This is just plain wrong. FireWire was part of what made the first iPods so great, but the runaway iPod success made Apple an iPod company and PC users who dominate tech markets wanted USB iPods because it is what they had and critically because USB was cheaper. If anyone is to blame then it is Microsoft and PC makers for not adopting FireWire, but their customers did not want a more expensive alternative.
The article covers this. Intel was going to build FireWire into their chipset which would make the technology ubiquitous but at the time Steve Jobs swapped the licensing model from a flat fee to pricing per port which pushed Intel away. If Intel had bought into FireWire PCs would have the port.
There was a lot of collateral damage too, small firms hitchng their wagons to FW tubed out, or pre-93 developing alternatives to USB for the same ends (just bad timing). It was up-front expensive, and while technically superior to USB addressed primarily issues that were rooted in processor speeds of the time. If you could make the silicon. I have stories if interested.
Did the title of this article change after it was published here? It says "torpedoed by corporations" now.
It was 'torpedoed by corporations' when I submitted it; that title doesn't really align with my reading of the article.