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Apple Now Selling 0.8m Thunderbolt 3 Cable for $39
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It really annoys me that there are this many differences with these cables Lol. Why can’t it just be simple?
I feel like it’s hard to keep up now.
I know TB3 makes sense, I'm just wondering why Apple started manufacturing one at the release of the iMac Pro. The iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro all had TB3.
All of you complaining about Lightning cords: are you not aware that Apple will replace them for free as long as you have any single Apple device that came with one that's less than one year old? You can also buy genuine Apple OEM Lightning cables from 3rd parties like Groupon, Walmart and elsewhere for less than half of the ridiculous $19 for a 1m? I have a dozen lightning cables in the house but not a single cable is more than 4 months old, and the most I've ever paid for one was $8... one time.
Wonder what cable comes with the LG 5K. It does TB3, is 2m long and supports full TB3 40Gb speed and 100W of power.
Hopefully it'll return in some shape or form. So stupid that they ever got rid of it.
I'm definitely not a power user, but I have an external drive for my MAC Steam library. According to my game play experience and the BlackMagic app, my data transfer speeds are about 2-3 times as fast as an internal Sata III drive (platter not SSD).
The other part that's nice is having a dock that can handle all the peripherals and only having to unplug one cable from the laptop.
I have had very poor luck with third party cables. I have acquired quite a few cables that end up having the contacts on the Lightning connector becoming black from arching, or corrosion. The latest was a Native Union 6' cable. I have only had one Apple cable do that, and the Apple store gave me a new one, no questions asked, and that happened years ago. The third party companies have refused to replace their defective junk.
I am concerned why the connectors seem to be arcing. I'm beginning to be concerned that might kill my iPhone, or iPad.
I will agree with you that I've also had some bad luck with third party cables over the years. Just this week, I noticed that the contacts on an Anker Lightning cable that I've used for the past year or so were turning black. I've never seen that before with Anker cables, and my family has probably a dozen or so Anker Lightning cables around. The cable in question started randomly refusing to charge my iPhone 7 so I threw it in the trash and have been using a different Anker cable for the last few days that's been working fine so far and the contacts are the normal gold color they should be.
One cable out of the mbp to one monitor and then to the next (ala daisy-chain) is what was promised but I have not found a usb-c tb3 4K monitor with usb-c tb3 out to downstream to a second monitor... have you done this? The LGs Apple pushed cannot do this.
I'm so paranoid when i'm in my chair and the kids run by now! Be careful! Watch out guys! My kids want magsafe back too
Wrong. They might be expensive as hell, but you can get full speed 30m thunderboth 3 cables. https://express.google.com/product/16905019750244871745_18046415803131134872_1057813
Well that's not exactly accurate, those cables are data only as they are optical fiber. I have two of them and they allow me to locate an OWC TB2 dock across the room from my Mac and have a full set of ports at the A/V rack. Extremely convenient and works perfectly. I also locate my noisy TB Raid across the room from my desk with the other.
Otherwise this article is great news. The Belkin cable mentioned will not reliably charge a 15" MBP and the only one to date that does id the CalDigit mentioned earlier. I use one with my Elgato Dock and it is nice but a lot more money.
I don't for the life of me understand the mob that trolls MR to take uninformed shots at absolutely any announcement. It's really getting old.
Apple thunderbolt cords are garbage. I have bought five in past year that keeps flaking out. Have gone to belkin that are built with Dupont and Kevlar
But it won't support USB 3 (and, by extension, any USB-C Alternate Modes such as video output to non-TB3 devices). The Apple cable really is special, before it the longest cable that can do everything the Apple cable claims to do was 0.5m long.
Thunderbolt 3 cables longer than 0.5m, except this Apple one, are active cables which means they lose USB 3 support.
So either Apple has got USB 3/USB-C Alternate Mode working over an active cable (unlikely), or has developed a new copper cable stock that allows a 0.8m passive cable to meet the USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 specifications (more likely, and an industry first).
I'm sure they will come eventually. The LG UltraFine 4K is USB-C rather than Thunderbolt 3 which I guess is why it doesn't do this.
That's not a Thunderbolt 3 cable, and even if optical ones were developed (they haven't been yet, it might not be possible), they would not support power nor USB-C Alternate Mode.
The cable that comes with a MacBook Pro only supports charging at up to 100W and USB 2 data.
This cable supports:
- Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps)
- USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps)
- USB-C Alternate Mode, for things like video output, audio, ethernet, and so on
It DOES support USB3, as I have USB3 adapters sitting on the back of my LG 5K displays. The adapters are all piped off of the single LG 5K cable. That cable is sending two video streams (stitched together to form the 5K image) and all data for the devices attached to the display.
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You can’t daisy chain displays, so it was never promised. That’s a limitation of the DisplayPort protocol. You couldn’t do that with the Apple Thunderbolt displays either. The closest you’ll get is by having a single TB3 dock (and therefore one cable) that will output to two 4K displays.
The LG 5K display is converting the Thunderbolt 3 connection into USB 3 and video because it basically includes a Thunderbolt 3 dock. If you took the cable and used it to connect a USB-C only device, i.e. that does not support Thunderbolt 3, then it would not work, because the cable only supports USB 2, whereas 0.5m Thunderbolt 3 cables (and this Apple one) do, and that's what I'm referencing in this instance.
I've been using an old Thunderbolt1/2 cable, and it has lasted me for many years, since roughly 2012 or so. It's starting to show sighs of wear, but it works, and hasn't split or anything, like the Lightning cables tend to do. It does seem like it's threatening to start doing what the lightning cables all do any day now, but it's been like that for awhile. Perhaps it just has thicker plastic...
No. I have a TB3 dock. Both monitors are connected directly to the hub. They are not not 4K monitors but the dock supports direct connections to 4K if I remember correctly.