
How useless is FireWire assist in macOS Tahoe 26? As useless because the iPod, so far as the Mac is anxious, which is a minimum of a bit of unhappy. Stephen Hackett checked.
In basic 512 Pixels style, he’s conjured collectively an actual world demonstration utilizing a battle-tested FireWire 800 cable-connected drive, two Thunderbolt adapters together with a Thunderbolt 2 to three dongle, and a Mac. Woof.

The consequence? A drive that appropriately appeared as a number of volumes on macOS Sequoia simply seems like an adapter to nowhere on macOS Tahoe. macOS deprecation defeated FireWire earlier than bit rot might take its toll on the drive.
On one hand, nobody ought to actually belief a FireWire drive to work in 2025. Then again, dropping FireWire assist for no obvious achieve past simplicity makes the Mac just a bit much less succesful.
If somebody have been to bump into an outdated FireWire drive full of lengthy misplaced household photographs from one other era, the Mac ought to be capable to see these photographs. Hopefully there’s a appropriate Mac in the identical discovery.
It’s much more unlucky {that a} Mac working macOS Sequoia can nonetheless interface with the unique iPod (utilizing yet another dongle than Stephen’s instance: a FireWire 400 to 800 adapter), however the identical Mac working macOS Tahoe can’t. Simply feels unsuitable on precept.
I’m not shedding sleep over FireWire assist being eliminated, however it does make me a bit of unhappy.
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