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Would you like usb3 with your MBP?

T

toke lahti

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 23, 2007
3,309
518
Helsinki, Finland
In 2008 Apple asked: "Can MacBook without FireWire be called Pro?"
In 2009 Apple knew the answer and FW came back to all MBP's.

In 2009 Apple asked "Can MacBook without ExpressCard be called Pro?"

If you have MBP with expresscard you can buy usb3 (or eSata) card from 3rd party for $40.
If you have MBP with sd-card reader you can buy new MBP with usb3 in sometime next year for $2000.
They really hit the goldmine!

Vote with your wallet!
 
I don't particularly care about Expresscard, which is really what your thread is about. Are you hoping the moderators don't tow this thread on this subject, unlike your first attempt?
 
Lets just skip USB3, and go straight for light peak.

It's scheduled to intro in 2010.
 
vant said:
Lets just skip USB3, and go straight for light peak.
It's scheduled to intro in 2010.
Click to expand...
And in the meantime all external hdd's have adopted usb3, dropped fw and none have LP. Fortunately they all still have eSata which Apple will also never adopt!
State of the Art!
 
toke lahti said:
And in the meantime all external hdd's have adopted usb3, dropped fw and none have LP. Fortunately they all still have eSata which Apple will also never adopt!
State of the Art!
Click to expand...

Adoption towards USB3 will not happen in 2010. Intel/AMD won't even support it until 2011.

Lets look at both...

USB3, 4Gbps (both ways) at 3 meters. Intel Adoption 2011

Light peak, 10Gbps (each way) at 100 meters. Intel Adoption 2010

Hmm...
 
vant said:
Adoption towards USB3 will not happen in 2010. Intel/AMD won't even support it until 2011.

Lets look at both...

USB3, 4Gbps (both ways) at 3 meters. Intel Adoption 2011

Light peak, 10Gbps (each way) at 100 meters. Intel Adoption 2010

Hmm...
Click to expand...

that is interesting....
is it remotely possible light peak will be available Q1 on MBPs??

If not, would it be possible to upgrade to light peak in the MBP?
simply take it to the genius bar and have them swap out one of the USB ports for a light peak port if the unibody hole will let it fit?

I am sort of a newbie when it comes to laptops, I know all the parts (such as CPU and GPU) are soldered on to the motherboard, so no upgrades can be done that way.....does the same go for the ports? Such as firewire, USB, ethernet, etc etc.....
 
palmerc2 said:
that is interesting....
is it remotely possible light peak will be available Q1 on MBPs??

If not, would it be possible to upgrade to light peak in the MBP?
simply take it to the genius bar and have them swap out one of the USB ports for a light peak port if the unibody hole will let it fit?

I am sort of a newbie when it comes to laptops, I know all the parts (such as CPU and GPU) are soldered on to the motherboard, so no upgrades can be done that way.....does the same go for the ports? Such as firewire, USB, ethernet, etc etc.....
Click to expand...

No, you would have to purchase a new laptop. You can't just add light peak, it has to be built with it. It might have an adapter that would plug into FW or USB, but you would never see the intended speeds.
 
vant said:
No, you would have to purchase a new laptop. You can't just add light peak, it has to be built with it. It might have an adapter that would plug into FW or USB, but you would never see the intended speeds.
Click to expand...

how about Expresscard/34?
 
ExpressCard 2.0 is due out in 2010 which doubles the speed of 1.0. This could open up the use of external video card with only a 25% performance lost compared to when running at 2.0 @ 16x.
 
No.
Firewire is still cooler. (tons of watts more to power stuff in a "works for sure" way, better connector, longer cables, P2P, daisy chains, etc.)

And for a SINGLE HARD DISK DRIVE (no RAID, no SSDs), you're not gonna see a huge real life improvement over Firewire800.

For other kind of peripherals, USB 2.0 and FW800 are already perfect.

I'd like FW3200 and LightPeak instead....

Lightpeak will be a whole new way of connecting stuff....multi-protocol (basically it's an highway where you can drive every kind of stuff, including USB, Firewire, Display Port, etc., imagine a Macbook with just 4 LightPeak ports and nothing else, imagine an external hub with legacy ports driven by a single lightpeak cable, imagine daisy chaining your monitor to your keyboard, mouse, speakers and hard disk with a single cable from your macbook, and so on....)

I think will see LightPeak for the first time on the Gulftown 6-core/12-core MacPro coming out this Spring and then in the macbook pros coming out in Fall 2010. (with a probably "Spotlight on laptops" event).

Great things are coming, and honestly USB 3.0 is the least exciting. It's just the same USB (with all the disadvantages over firewire) but bigger.
 
toke lahti said:
In 2008 Apple asked: "Can MacBook without FireWire be called Pro?"
In 2009 Apple knew the answer and FW came back to all MBP's.
Click to expand...

Firewire never went away from Macbooks with the "PRO" moniker. So you cannot say "it came back to all MBP". It never went away.

Firewire went away from non-PRO Macbooks in 2008 and....STILL is!

(The old white macbooks from fall 2008 to fall 2009 had fw400 just because they had it in the past, at the first revamping they lost it.)

In 2009 Apple asked "Can MacBook without ExpressCard be called Pro?"
Click to expand...

Since nobody ("one digit percentage") used it, probably yes.

If you have MBP with expresscard you can buy usb3 (or eSata) card from 3rd party for $40.
If you have MBP with sd-card reader you can buy new MBP with usb3 in sometime next year for $2000.
They really hit the goldmine!
Click to expand...

This is BS because YOU KNOW that MOST PEOPLE wouldn't had bought those fugly and uncomfortable adapters to get USB 3.0 ANYWAY....so it's not a goldmine at all....it's a thing that concerns a small number of people...
 
toke lahti said:
And in the meantime all external hdd's have adopted usb3, dropped fw and none have LP. Fortunately they all still have eSata which Apple will also never adopt!
State of the Art!
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that all external hdd's have adopted usb3. Didn't Buffalo just release the firs usb3 capable drive recently? Can you even get usb3 in a computer as of today? Maybe I'm way off base here, but isn't the schedule to have light peak in computers a lot sooner than usb3? I thought it was reasonable to assume that the next major upgrade to Apple's computer line might include light peak, or at least a revision in the summer of 2010.
 
gianly1985 said:
Firewire never went away from Macbooks with the "PRO" moniker. So you cannot say "it came back to all MBP". It never went away.

Firewire went away from non-PRO Macbooks in 2008 and....STILL is!
Click to expand...
13" aluminium MB is pretty much same than 13" MBP now, so switching names back and forth won't make a difference.
Apple is shortening the life of MBP on ourpose by taking away expandability.
I just don't think that's good, at least it's not ecological.

gianly1985 said:
Since nobody ("one digit percentage") used it, probably yes.
Click to expand...
Do you have some data to back that "one digit" up?
Of course EC hasn't been so important in the past, but within next two years there would have been increasing interest to it, when eSata & usb3 & LP are becoming common.

Anyway, if Apple would only care bigger than "one digit percentage" they would sell only 2 laptop models and 1 iMac model.
Btw, Mac's global share of PC's is only very small one digit percentage...

They should do better. Excellence has been in their DNA. Not medicore for big masses. Oh well, maybe times really are changing...
 
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