Apple tried to salvage the format by doubling its speed with FireWire 800 in 2003, but the USB wave was too strong to beat back by then.The final blow came when Apple moved the iPod from FireWire ...

FireWire IEEE-1394, which Apple markets as FireWire and Sony markets as i.LINK, is a high-speed serial connection, based on a tiered hub-and-spoke topology.

Although the upper-end MacBook Pro — which Apple also revamped and relaunched Tuesday — includes a FireWire 800 port, users bemoaned the FireWire loss on the more affordable MacBook models.

Apple made things worse in 1999 when it began charging a $1 per port licensing fee to FireWIre device users. This drove manufacturers away from the format and back to the fee-free USB standard.