A further wrinkle is that various camera manufacturers offered differing levels of compatibility even with Mac and PC during the height of the format. Canon and Sony and JVC cameras could get finicky, depending on the editing software you were using. As standards go it was often quite frustrating how loosey-goosey they were, speaking dialects of ieee1394 but not quite the same language.
Not much has changed, really, with these same manufacturers and modern cameras though now you get access to a filesystem with flavors of MP4 that everyone has their own special blend of. At least you don't have to worry about tape transports anymore and drop-outs or a drop-frame or device dropping off the bus that could lock your whole system up because, my guess, Firewire hooks into the OS at a fairly low level and likes to misbehave. FW800 improved reliability a little, for drives. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to smash original Firewire gear though, drives, cameras, you name it. It's never to be trusted to just work.
