My first exposure to FireWire (like many folks, I assume) was the original 5GB iPod I bought from a friend. I thought it was SO cool that you just used this one cable to connect to your computer (in my case, my first Mac, an iBook 600mhz G3), as well as to the power adapter. The charging brick was just a brick with a firewire port and flip-out prongs that could be removed from the power brick, just like today's Mac laptop chargers. You could interchange the prongs with foreign prongs (I still have the travel kit somewhere.. of course the foreign ones don't have the same flip-out functionality). You could even put your "long" laptop charger cable on the Firewire iPod power brick! This was also true of the Airport Express. All interchangeable parts.
I'm not sure if Apple was the first company to do this; today everyone has wall chargers that output a single USB port, but I don't remember it existing before then. Hell, I'm not sure if there were any devices TO charge over USB when the iPod first came out -- those little SanDisk flash MP3 players, and I'm sure the bigger Archos hard-disk based MP3 players must have had their own chargers, there's no way they charged over USB.
I'm so happy that the world has gone in this direction, where I can use your Samsung USB charger to charge my Sony phone, or whatever. And Apple has still stick with the same charging brick style where you can flip out the prongs or use a longer cable. (not sure how it is now with USB C though).
But that firewire power brick still makes me nostalgic, a simple design that felt so elegant 15 years ago, and still does to this day.
Apple's 12 watt USB power adapter* still has the same design. Swappable plugs compatible with all of the laptop power brick international plugs. It comes with the iPad Pro these days (and probably others, too).
I'm not sure if Apple was the first company to do this; today everyone has wall chargers that output a single USB port, but I don't remember it existing before then. Hell, I'm not sure if there were any devices TO charge over USB when the iPod first came out -- those little SanDisk flash MP3 players, and I'm sure the bigger Archos hard-disk based MP3 players must have had their own chargers, there's no way they charged over USB.
I'm so happy that the world has gone in this direction, where I can use your Samsung USB charger to charge my Sony phone, or whatever. And Apple has still stick with the same charging brick style where you can flip out the prongs or use a longer cable. (not sure how it is now with USB C though).
But that firewire power brick still makes me nostalgic, a simple design that felt so elegant 15 years ago, and still does to this day.