If you're one of those people so obsessed about Apple's technologies that you can't sleep at night because you're constantly worried about whether Apple's 400 Mbps FireWire technology will survive the threat of the 480 Mbps USB 2.0 standard, we have a couple of things to say. First of all, get a life. Seriously. Otherwise you might wind up so far gone you'll spend all your time producing an Apple-themed online soap opera or something equally absurd. Secondly, even if you don't get a life, at least you can breathe a little easier now, because Apple has a powerful new ally in the fight for widespread FireWire support. Here's the weird thing, though: that ally is none other than Microsoft.

'Strue! Faithful viewer Nina Tovish could have knocked us over with a feather when she told us, but she chose to knock us over with a CNET article instead. Apparently when Windows XP surfaces later this year as the company's consumer operating system du jour, it'll support the existing USB 1.1 standard out of the box, but the higher-bandwidth USB 2.0 (which the industry formulated as an alternative to FireWire during those pesky licensing tussles a few years back) will be persona non grata. Instead, Microsoft will "throw its support" behind FireWire as Windows XP's high-speed peripheral interconnect bus of choice.

So you can probably stop worrying about FireWire going away anytime soon. With Microsoft's chunk of the desktop market, it's a pretty safe bet that USB 2.0 peripherals aren't going to catch on very quickly. It's a story that we Mac users have lived through time and time again: why build the goods if 90% of the market won't be able to use it unless you write custom drivers? It's sort of nice being on the winning side of that paradigm for once; the selection of FireWire-based peripherals has been increasing nicely in the past year or so, but we imagine that Windows XP will send FireWire peripheral development through the roof.

As for why Microsoft bailed on USB 2.0 in Windows XP, the company claims that "there is not a sufficient array of production-quality devices to test against." Fair enough. On the other hand, the company's statement that "Microsoft will not ship support for a standard that they can't guarantee a great user experience on" strikes us as both awkwardly constructed and, you know, pretty funny. But far be it from us to look a gift monopoly in the mouth.