Mac Rumors directed us at a ZDNet blog post in which the author states that, due to the lack of FireWire support in the latest iPod, he thinks Apple is poised to drop FireWire 400 support.

"Now I'm hearing that FireWire is gone completely from the new Intel iBooks that are coming next month, but its loss should come as a surprise to no one, given Apple's moves of late," says Jason. I strongly disagree. Removing FireWire 400 is critical for legacy devices - even legacy devices from Apple themselves. Remember the first iPods? I have a years-old iPod - third generation if I remember correctly - and System Info tells me that it's a FireWire 400 device. Are you honestly going to tell me that Apple is going to revoke support for their own devices? Their own devices using a technology they invented in the first place? I think not.

Now to be a bit more speculative, because I can. If you think about it, Apple has historically strived to be ahead of the times. They dropped floppy disk support early, their network cards went gigabit early, their wifi standardized at 802.11g early. Perhaps they were trying to be ahead of the times with FireWire, attempting to set that as the new standard with their earlier iPods. Perhaps going back to USB is simply their realization that USB isn't going away just yet and they might as well take advantage of lower costs involved in selling USB devices. .

And one final note: Apple is still supporting FireWire 400 devices that they've sold under AppleCare. The technology is not that old. If they ever drop FireWire 400 it's not going to be while they're still supporting devices that use it. That's just asking for a support nightmare of epic proportions.

Sorry, Jason, but I'm not buying this one. Then again, I'm not calling the move to Intel a "deal with the devil" either so I suppose we'll just have to disagree.