USB2 may well be quoted faster than Firewire, but USB2 is not so good at sustained transfers of large-volume data such as video. Firewire is, to all intents and purposes, designed purely with the thought of transferring big chunks of data as fast as possible and with as little CPU overhead as possible.
Firewire is a peer-to-peer protocol, with devices communicating directly with each other, rather than through a central hub. USB devices have all their data transfers controlled by the hub, with handshaking/checksumming per packet. Firewire just shoves a big bunch of data down the wire (slightly more technical, but the comparison holds).
Nobody has yet seen a 480Mbs capable USB2 controller. Firewire works at 400Mbps, with some devices supporting 800Mbps. 1600 and 3200Mbps are in the works.
http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/usb20vsfirewire/
Firewire is a peer-to-peer protocol, with devices communicating directly with each other, rather than through a central hub. USB devices have all their data transfers controlled by the hub, with handshaking/checksumming per packet. Firewire just shoves a big bunch of data down the wire (slightly more technical, but the comparison holds).
Nobody has yet seen a 480Mbs capable USB2 controller. Firewire works at 400Mbps, with some devices supporting 800Mbps. 1600 and 3200Mbps are in the works.
http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/usb20vsfirewire/