USB 3.0 is coming and it's fast !
 

read here -

Electronista | USB 3.0 full specs promise 10X speed boost

25GB in 70 seconds! Wow! I wonder if FireWire will lose major ground to USB 3.0 as computer processors become even faster.

but not coming fast....

I think the answer is an almost certainly YES.

Reasons?

1. I believe a big driver for the adoption of FireWire was tape based digital cams. They are going away as camcorders transition to being either hard drive or flash memory based. There have even been a few people on this forum who have been startled to find hard drive or flash based cam means NO FIREWIRE PORT, only USB.

2. The biggest driver behind USB in all its forms has been Intel. As a practical matter, this means it is hardly possible anymore to buy a PC without USB. FireWire ranks a definite maybe. So even if you are using a computer at a remote location, you can pretty much assume USB will be there. FireWire? No.

That doesn't mean FireWire is going away immediately. It still definitely plays a role in apps that need low cpu overhead, high speed, low latency response. And the fact that Apple has bought into it big time means it WILL be sticking around. But I think it will slowly transition to being a niche/specialty/professional feature that most consumers have no need for. Sort of like tape backup. It was big 10 years ago. At the consumer level you just don't see it anymore.

Example: Would it surprise you if you could still get FireWire in all its forms on a MacPro, but not on a Mac Mini? I am not saying this has happened. I am saying, would it surprise you if at some point it did? Because the folks at that low end market segment simply never used it?

I agree. Over time there won't be firewire and we won't miss it. Two high speed standards aren't necessary. Also, the less flexible but fast eSata connections are starting to show up on better high end computers.

This doesn't mean we want to start buying usb 2.0 external drives when firewire is available.

As long as USB requires a host there will always be a place for Firewire since Firewire requires no central host. Firewire has had in place for years now an upgrade path to higher speeds that would compete with USB.

Now if USB OTG ever takes off then surely Firewire could find itself obsoleted.

Firewire is preferrable on multiple levels. Device to Device communication (sans computer) is a hand feature that hasn't been fully taken advantage of and the superior
power that FW delivers powers many small devices (like the Apogee Duet).

Frankly it appears that Apple found it couldn't extract a bunch licensing fees from Firewire so they've used it sparingly even though other groups have championed Firewire.

HANA - High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance - Bringing HD to Life
What's mLAN - Products - Yamahasynth.com

and more. USB isn't designed for these functions. If I want burst transfer for cheap then USB is the connection of choice but if I wan't controller sophistication which can include leveraging IP, Power and QoS then FW is a superior connection.

USB is great for Intel since it leverages the CPU and Intel always wants to make the CPU or rather the need for that faster (and higher margin) CPU necessary.

I view smart computing as the amalgamation of many little "brains" in the computer. The CPU should provide a majority of the number crunching but I believe that it should be delegating to other "smart" chips that handle things like storage and networking and AV handling.

Since USB 3.0 is finally duplex I'm going to be interested in seeing how it performs as an audio interface. Video applications are more data throughput sensitive whilst audio applications are more latency bound.

I definitely think there's room for both. There are 3-4 major Operating Systems each with its own features/benefits. I hardly think there will be one connectivity standard that rules them all.

Personally, I've found USB 2.0 read and write speeds to be so completely unreliable (and more often than not - slow). I'm going to hold out hope for a broader market presence of FW-800.

For some reason my hopes aren't that high...

Apple has no FireWire Ports in their 13" MacBook notebooks, so Firewire seems to be dead.

That may be so, but this lost Apple some sales.

USB 2.0 almost never works at the speeds it's supposed to - maybe 10% of the time it runs fast, so I'm not going to get my hopes up about 3.0

At least Firewire is consistent.

CES 2009 Intel Interview USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Release Schedule
 

The short interview video clip shown gives the production release schedule.

Intel talks USB 3.0 at CES | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News