1394 Trade Association (FireWire) Names Apple Engineer As Chairman

by , 4:45 PM EST, January 22nd, 2003

The 1394 Trade Association, the governing body that controls the technology behind FireWire, has named a new chairman, and that chairman is from Apple. The trade group has named Eric Anderson, Apple's Manager of FireWire Software, to be the titular had of the organization. Max Bassler of Molex has been named to be the vice chairman.

James Snider, the former chairman and the man who has been quietly and successfully shepherding 1394/FireWire/i.LINK along (all three being brand names for the technology), has taken on the new position of Executive Director of the group, and continues to run day to day operations. The press release from the 1394 Trade Association:

The 1394 Trade Association elected Eric Anderson of Apple Computer as its 2003 chairman, with Max Bassler of Molex Inc. as vice chair, during its first quarter meetings last week. The group also set its next Compliance Workshop for Feb. 3-5 at the Embassy Suites in Burlingame, Calif.

Other officers include Dave Thompson, Agere Systems, secretary; Jalil Oraee, Oxford Semiconductor (UK), financial officer; Scott Smyers, Sony Corp., technical officer; and Alan Berkema, Hewlett-Packard, editor.

Other members of the 1394 TA board for 2003 include
John Barber of NEC Electronics; Scott Fierstein of Microsoft; Angela Lee of Mitsubishi; Sam Liu of Newnex; Larry Matola, Delphi Automotive; Richard Mourn, Quantum Parametrics; Declan O'Mahoney, Firecomms (Ireland); Andreas Schloissnik of Yokogawa Electric; Cecelia Smith of Texas Instruments; and Hans van der Ven of Panasonic.

You can find more information on the 1394 Trade Association at the group's Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

That Mr. Snyder continues to run day to day operations is being deemed a Good Thing™ by TMO, while having the chairman hail from Apple should also be good for the entire FireWire platform. With some of the momentum in the realm of high-speed peripherals having shifted to USB 2.0 in the Wintel world, even as 1394/FireWire was finally coming into its own there, it will be good for the TA to be able to step up its presence. Hopefully the new positions of everyone involved will facilitate that.

Of course, the actual release of FireWire 800, the higher-speed 800 Mbps version released with Apple's new 17" PowerBook, will also help. In fact, it would have helped even more had the company equipped the new 12" PowerBook with FireWire 800 as well, and it is beyond us why the company didn't. That, however, is a subject for another discussion.

1394 Trade Association