Apple has announced availability of the FireWire Reference Platform 1.0 for embedded use in FireWire devices. The software can be used to help manufacturers rapidly add high-speed FireWire to peripheral and consumer electronics products such as digitial cameras, set-top boxes, televisions, and music systems. It is based on the "TNF" software that was acquired by Apple from Zayante in April of 2002 and is designed to run on multiple embedded and real-time operating systems, offering services such as bus management, configuration, transactions, and real-time transfer, generic to any FireWire device.

Apple is also providing technical assistance to qualified hardware vendors who would like to support Rendezvous, its proposed industry standard for automatic discovery of computers, in their network-enabled products. Mac OS 10.2 will be the first OS to support the new technology and includes sample code on the Developer Tools CD (one of the 3 CDs, which will be included with its release later this month).

by MacNN Staff