivers for it, no matter what your device is, are right there. Windows, MAC, Linux, whatever. All on the same internal gigabyte of storage in their own directories where the host computer should know where to look.

Additionally, if you update your drivers on one computer, the next time you plug that device into another computer of the same operating system, updated drivers will be immediately available rather than require a download.

Last, but not least, Windows needs to learn how to understand that a USB device plugged into one USB port is the same as if it were plugged into a different port. Too many times, moving a device from port to port causes Windows to demand the drivers again and prompt the user for all the installation options.

Installation should be primarily a painless, invisible process. Plug it in and it works. And that’s it.

You get the USB standard to include drivers in internal storage and to have invisible installation processes so clueless users don’t have to know what their doing to plug in a new gadget in ant port they happen to choose and your new standard will take off.

wow, i feel old now. This is no rumor, in fact many scsi scanners are available today.

This Microtek only has firewire and SCSI interfaces, no USB.

http://www.microtekusa.com/as120tf.html