Poll of the Day > Firewire

(+) Yeah! (+)

I don't understand. Was there ever a consumer use for this port?

ipods

it was the only way to charge them since usb wasn't able to do it at the time

Non computer / Apple use, but PS2 used iLink / Firewire (or at least what they called IEE1394, but was the same thing, 3 / 4 player LAN required a Firewire hub) to LAN model 3X00X (and 1X00X in Japan) consoles together for some older multiplayer games. Was rarely used though and the PS2 network adapter came out not long after anyway, so the 5000X model discontinued the port.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ps2/comments/6impms/is_there_an_accurate_and_uptodate_list_of/

Anything else, no bloody clue.

https://youtu.be/uTgyr7mM8Mo

I had exactly one external device for it, as it was the port of choice for Macs in about 2003-05. Even then not many people heard of it. So I want to say it went the way of certain forms of media storage, such as that one that tried to compete with Blu-Ray roughly about the same time. Firewire was hella slow, the external harddrive for it was loud, and I recall devices for it sometimes needed their own power supply like you were plugging in a gaming console versus the USB devices of the same purpose that needed no such power requirement.

Seriously, Firewire is basically a failure, and should have been dropped altogether a couple decades ago.