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Prices of Thunderbolt Cables Likely to Drop in 2013
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I don't know how widely this will ever be used. Firewire was originally intended for high speed data transmission, and USB for standard one-connector-for-most-things. We all know how that went. USB got faster and cheaper, and eve though firewire 800 was faster, USB 2 was the go-to connector.
Unless thunderbolt turns into a one-cable-to-rule-them all (and aside from power it looks like it will get there) it's not going to take off the way USB did. It needs to be cheaper and easier to use. Thunderbolt only has one of those points covered.
Unless thunderbolt turns into a one-cable-to-rule-them all (and aside from power it looks like it will get there) it's not going to take off the way USB did. It needs to be cheaper and easier to use. Thunderbolt only has one of those points covered.
Firewire was popular because of digital video (DV) devices like camcorders...This is the reason FW800 never took off, even though it's faster than USB 2.0. Nowadays digital video camcorders either record to SD cards or internal hard drives and the data is copied to the computer via USB2.0.
FW800 is dying, unfortunately. I'm glad some of my external FW800 also have a USB3.0 port
The Ivy Bridge chipsets do not support T-Bolt - but they do support USB 3.0. Discrete T-Bolt controllers are still needed.
Wouldn't 1394 at 1600/3200 have to have been born in order to die?
It was a vapor spec that never materialized, and now never will.
I know this is a silly point of contention, but I dislike the name "Thunderbolt". "Light Peak" seemed perfect, especially marketing; following "FireWire", "LightPeak" or "LP" devices.
Thank God Jobs never got his wish in naming the "iPhone" the "Magic Phone".
Thank God Jobs never got his wish in naming the "iPhone" the "Magic Phone".
Thunderbolt like FW is daisy-chained. All I can say is that daisy-chaining sucks big time for removable devices, especially if the "monitor" must be the last device on the chain. Want to unplug that hard drive? Time to play musical chairs with all your peripherals! People don't realize how MUCH it sucks until they're actually in a situation where they have to do it regularly. And just TRY to find a reasonably priced multi-port hub for Thunderbolt. Try to find a reasonable priced ANYTHING for Thunderbolt. The whole system is a major FAIL since inception for these very reasons and the sad thing is that it was SO EASY to see its failings from Day 1 because it's Firewire all over again. It was plain to see USB3 would be dirt cheap and used by default given its backward compatible nature with USB 2 and 1. In short, you'll NEED USB3 regardless so of course it'll get used. It's there. It's cheap. It's everywhere. The only way to dethrone an entrenched format like that is to be not only massively better (TB is 2x faster, but that's neither hear nor there when it's a BUS format and video sucks up that bandwidth very quickly), but it also has to be both more convenient (daisy-chaining kills that) and cheaper (NOTHING and I mean NOTHING is cheap about TB; you're paying $200+ premiums for the same hard drive just to use a TB connector (and then pay $50 for a cable on top of that, so that 3TB drive then costs you $350-450 that costs $100-150 for USB3 and the same speeds since the hard drive is the limiting factor). Good luck finding one at a brick and mortar store for that matter.
People keep making a big deal about this idea of using "less" connectors in the future, but it's not really true except for a docking connector. All those devices STILL have to be connected to the machine somehow (i.e. unless your hard drives are built into your monitor, you'll need a separate cable for them and for Network and everything else; the only connection that needs just one cable is the dock connector and there I'd agree it would take a few seconds less to dock your notebook than with 4 cables, but is it really worth that much more money to save a few seconds? The current all-in-one hubs cost a fortune and Apple's own built-in hub to their monitor is already outdated since it's only USB2 (and for no good reason either since USB3 was available when it came out and the cost would have been negligible but that would have meant OSX would have had to support it while Jobs was still alive and that wasn't going to happen. Steve was intelligent and creative on a lot of levels, but practicality wasn't always one of them.
As usual, you're wrong about everything, and have the audacity to proclaim "fail" about the statements of others.
Sumitomo makes optical Thunderbolt cables. They've been available for a while now. Sumitomo also manufactures several of the other Thunderbolt cables that have recently come to market (Elgato, Belkin), but they don't sell direct in the US. Yes the optical transceiver is housed in the cable connector, right where it should be for a consumer device. It keeps the price of everything lower for those that don't need the range of optical, it keeps a potentially dangerous laser device out of harm's way, and doesn't require any expensive, easily damaged or contaminated lenses in the connector.
The speed of Thunderbolt is entirely determined by the controller. Thus far all controllers on the market are 10 Gbps, full-duplex, per channel. All cables are dual channel, and thus multi-path.
The copper implementation of Thunderbolt is actually twice the bandwidth of the optical versions that were demoed as Light Peak. Those only offered a single 10 Gbps channel, rather than the two that are standard with Thunderbolt. Short of silicon photonics, there is always an electrical/optical boundary, and your semantical arguments about the significance of where this boundary lies are pointless. For now, economics and practicality will determine where they are.
Also, the requirement of Thunderbolt devices to be hot-pluggable means that daisy chaining isn't much of a liability, unless you are silly enough to boot off of a device that isn't at or near the beginning of the chain. But then again, you're welcome to voice your opinion that daisy chains suck. At least that isn't patently false, like most of the other troll-bait claims you make.
1+
Why would the average Mac or PC user now looking at USB3 want to pay more for TB for storage?
OT - plugging a USB2 HDD into a USB3 computer will it be faster? I'm not talking about USB3 speed but will there be less of a bottleneck with the faster connecting if you have a number of HDDs running off the same bus or hub?
Hand up how many of you own Ferrari after all they only been out 2 plus years.
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So well written and yet no one has given you a thumb up.
dCertainly, seeing as FireWire is on its deathbed. Big electronics retailers like Best Buy and Fry's have for the most part ceased stocking FW external drives in their stores, and only feature USB3 drives.
As for TB, every delay and grossly-overpriced product on the TB side just further entrenches USB3. I predict TB won't get close to FW in market penetration.
The pictures are very deceiving. Here's a pic of mine for scale, next to a USB connector, MagSafe 2 connector, headphone, and what for some reason is an unnecessarily large MDP->DVI cable. It's maybe about a centimeter longer than the USB connector, but not long enough to be a problem I don't think.
I have a 2011 MBA 13" and actually the only thing which I really envy from the new Airs is the USB 3.0... I really don't think we're gonna see considerably cheap Thunderbolt devices in the near future (1-2 years)...
USB 3.0 is "only" 5 Gbit/s but it's s till way faster than Firewire, it's a whole another category.
USB 3.0 is "only" 5 Gbit/s but it's s till way faster than Firewire, it's a whole another category.
Is there a good reason for all those ICs to be built into the cable?* Surely it would have been more sensible to put all the processing hardware into the computer/peripheral at the socket, leaving the cable as just that - a cable.
(*unless, the conspiracy theorist might add, you're trying to make your laptop ultra-thin and create a nice money-making scheme into the bargain...)
Apologies if I've missed something obvious, but I still don't see the (technical) reason why all that tuning/multiplexing hardware should be built into the cable, rather than into the ports at either end...?
Apple's biggest marketing blunder with Thunderbolt : making everyone think it was aimed at replacing USB. Whether intentional or not on their part, that is now what most in the Apple community think.
Thunderbolt is not a USB replacement. Never will be. It'll be a niche host based connectivity option for higher end machines and peripherals, mostly used in the prosumer world.
Enterprise is going network based connectivity (FC or IP SANs for storage, network based peripherals over GBE or 10GE), consumers are sticking with lower mass market priced peripherals (USB3).
Thunderbolt is not a USB replacement. Never will be. It'll be a niche host based connectivity option for higher end machines and peripherals, mostly used in the prosumer world.
Enterprise is going network based connectivity (FC or IP SANs for storage, network based peripherals over GBE or 10GE), consumers are sticking with lower mass market priced peripherals (USB3).
The pictures are very deceiving. Here's a pic of mine for scale, next to a USB connector, MagSafe 2 connector, headphone, and what for some reason is an unnecessarily large MDP->DVI cable. It's maybe about a centimeter longer than the USB connector, but not long enough to be a problem I don't think.
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What on earth is that Monoprice cable? Is that the adapter in a new Retina Pro? I have Monoprice adapters, and none are as hideously large as that thing...
Yeah, it's a Monoprice Mini DisplayPort to DVI cable. I have no idea why it's so freakin' huge either. And yes, it's a retina MBP.
Thank you for the polite reply.
Any "optical" T-Bolt cable today is a hybrid Cu-optical cable - it has copper connectors, with the copper protocols (and speeds) bridged across an optical segment.
True optical does not exist.
Haha... I have one of them Monoprice big boys, but fortunately it connects a second display to my iMac, so it stays hidden from view.
I remember when USB was announced and described nearly exactly the same way... One of these days I'd like to see the hype fulfilled on some magical new technology.
When optical TB becomes more prevalent, they'll probably move the hardware back into the port controller. Then there will be cheaper cables, but it will establish a fragmented legacy cable market. Perhaps we might also see a transducer dongle adapter.
All this putting chips in cables does sound perverse, but we live in an age where things have become so small and so cheap there's really no reason not to put intelligence inside the most mundane things.
Hot-swapping without a restart and a whopping 12 Mbit/s in the age of floppies and serial cables. I had few serial mice... You really needed USB 2.0 once flash drives over 256 MB rolled out.
Get back to me when I can get a Thunderbolt cable in a cereal box. Which you might be able to do with a USB cable, today.