Apple Revamps Thunderbolt Cable Lineup with Lower Pricing, Shorter Cable Option

[SicMX]

Originally Posted by Frisco

Bottom line is FW and Thunderbolt are dead, and USB 3 is the future. The sooner Apple realizes this the better. But we are talking about stubborn Apple....

Let see, one Thunderbolt cable is connected to 3x Lacie 2big Thunderbolt devices (2x3TB, 2x3TB, 2x256GB SSD), 1x Lacie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (2x512GB SSD) and 1x Eizo display. Even using all devices at the same time i'd probably not manage to max out the Thunderbolt cable bandwidth. Also when my my mbp goes to sleep all 4 hard drive enclosures also switch off (this might also work with USB 3.0, not sure)

The other alternative would be connecting my mbp via USB 3.0 to a USB 3.0 hub (and we all know how well those work) and connecting the hub to 4x external drives, of which the Lacie SSD wouldn't even to be able to use all of its speed due to USB 3.0 max bandwidth. The monitor would be connected with miniDisplayPort.

My backup hard drives are actually USB 3.0 but a) much slower than my Thunderbolt ones and more importantly b) much less stable. I get random errors that the disk was not correctly ejected when my computer goes to sleep, which probably isn't good for the HDDs. This could be due to USB 3.0 drivers, the USB 3.0 hub or the USB 3.0 enclosures. Not sure, but my Thunderbolt drives have had 0 errors so far, so i'm pleased.

Add the Belkin dock and i only need to connect 1x power cable and 2x Thunderbolt cable and i'm set. Plus i get back my ethernet and firewire 800 port that I still need.

[raniel]

Originally Posted by SicMX

Let see, one Thunderbolt cable is connected to 3x Lacie 2big Thunderbolt devices (2x3TB, 2x3TB, 2x256GB SSD), 1x Lacie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (2x512GB SSD) and 1x Eizo display. Even using all devices at the same time i'd probably not manage to max out the Thunderbolt cable bandwidth. Also when my my mbp goes to sleep all 4 hard drive enclosures also switch off (this might also work with USB 3.0, not sure)

The other alternative would be connecting my mbp via USB 3.0 to a USB 3.0 hub (and we all know how well those work) and connecting the hub to 4x external drives, of which the Lacie SSD wouldn't even to be able to use all of its speed due to USB 3.0 max bandwidth. The monitor would be connected with miniDisplayPort.

My backup hard drives are actually USB 3.0 but a) much slower than my Thunderbolt ones and more importantly b) much less stable. I get random errors that the disk was not correctly ejected when my computer goes to sleep, which probably isn't good for the HDDs. This could be due to USB 3.0 drivers, the USB 3.0 hub or the USB 3.0 enclosures. Not sure, but my Thunderbolt drives have had 0 errors so far, so i'm pleased.

Add the Belkin dock and i only need to connect 1x power cable and 2x Thunderbolt cable and i'm set. Plus i get back my ethernet and firewire 800 port that I still need.

Ok Ok. how much did it cost you again?

[ConCat]

Originally Posted by NewbieCanada

But there's only the 2011 Macs that have Thunderbolt without USB 3.0

USB 4.0 then. Bottom line: I will be able to plug whatever I want into this thunderbolt port when the appropriate adapter comes out, and that kind of thing is perfect for a laptop, which only has room for a limited amount of ports. I already have an ethernet adapter for it for the times where I need to wire into my router to troubleshoot wifi or on a network somewhere. If a new standard comes out, once Apple has support for it on ONE of their computers, chances are a thunderbolt adapter will then become possible, and I will buy it if there's a peripheral I need but can't use with existing ports. It really does future-proof my computer substantially. I like.

Comparing this kind of versatility to FireWire is foolish to say the least. Thunderbolt is not FireWire, and is surely not USB. These are different things, and Thunderbolt can do things that neither of them could ever dream of doing.

Although, I have to say, this whole "Dasiy-chaining" thing is definitely dead. Already there are a few thunderbolt peripherals out there that are forced to be the at the end of the chain, and, well... You can only have one end. Even the Thunderbolt adapters from Apple are in that boat. Hopefully some sort of Thunderbolt hub comes out in the near future, otherwise managing thunderbolt peripherals could get tedious.

[Mike MA]

Originally Posted by bbeagle

These trolls are ingenious. Good or bad, everything can be spun to be bad.

These trolls are ingenious. Good or bad, REALLY everything can be spun to be bad.

[mrsir2009]

Originally Posted by iGrip

You need it to hook up an Apple Brand external monitor.

A three thousand dollar external apple monitor

[johnmacward]

Originally Posted by charlieegan3

Shorter cable, same massive markup.

This is the absolute truth.

There's no doubt that the cables are more expensive than others with built-in circuitry and so on, so rather than costing 45c cost price, they're maybe €3 or €4. Retailing at €39 is taking the pee, expecially considering the platform isn't doing all that well.

[KnightWRX]

Originally Posted by haruhiko

Early 2011 - Thunderbolt debuted and initially very expensive and with no accessories and the 2011 Macs don't have USB 3 ports:

"It's a new technology! It will improve and have more accessories over time therefore lowering the cost! It's lightyears better than USB 3!"

Early 2013 - Thunderbolt is 2 years old and still very expensive and with no accessories (well... there are some... like the $299.9 dock?):

"It's not for the mass! It's targeted to the prosumer! The professionals! It's not for the unwashed poor people like you!"

The speech never changed like you hint. It always was the same, people just never bothered to read it and are surprised 2 years later when Intel's head of Thunderbolt was right, back in 2011 about it :

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380890,00.asp

Seriously people. Read and understand what Intel has planned for this. Mass consumer adoption and replacement of USB 3 is not it.

[roadbloc]

Still expensive for just a cable.

[MattInOz]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

They told us the high price of tha cable was becuase of the expensive chips inside the ends. If so then why should the longer cable cost $10 more. Did the extra 1/2 meter of wire really add $10 to the cost? Why not sell both at the lower price.

Didn't the old cable have a couple of levels of chip?
Have a look at iFixit teardown
Maybe short thunderbolt doesn't need as many chips to cover shorter distance making them cheaper to make. We'll see once iFixit gets their hands on new cables.

[attiland]

Originally Posted by topmounter

The guy at Best Buy told me the gold-plated ones are at least 100x faster.

have you believed it?

[szw-mapple fan]

Originally Posted by mrsir2009

A three thousand dollar external apple monitor

well... it may cost a teeny bit less than that at $999 but i get your point.

[Andreu]

Originally Posted by SDAVE

Not good for us.

TB can become a FireWire port, a Gigabit Port, an extension for the PCIe port to expand graphic card capabilities, etc, not to mention connect to a display and the display becomes a hub, etc.

USB3.0 cannot.

TB is a PCIe extension directly connected to the motherboard, kind of like the now dead ExpressCard.

yeah.. but where is the hub that does the above for a reasonable price? $299 or $399 but can't order it anywhere?

This is ridiculous... I am betting that the TB is going to be another Firewire.. so what is the cable becomes 80% cheaper? I can't find anything to plug it in? USB 3 is going to be 10Gb soon.. TB is going obsolete when that happens for sure..

----------

Originally Posted by attiland

have you believed it?

Haha... the Best Buy guy would probably sell a USB 3 gold plated with a USB 2 Hub telling the customer. Yes! your USB 2 will run quicker on this cable!

[MeFromHere]

Originally Posted by Mr. Gates

$9.99 would be fair.

So design one, build it, and offer it for sale at $9.99.

Otherwise I'll assume you're an armchair expert with no worthwhile experience or knowledge, and ignore you.

[theluggage]

Originally Posted by charlieegan3

Shorter cable, same massive markup.

Actually, no - compared with the fixed costs of the 2 connectors, 2 sets of chippery and the 'labour' of attaching said gubbins to each end of the wire, cutting out 1.5m of wire seems unlikely to reduce Apple's marginal cost per cable by 25% - and these aren't going to be significantly harder to store or distribute, plus it's inevitably more expensive to manufacture and distribute 2 versions of a product than just one.

So most of the price reduction must come from reducing their markup.

i.e. it shows how big the markup was on the original cable!

[Fishrrman]

"Thunderbolt is a dead non-starter. USB3 is on course to win the fight."

You're right, of course.

I also predicted this months ago.

Thunderbolt was a snazzy technology that had a lot going for it, with two major exceptions:
- Price, and
- Availability.

Whereas USB3 is out of the starting gate like a well-groomed race horse.

I'd reckon the sales of USB3 vis-a-vis Thunderbolt drives to be something like 100 to 1, perhaps more like 500 to 1.

With the new 10gps USB standard arriving next year, there will be little place left for Thunderbolt in the market, at all.

Prediction:
By 2016, the Thunderbolt port will be gone from Macs, probably replaced by just a MiniDisplayPort connector, or some new connection technology.

But USB will still be there, probably running at 20gps or more….

[everything-i]

Originally Posted by sammich

Don't the active ends of the cable just manage the cable itself? It's the controllers in the devices that handle the data 'protocols'.

AFAIK the ends of the cable enable the high speed and low latencies by adapting to the electrical characteristics of the copper. That's all. Just like the newly announced optical cables, all the ends do is manage their medium.

Correct, the writer of this article does not understand the technology used here. As for all the comments about price, the electronics in the cables is pretty complex stuff so the price seems about right. In a years time it will be half the price again so the cable costs can be reduced again. I think it will reach a point where TB will be attractive to the consumer market, just not for a couple of years yet but it has huge potential especially now the optical cables have started to appear.

[inlovewithi]

Originally Posted by KPOM

Thunderbolt won't be ubiquitous like USB 3.0. However, it can still be useful. I don't know why Intel doesn't insist on it as part of the Ultrabook spec (instead they focus on silly things like Wi-Di and touchscreens). It would be the perfect port for a universal docking station, since it has greater capabilities than USB 3.0. Apple has the right idea with the Thunderbolt monitor. With the cable down to a more reasonable $29 and a smaller size, maybe we'll see some companies take it more seriously. The $300 docks are a start, but we really need to get these down below $200 before anyone will notice. Decent USB 3.0 docks are about $150.

Are you joking? Do you think the average person would care more about a Thunderbolt port over having a touch screen? Or even WiDi? You must really love Apple. I would say 99.99 of people would rather have a touchscreen than a computer with a Thunderbolt port.

----------

Originally Posted by ikir

Pro market? I work in a shop and we sell FW hardware everyday to professionals. Thunderbolt is the same, it does what USB and other connection can't. Sure it is more expensive, but soo many users are too stupid to understand that if they don't need Thunderbolt, someone else do.

The anger that comes through your post, for something that nobody really cares about or thinks about after they read the story.

[KPOM]

Originally Posted by inlovewithi

Are you joking? Do you think the average person would care more about a Thunderbolt port over having a touch screen? Or even WiDi? You must really love Apple. I would say 99.99 of people would rather have a touchscreen than a computer with a Thunderbolt port.[COLOR="#808080"]

What's silly is Intel mandating it. Windows 8 effectively requires a touchscreen to be useful. Therefore Intel "mandating" it is unnecessary. (That said, I do agree with Apple's position that, as currently implemented, touchscreen notebooks and desktops aren't necessary or desirable).

The design reference should push manufacturers to adopt technologies they wouldn't otherwise be inclined to support (out of inertia). If you are trying to establish a powerful new expansion standard, put it in the design requirements. Since the Windows side seems bent on creating converged devices, I don't know why Intel isn't using it as an opportunity to advance a port that would be perfect for creating these docks. Heck, Thunderbolt could even be used to create a universal keyboard dock that could be used interchangeably with any in-spec Ultrabook.

[luckyw]

Originally Posted by haruhiko

Early 2011 - Thunderbolt debuted and initially very expensive and with no accessories and the 2011 Macs don't have USB 3 ports:

"It's a new technology! It will improve and have more accessories over time therefore lowering the cost! It's lightyears better than USB 3!"

Early 2013 - Thunderbolt is 2 years old and still very expensive and with no accessories (well... there are some... like the $299.9 dock?):

"It's not for the mass! It's targeted to the prosumer! The professionals! It's not for the unwashed poor people like you!"

Exactly my thoughts. Don't forget Apple gave in and started adding USB 3.0 to their Macs, but forgot to provide a Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 adaptor. The current docks and adaptors are a rip-off.

[repoman27]

Originally Posted by johnmacward

This is the absolute truth.

There's no doubt that the cables are more expensive than others with built-in circuitry and so on, so rather than costing 45c cost price, they're maybe €3 or €4. Retailing at €39 is taking the pee, expecially considering the platform isn't doing all that well.

The first generation of Thunderbolt cables were built using Gennum (now Semtech) transceivers which were manufactured on a rather expensive SiGe process. Each cable required 4 transceiver chips (1 per channel at each end) and a separate microcontroller and power management IC. The cables also use 4 runs of shielded twinax for high speed signaling, a low speed signaling pair for link/power management, and 4 conductors for the device power bus. They are also manufactured using aramid fibers for additional strength, quite a bit of EMI shielding, and several novel manufacturing processes. The $49 Thunderbolt cable may have been one of Apple's lowest margin offerings in history. The fact that no third party cables were ever able to undercut Apple's pricing further supports this.

The new cables are likely using Intersil's transceiver solution which is made on a much more affordable 40nm CMOS process, can accommodate both channels with a single chip, and includes the microcontroller on die.

You might ask yourself, who isn't the platform doing that well for? Thunderbolt is a solution that Intel produces for one of their key customers—Apple. Apple is buying plenty of chips from Intel and paying good money for them. Apple's PC shipments have continued to grow steadily, and thus so have shipments of Thunderbolt controllers, while the rest of the PC industry is declining (which is an historical event in and of itself.)

Originally Posted by theluggage

Actually, no - compared with the fixed costs of the 2 connectors, 2 sets of chippery and the 'labour' of attaching said gubbins to each end of the wire, cutting out 1.5m of wire seems unlikely to reduce Apple's marginal cost per cable by 25% - and these aren't going to be significantly harder to store or distribute, plus it's inevitably more expensive to manufacture and distribute 2 versions of a product than just one.

So most of the price reduction must come from reducing their markup.

i.e. it shows how big the markup was on the original cable!

The price reduction on the 2.0 m cable is likely due to the reduced cost of the newer generation of Thunderbolt transceivers. Moore's law predicts that the cost of the silicon components used in the cables will continue to decrease steadily over time, however copper prices are not at all subject to Mr. Moore's conjecture. Materials and shipping costs are actually lower on a shorter cable. Furthermore, the yields may be considerably higher for the shorter cables thus making them less expensive to produce. The shorter cables may even be the result of binning, i.e. if a 2.0 m cable does not pass testing, you may still be able to make a few shorter lengths from it that do pass, instead of throwing the whole thing in the bin.

Originally Posted by Andreu

yeah.. but where is the hub that does the above for a reasonable price? $299 or $399 but can't order it anywhere?

This is ridiculous... I am betting that the TB is going to be another Firewire.. so what is the cable becomes 80% cheaper? I can't find anything to plug it in? USB 3 is going to be 10Gb soon.. TB is going obsolete when that happens for sure..

Originally Posted by Fishrrman

"Thunderbolt is a dead non-starter. USB3 is on course to win the fight."

You're right, of course.

I also predicted this months ago.

Thunderbolt was a snazzy technology that had a lot going for it, with two major exceptions:
- Price, and
- Availability.

Whereas USB3 is out of the starting gate like a well-groomed race horse.

I'd reckon the sales of USB3 vis-a-vis Thunderbolt drives to be something like 100 to 1, perhaps more like 500 to 1.

With the new 10gps USB standard arriving next year, there will be little place left for Thunderbolt in the market, at all.

Prediction:
By 2016, the Thunderbolt port will be gone from Macs, probably replaced by just a MiniDisplayPort connector, or some new connection technology.

But USB will still be there, probably running at 20gps or more….

I posted this previously, but it bears repeating. The next USB specification to include a speed bump is expected to be released at the end of 2014. Silicon based on that spec, the products based on that silicon, and the drivers to make it all work will take some time to reach market after that. True widespread adoption happens when Intel releases a chipset with an integrated controller.

So let's see:
USB 1.1 spec released Q3 1998, integrated by Intel Q2 1999
USB 2.0 spec released Q2 2000, integrated by Intel Q2 2002
USB 3.0 spec released Q4 2008, integrated by Intel Q2 2012
USB x.x spec released Q4 2014, integrated by Intel...

Also, the speeds used to market the various generations of USB are grossly inflated compared to real-world throughput numbers. USB has always used its physical layer gross bitrate as its advertised speed, inclusive of all encoding and protocol overhead. USB 2.0 was advertised as 480 Mbit/s, however it was only a half-duplex connection that employed 8b/10b encoding and required a significant amount of protocol overhead. Real world speeds never tend to exceed 320 Mbit/s, and only in one direction at a time. USB 3.0 SuperSpeed mode is full-duplex, but once again the advertised speed is 5 Gbit/s, which includes 8b/10b encoding. So really it's a 4 Gbit/s link, but protocol overhead has thus far kept devices from exceeding 2.8 Gbit/s. If the connectors and cables are essentially staying the same, then we can presume that the next gen of SuperSpeed USB is still using a single pair each for send and receive, and bumping the signaling rate to 10 GT/s. If so, then unless the encoding and protocol change considerably, we can expect real world transfer rates of 5.6 Gbit/s, or a bit better than what was advertised for the current generation.

Thunderbolt advertises the single channel bitrate without including encoding. Since each link is 2 full-duplex channels, and the protocol overhead is lower than USB, it offers more than 5x the net bandwidth of SuperSpeed USB. Also, due to the architecture, a 4-channel Thunderbolt controller offers more than 10x the front-end bandwidth of a 4-port USB 3.0 controller. Thunderbolt already is 20 Gbit/s per link, while USB may not ever go there due to what it is primarily used for.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but the netbook is officially dead. As in nobody is producing another one, and once remaining stocks have been written off, that's it. Kaput. Let's see, what did they have going for them? Oh right, price and availability.

USB 3.0 is the third major revision of the most popular PC interface in history. It's not going anywhere. Thunderbolt is not having a fight with USB 3.0. In fact they get along just fine on all of the 2012 Macs.

The Thunderbolt port is just a mini DisplayPort that offers a second signaling mode. For folks who don't need super fast I/O or can't afford to pay for the gear, it's just a digital display output port. That's why it's so odd that people are so vocal about how problematic this port is because they don't have anything to plug into it. Did you all feel this way about other laptops you've owned with VGA, DVI or HDMI ports? "Dammit, when I don't have an external display plugged into this thing I've got no use for this darn socket. What a gyp."

People who think Thunderbolt was designed for connecting "drives" are missing the point. While one of the uses of the PCIe lanes in a PC is for the connection of SATA controllers to which various HDDs, SSDs and ODDs can be attached, this is not its raison d'être. USB 3.0 is a perfectly reasonable and very economical way to connect external storage devices to a PC. Thunderbolt is a perfectly reasonable way to connect external storage arrays with vastly better performance than SuperSpeed USB, so long as you are in a position to justify the expense. USB is also a great way to connect input devices, native Thunderbolt keyboards and mice would not make a bit of sense. Different tools, different applications.

At last count there are at least 37 Thunderbolt devices available on the market that are not based on SATA/SAS interfaces. How many SuperSpeed USB products are on the market that are not direct attach storage/flash drives, card readers or hubs? Can you even come up with 37?

[KnightWRX]

Originally Posted by KPOM

The design reference should push manufacturers to adopt technologies they wouldn't otherwise be inclined to support (out of inertia). If you are trying to establish a powerful new expansion standard, put it in the design requirements.

But again, Intel's plans for Thunderbolt doesn't seem to be the mass consumer market. So why should they push for it in their mass consumer platform that is the Ultrabook ?

That's where your disconnect happens. You're thinking of Thunderbolt as "Thunderbolt vs USB 3" whereas Intel sees Thunderbolt as "Thunderbolt and USB 3".

[KPOM]

Originally Posted by luckyw

Exactly my thoughts. Don't forget Apple gave in and started adding USB 3.0 to their Macs, but forgot to provide a Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 adaptor. The current docks and adaptors are a rip-off.

It isn't that they "gave in." With Ivy Bridge, Intel chipsets started coming with USB 3.0 support standard. Of course they would support it. Before then it would have required adding another chip.

[KnightWRX]

Originally Posted by KPOM

It isn't that they "gave in." With Ivy Bridge, Intel chipsets started coming with USB 3.0 support standard. Of course they would support it. Before then it would have required adding another chip.

Thunderbolt required and still requires another chip. Yet they are including it. No one will ever know why Apple was actually so late to the USB 3 game. Were they really thinking of Thunderbolt as a consumer level tech to replace USB 3 ? Because again, even Intel never positionned it as such.

[KPOM]

Originally Posted by KnightWRX

But again, Intel's plans for Thunderbolt doesn't seem to be the mass consumer market. So why should they push for it in their mass consumer platform that is the Ultrabook ?

That's where your disconnect happens. You're thinking of Thunderbolt as "Thunderbolt vs USB 3" whereas Intel sees Thunderbolt as "Thunderbolt and USB 3".

But right now, it is turning into USB 3.0 and no Thunderbolt at all. In the current market, some level of adoption in the mass consumer market is necessary. More companies are following Apple's model of not making a separate "enterprise" line (although Apple has a MacBook Pro, it is very much a mass consumer market product).

If Intel wants to attract any kind of usage for Thunderbolt besides massive RAID enclosures and similar devices, they will need to get the port on more devices. That doesn't mean Thunderbolt flash drives or printers, but even things like external GPUs have been held back because of a lack of a market. Why bother developing anything useful when the market is so small it isn't worth it? A docking station isn't a "mass consumer" device, but it is common enough (some consumers, more businesses) where it could be useful, and it would be the perfect application for Thunderbolt. But it's been nearly 2 years and only now are some of these starting to come out, and at twice the price of USB 3.0 alternatives that don't work quite as well but could garner enough of the market to crowd it out.

[KnightWRX]

Originally Posted by KPOM

But right now, it is turning into USB 3.0 and no Thunderbolt at all. In the current market, some level of adoption in the mass consumer market is necessary.

Uh ? Plenty of Thunderbolt and in the current market, no level of adoption in the mass consumer market is necessary at all.

Remove your "Consumer glasses" for an instant. Is RED having any consumer success ? Is FiberChannel (even it's cheaper cousin, FCoE) ? Is iSCSI deployed in cheap 30$ routers ?

Prosumer/SMB businesses are a segment of their own. Thunderbolt fits there, better than USB 3, and thus the peripherals provided for Thunderbolt are aimed at those segments.

Just as Intel envisionned. Again, read interviews with Jason Ziller (I posted one very interesting article where all of your criticism is covered and answered and the answer is : "We don't see Thunderbolt competing with USB 3").