If you’re still rocking a first-generation iPod or, like me, are holding on to an old FireWire external drive for dear life, this one might hit hard: the first developer beta of macOS 26 Tahoe appears to have dropped support for the FireWire 400 and 800 standards.
Top comment by Andy Soderberg
As Apple's original Video Evangelist (1990-1993), I was responsible for working with Apple's 3rd party hardware developers to add Firewire to their products (mostly hard disks and digital video capture cards. Firewire was released in 1995, so If Firewire does become deprecated with MacOS Tahoe, I think 30 years is a pretty good run. I hope that it doesn't get dropped in MacOS because I still have about 200 DVCam tapes that I inherited from my brother that I still need to digitize. And the Sony DVCam deck with Firewire makes getting the original saved video data into a Mac a breeze.
Reddit and X users (via MacRumors) who upgraded to macOS Tahoe 26 developer beta 1 say FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 devices no longer mount, whether it’s an old iPod, a MiniDV camcorder, or that trusty LaCie drive you’ve been using for backups since the Steve Jobs days.
“macOS 26 Tahoe dev. beta 1 is no longer compatible with the iPod 1st generation due to FireWire support being deprecated,” wrote @NekoMichiUBC on X.
On Reddit, user mowd8574 confirmed that a FireWire 800 external drive disappeared post-update. “I went to System Info, and there should be a FireWire, but it no longer exists”, they also said. Meanwhile, others chimed in saying that FireWire 400 accessories and DV capture are broken, too.
It is worth keeping in mind that we’re very early in the beta cycle. As we’ve seen with similar situations in the past, FireWire support could theoretically return in a future build, in time for the final release this fall. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment and will update this article if we hear back.
Did you still rely on FireWire? Let us know in the comments.
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