In macOS Tahoe, Things Are Indeed Dire for FireWire

It has been reported that macOS Tahoe doesn’t include support for FireWire devices. To see for myself, I dug out an old FireWire 800 drive I used to use in my Apple service tech days. This baby has a lot of volumes on it, all of which appeared when plugged into my MacBook Pro running macOS Sequoia:

Getting this old drive plugged into a modern Mac requires a trip to Dongletown:

• MacBook Pro (Thunderbolt 5)
• An Apple-branded Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter
• An Apple-branded Thunderbolt 2 to FireWire 800 adapter
• A Firewire 800 cable to my bus-powered drive

With this monstrosity in place on my Sequoia machine, the volumes all appeared in Finder and System Information app, under FireWire:

When I moved the drive over to my MacBook Air running macOS Tahoe, it was a very different story. With the dongles in place, I held my breath, but it was in vain.

As you can see, Tahoe doesn’t even have a FireWire listing in System Information, and only the adapter shows up under Thunderbolt:

The reports are true: FireWire’s run on the Mac has ended after 26 years. RIP, my once-fast friend.