Once upon a time (for those somewhat new to the Mac platform), there was this innovative connection that showed up in the late 1990s – early 00s called FireWire that came around shortly after the advent of USB (at least in terms of the consumer world – FireWire had been in development since the mid […]
Category Archives: Mac USB & FireWire
Way back when Apple made fruit flavored iMacs and round, one-button mice, Contour Design introduced a multi-button USB mouse colored to match the fruit-flavored colors of Revision C and D iMacs.
The latest thing in laptops is using them as desktops. Devices such as the Lapvantage Dome and forthcoming Oyster Laptop Dock let you move your ‘Book off the desk to position the screen at a more comfortable, more ergonomically correct height.
2001 – Iomega has produced a new entry in its collection of Zip drives. There are now, what, seven or eight different Zip drives, from the VL-Series reviewed here to the Zip 250 FireWire drive – and that’s not counting drives made for internal installation.
I couldn’t believe it – a US$19 USB extended keyboard! At that price, it was worth a try. From the photo (below), it looked like a match for the Apple Extended Keyboard layout, or at least very close.
Supporting a over 80 Macs in three locations, consistency is very important. Most of the Macs at work are still running System 7.5.5. Newer ones are generally on Mac OS 8.1 or 8.6. We use the Apple ADB Mouse (in its various incarnations) almost exclusively, along with the Contour UniMouse on Macs without ADB ports.
First, thank you to Adesso for supplying a keyboard for this review. Since the advent of the Power Mac G4, we have to find a new keyboard we can use at work – the G4 has no ADB port for our old Apple Extended, Apple Adjustable, MicroSpeed KB-105M, or Adesso Nu-Form ADB keyboards.
1999 – USB is slower than promised, providing at most two-thirds of the expected speed based on its 12 Mbps bandwidth (see The Truth About USB Speed). But the iMac, iBook, and Lombard PowerBook don’t have any other option, do they?
Until May 1998, the Mac world was pretty much oblivious regarding the Universal Serial Bus (USB) found on many Windows computers.
So you have an iMac or Blue & White G3, and you totally love it – but you need to buy a low-cost removable-media drive. What should you get? With this criteria, you have three options: a Zip drive, a SuperDisk (a.k.a. LS-120) drive, or a standard floppy drive.
