Audio and Video professionals swear by it, but if Microsoft sticks with its plans, Firewire may not be supported in Windows 8. This is following an industry trend with, for example, Apple itself phasing out firewire support in recent years.
Firewire is still very popular in amateur and professional audio and video circles. Just read the blogs comparing USB 2 and Firewire and you'll see how heated the conversations can become. The pro-Firewire camp purports it delivers lower "drop frames" and that Firewire has a dedicated processing chip that reduces stress on the main CPU, all allegedly leading to a purer, more complete data transfer. On the other side, the pro-USB 2 camp states lower hardware costs, faster CPUs and less niggly connectors just don’t make that marginal and mostly indiscernible increase in quality worth the trouble.
With USB 3 becoming mainstream we are likely to see a flood of new audio and video interfaces. Intel for one recently promised better operating system and chip integration for USB 3 in Windows 8. Although non-support for Firewire will not mean the automatic death of Firewire (due to third party drivers, ect.) it will likely become a smaller and smaller niche market and probably bid us Farewell in the near future.
