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Yes, you would probably be the only one. A locking connector would be a disaster wating to happen. Why do you think Apple came out with the Magsafe power connector. A locking connector would mean laptops and devices crashing to the floor as well as broken (expensive) cables.

Oh. Well, personally I hate the magsafe and FW cables popping out of the side of my MBP everytime I move it.

Perhaps they should at least consider a lockable version for servers and desktops etc.
 
next step: bio-neural circuitry!!

ha yeah really. the video looks pretty promising. maybe with this, some of the internet speeds will get a bit of an upgrade (DSL would become extint, Cable Broadband would be the equivilant of dial-up and FIOS would be the default choice, once its installed everywhere). So is this just for server operations or would this stuff be availble to the general public?
 
Monoprice

Brilliant - Now Apple can sell LP-USB, LP-FW, LP-DVI, LP-VGA, LP-DLDVI adaptors at £20 -> £70 each to rip us all off a little bit more.

Nah, you buy them all at Monoprice $5 apiece (USD).

While Apple would never do something so consumer friendly, I'd love to see them do this for desktops: Make all of the legacy ports fully available, but have them ALL mapped via software (and internal adaptors) to the single LP chipset. So we'd buy new systems that still had USB, FW, and the new LP connectors, whatever, plug em in, and they just work! But in reality they are all just using LP. This would allow people to keep their legacy solutions while allowing Apple to switch to a single chipset that rules them all: LightPeak.

In a way, it is like the GeoPort idea only done right: stick an adapter on something with massive bandwidth and let the adapter handle the protocol conversion. Just need the one pipe and lots of software.
 
We have had fiber optics in aviation for a decade and half. Although with this technology maybe it will catch on even more in my world. Honeywell had used it in the HF communication boxes and although it was cool to see the setup and install was a bitch. Very fragile wiring and connectors.
Avionics has vibration and temperature problems that don't exist in home/office applications. I don't see Intel spending much time and money on ruggedized applications for Light Peak.
 
The Intel presentation on the MacRumors page just emphasizes that Light Peak is hot-plugable and bidirectional as if this is never-seen-before functionality.
A lot of people don't seem to know what FireWire is. I've been to Best Buys and similar stores looking for FW drives and seen nothing in stock but USB and eSATA drives, so I can understand why Intel speaks like that.
 
At face value, it sounds more like a reincarnated ADC (Apple Display Connector) than a replacement for USB.

Could you attach a hard drive to ADC?

Additionally, it’s going to take a hell of a lot of marketing ...
[snip]
...And why did Apple (who has never been afraid to develop a new standard) have Intel develop it?

You answered your own question.

Maury
 
A lot of people don't seem to know what FireWire is. I've been to Best Buys and similar stores looking for FW drives and seen nothing in stock but USB and eSATA drives, so I can understand why Intel speaks like that.

Probably because those stores mainly sel to PC users. Firewire never took off in the PC world.

However LP has a great future in both PC and Mac camps.
 
This sounds sweet. That is some serious speed. Only problem, that is one more interface to add on to the ever growing list of interfaces. FireWire 400 is dead, 800 by next year. USB 2.0 is going be dead soon, and 3.0 is nowhere to be seen. Very interesting stuff here.

Look at the connector.
Can we say USB 4.0.
 
Remember the movie Aliens when the android Bishop remotely pilots the second drop ship from the Sulaco... his remote console plugs in to the up-link dish via optic cable connector...:cool:
Looks great :apple: !

Yeah, but then the Alien Queen tears him in half later. :(
 
this thread is getting so long now I had to skip some posts, but I'm curious how this is going to accommodate real world storage. If the cable can push this awesome about of data but you have a standard HDD, you're not going to see a whole lot of actual difference.

Granted SDD are the next thing and are practically here, but even they can't handle 10Gb/s. Most people don't and won't for a while have SDD raid going on, so for your average user how is this going really be visible? This seems to be for peripherals, but is internal storage going to use this too so it's actually transferable without the current 3Gb/s (SATAII) bottleneck.
 
At face value, it sounds more like a reincarnated ADC (Apple Display Connector) than a replacement for USB.

Additionally, it’s going to take a hell of a lot of marketing and arm twisting to get the entire peripheral industry to adopt Light Peak. I just hope Apple doesn’t go radical with it (like they did with USB 1.0, which worked in their favor).

The big question is why is Intel promoting USB 3.0 if they have Light Peak coming around the corner (2010). And why did Apple (who has never been afraid to develop a new standard) have Intel develop it?

Somehow this story doesn’t add up.

Did you read a different post than the rest of us? This is amazing and will clean up all the different standards mess for at least 10 years. What part if that will need arm twisting? Getting Intel to do it just makes it appeal to the entire PC market, not just Apple's market.
 
this thread is getting so long now I had to skip some posts, but I'm curious how this is going to accommodate real world storage. If the cable can push this awesome about of data but you have a standard HDD, you're not going to see a whole lot of actual difference.

Granted SDD are the next thing and are practically here, but even they can't handle 10Gb/s. Most people don't and won't for a while have SDD raid going on, so for your average user how is this going really be visible? This seems to be for peripherals, but is internal storage going to use this too so it's actually transferable without the current 3Gb/s (SATAII) bottleneck.

In the video they transfer a 2 gig file while usin the same cable to run a display at full resolution. I'd say that's the coolest thing about the technology, using it as a single plug for a dock type mechanism, or just a monitor with FireWire, USB ports, and card readers without needing more cables.

There ya go, perfectly useful, while still supporting legacy plugs.
 
Look at the connector.
Can we say USB 4.0.
Light Peak is a USB-style connector? Bah! If Apple really is behind this, you'd think they'd get Intel to use FireWire-style connectors. FireWire connectors are so much more robust and easy to insert.
 
Could you attach a hard drive to ADC?

You could attach your Firewire hard drive to your ADC monitor that had a standard Firewire port and bypass having to connect it to your Power Mac G4.

In a way, it could be considered a precursor to Light Peak.

Did you read a different post than the rest of us? This is amazing and will clean up all the different standards mess for at least 10 years. What part if that will need arm twisting? Getting Intel to do it just makes it appeal to the entire PC market, not just Apple's market.

Actually yeah I did. This story was moved from the forums to the front page and has been updated several times as different information has leaked out. :rolleyes:

It's naive to think the multitude of device makers (hard drives, keyboards, mice, digital cameras, camcorders, displays, sound, etc) are going to jump right on "Light Peak" when they've been preparing their devices for other emerging standards (USB 3.0, DisplayPort, Firewire 3200, etc).

Light Peak essentially replaces all of these upcoming "real" standards from actual standards bodies (including the USB Forum, IEEE, VESA, etc), which have been working on their respective standards for years.

The information leaked by Engadget assumes a 2010 time frame. That has to be optimistic at best. This will be a huge undertaking. After all, no one has signed on for Light Peak except Sony. Even Apple won't publicly commit.

Intel and Apple have a big sell ahead of them if they want this to take off.
 
There's nothing to prevent the final connector from including both optical fibers and a couple of copper wires for powering/charging the connected device. There's also the possibility of wireless charging which Apple and others are developing as we type (remember Nicola Tesla?).

Except for the power loss as the cable length increases. Since LP can be 100 meters long, that would cause a loss in power for the copper wires. For normal / close / short connectors, wires alongside the optical would be suitable.

Twenty-five years before Tesla was born, Faraday discovered the phenomenon that a magnet moving in a coil (or a coil moving through a magnetic field) would produce an electric current in the wire (electromagnetic induction). Remember Michael Faraday?
 
Light Peak is a USB-style connector? Bah! If Apple really is behind this, you'd think they'd get Intel to use FireWire-style connectors. FireWire connectors are so much more robust and easy to insert.
The connector used in the demo appears to be a prototype USB3 optical connector (an optional aspect of the USB3 standard). Knowing Apple they will want a smaller connector for these... hopefully something keyed or uncaring of connector rotation... etc.
 
I'm concerned the demo shows a USB-type connector. They're too large and thick.

Also, am I the only person who wants a lockable connector?

Not the only one. But I'd like both.
A locking one for fixed uses.
and a non-locking one for portable uses.

I kind of wonder how well this will work with patch cable set ups. could it handle set ups like ethernet where we build long runs of cables into the wall that terminate at a wall plate at one end and a patch panel at the other. So every run is three cables. Or will it need to be like the old Telephone exchange panels so each run is one cable.

So much potential so little detail.
 
Oh. Well, personally I hate the magsafe and FW cables popping out of the side of my MBP everytime I move it.

Perhaps they should at least consider a lockable version for servers and desktops etc.

I would expect they would have a KVM type setup as well, just it would be fewer cables :)

By locking I assume you are thinking the clips for ethernet cables as opposed to locking as more lock/key type, but yes some of us who still dont use laptops don't mind locking cables. :)
 
It isn't today we want to look at but what fiber can do for us in the future.

Well good for you!

We are not talking about 160 Gbit/s or 300 feet. This thread is about a unified optical desktop connection call Light Peak that has a throughput of 10Gb/sec.
Well it has been described as a desktop connection, but we don't know how Apple will make use of it. Notably this is a low cost new standard for optical communications, with an order of magnatude speed increase waiting in the wings.

Can 10GB/s be done on copper, YES but is it worth the effort? Apple apparently made the decision to abandon copper, for reasons we don't know. It is not however a bad decision in my estimation.

The reason is this; doing 10Gb/s over copper, while doable, is not however a piece of cake. Going to 100Gb/S will be very difficult and has severe distance limitations.

Further I think it is a mistake to pigeon hole this tech as a desk top connection. A well done high speed full duplex optical connection can solve all sorts of issues from use in a SAN, to clustering, to video and a host of other uses.
No one is arguing that fiber isn't fast, all I was trying to say is at 10Gb/sec can easily be done with copper today and with copper you can still power/charge a device.
This is all well and good but fiber has strengths that copper does not have. Future potential is huge but noise immunity and subsceptability are also things that distinguish fiber.
In this case length isn't that big of a deal because this is a desktop standard. Well I guess if you own a house like Bill Gates you might have a problem with copper.

Well you are making a huge assumption here as to how Apple will use this tech. That is what many of us are saying.


Dave
 
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