FireWire Trade Association Picks Board of Directors

Sources say that the 1394 Trade Association has recently finished electing its 2009 board of directors, at the organization’s first quarter meeting. The Mac community refers to the IEEE 1394 technology as FireWire.

According to those sources, the new board includes Peter Helfet of Eqcologic, who will serve as vice chair; Rainer Gutzmer of Hella Aglaia GmbH; Dave Thompson of LSI, who returns as secretary; Don Harwood of Oxford Semiconductor, finance chair; Richard Mourn of Quantum Parametrics, Morten Lave of TC Applied Technologies; Toni Long of Texas Instruments, who is the new documents editor for 2009; and Max Bassler, Littelfuse, who is the new chairman.

The 1394 Trade Association is a worldwide organization dedicated to the advancement of the IEEE 1394 standard. The 1394TA has entered its 15th year of promoting 1394, being led by multinationals such as Apple, Fujitsu, Microsoft, Molex, Panasonic, Texas Instruments, and others. FireWire is used today in mass-market computer, computer entertainment, and professional products, and in a wide range of specialty applications such as music, defense, aerospace, industrial, and robotics products.

In a recent press release from the 1394 Trade Association, Apple's new 13-inch unibody MacBook “delivers great value for users,” the organization believes, thanks mostly to the built-in FireWire and upgraded graphics.

Built around the Intel 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, the new white MacBook is priced at $999 and ships with a standard 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card and a 120GB hard drive. While several fresh Apple products have replaced FireWire with Apple's new standard, the Mini DisplayPort, the 13-inch notebook stays true to its fans, which the 1394 Trade Association applauds.

“The inclusion of 1394 in its latest new MacBook is a welcome sign of Apple’s attention to user enthusiasm for FireWire, and should end concerns about the future of FireWire in the PC,” said James Snider, executive director of the 1394 Trade Association. “Apple users clearly see FireWire as an essential component for their work, and are glad it is included in the white MacBook. We welcome the enthusiastic response we‘ve had from MacBook users, and Apple’s continued support for FireWire, which the company helped popularize in the 1990s and has included in almost all of their popular MacBook computers.”