Hi,
I'm not sure why this mini-argument is taking place, to be honest. I asked a simple question: do the newer Macbooks/Macbook Pros have the TI or Agere firewire chipset? I frankly don't care if the manufacturers are not developing new firmware; I just want my stuff to work.
And I take offence at your "low-grade hardware" insinuation. RME and PreSonus are 2 major audio interface manufacturers used in professional studios; and their interfaces are incompatible with the Agere chipset.
This is the statement by RME:
"There is a new FW 800 chip on the market from Agere, which seems to be incompatible (not only) to RMEs FireWire audio, and requires workarounds for successful operation.
The reason Apple used this chip instead of the former TI solution is easy to find: half the price and a lot smaller. So it is not astonishing that this chip now also begins to show up on Windows computers. We got our hands on a PCIe FireWire 800 card from Unibrain using this chip, and found the exact (!) same problems under Windows as under Mac OS X using this card.
Our examination of the problem showed that the Agere chip causes the Firefaces to issue a FireWire bus reset shortly after start of data transmission (isochronous mode). We tried a Motu 828 for comparison and found this to be affected as well (everything seemed to work, but playback did not start).
Therefore we have to declare this chip and all related products as incompatible, and expect a fix (if any) from Agere's side, by either firmware or driver updates."
So, really, and I'm not being curt or anything of that sort here, but it's as simple as this: I have X which is compatible with Y but not with Z. I would like to know if the newer Apple notebooks have Y or Z in them, to gauge if my X can be used: it can with Y but not with Z, all things else are irrelevant. Can we not argue about whose hardware or OS or etc is superior; I think I asked a perfectly reasonable question.
Thanks!
PS: The Digidesign link is for compatibility with the OS. There isn't a problem with the OS at all; it's the firewire chipset that is causing problems. I mentioned nothing about the OS.