Please don't confuse TB with USB. TB is a PCI-E bus. You won't get external GPU's connected to your PC via USB. That's what TB is for. In terms of HD performance, no external HD I know off needs more speed than FW800 due to low RPM drives used in the enclosures. I have a USB 3.0 PCI-E card on my Mac Pro. And I haven't noticed any speed difference when I use my external disks through it, compared to eSata or FW800.
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Apple Still Considering USB 3.0 in Addition to Thunderbolt?
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I hope you enjoy your thunderbolt products. ( 4 of them )
Currently Thurderbolt is a disaster. Is has such a limited choice of products .
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3.0 will be better than 2.0, and maybe Thunderbolt, as I have yet to see anything world shaking with regard to peripherials for TB
You mean besides TB real world performance being able to sustain 1GB/s, twice the theoretical throughput of USB 3.0 and 2.5 times the real life maximum throughput of USB 3.0?
Yes, but for example, you can't imagine a computer with only FireWire and no USB, but the opposite is totally fine. What I would want, in a perfect world, is a SINGLE connector that does everything. Why can't they figure out a connector that is able to do everything from wired mice through speakers, cheap thumb drives, external hard drives to high-resolution displays? Then there would be one standard to replace everything, which would make choices easier for everyone, and probably cheaper to manufacture products.
Reminds me of this:
Is it really true, that the only Thunderbolt products available for purchase TODAY is:
Apple Thunderbolt Display
Promise Pegasus R4
Promise Pegasus R6 (same as above, but with 6 drive bays)
And the only other committed products are:
LaCie Little Big Disk
Sonnettech RAID-enclosure-something
???
There's also some talk about external GPUs from Sony or something, but they're not compatible with Apple HW, as far as I can tell?
Seriously. Thunderbolt is in deep trouble. Yes, there'll be people using it, yes, they'll be an active and very vocal group. For the rest of the world, there's 10GbE*, USB 3.0, and perhaps FW800 for a while.
Or perhaps all the third party companies (LaCie etc) are awaiting the competitors moves (prices), so that when one of them come out with a thunderbolt device, the rest will quickly follow?
* Of course, Apple will hesitate for a loooong time before including 10GbE. Rather try to convince the world that their Thunderbolt is the only thing that's good for you.
Apple Thunderbolt Display
Promise Pegasus R4
Promise Pegasus R6 (same as above, but with 6 drive bays)
And the only other committed products are:
LaCie Little Big Disk
Sonnettech RAID-enclosure-something
???
There's also some talk about external GPUs from Sony or something, but they're not compatible with Apple HW, as far as I can tell?
Seriously. Thunderbolt is in deep trouble. Yes, there'll be people using it, yes, they'll be an active and very vocal group. For the rest of the world, there's 10GbE*, USB 3.0, and perhaps FW800 for a while.
Or perhaps all the third party companies (LaCie etc) are awaiting the competitors moves (prices), so that when one of them come out with a thunderbolt device, the rest will quickly follow?
* Of course, Apple will hesitate for a loooong time before including 10GbE. Rather try to convince the world that their Thunderbolt is the only thing that's good for you.
You can now pre-order the Sonnet Echo ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter for October delivery.
It's not a cheap solution though. For example it costs $270 for the adaptor with a USB 3.0 card and Apple Thunderbolt cable.
Twice as many as back when Apple released the first iMac with USB. There were exactly two products: Apple's USB mouse. And Apple's USB keyboard.
And Thunderbolt compatible hardware isn't expensive. The problem is that right now only the rip-off merchants build it and try to sell you $20 worth of hardware for $200.
It'll get there. Its too good not to.
Thunderbolt brings so much expandability to a laptop its not even funny. Before too long you will be able to run a 600MB/sec+ RAID, and external full size GPU, an ExpressCard 34 slot and more off a laptop at the same time.
You'll be able to add multiple gigabit ethernet or fibre channel to a MacBook Air or Mac Mini for example.
As for USB 3, I can think of one massive reason why Apple would consider it alongside Thunderbolt: iOS devices. It might be that its cheaper/easier/lower power to add these controllers to iOS devices, particularly with PCs in mind. I think given that most Macs won't get updates until Ivy Bridge which will have USB 3 anyway, iOS is the more likely recipient of a USB 3 controller. iPad 3 with its rumoured retina display will benefit from a quicker way to get HD content onto the device. Thunderbolt would be better but useless on Windows for now. They'll catch on eventually though. Thunderbolt will extend the useful life of many peoples computers by years.
This is bad news for customers. USB 3.0 was dead on arrival, we need to keep the market focused on embracing the superior Thunderbolt technology that Apple has pioneered.
2 x 10 GBit/s TB = 20 GBit/s
+ 1 x 800 MBit/s FW = 800 MBit/s
+ 4 x 5 GBit/s USB = 20 GBit/s
------------------------------------------------
= 40.8 GBit/s I/O
------------------------------------------------
= Wet dream & nerdgasm ;-)
What's not to love?
;-)
Hey I can actually buy hardware for USB 3 today. Where's thunderbolt.
Well there are two things that happened so far that Steve would have never approved - this article and the re-release of FCP7.
Well there are two things that happened so far that Steve would have never approved - this article and the re-release of FCP7.
Don't be a fool. Once intel supports USB 3 in their chipsets there is no reason NOT to include it. At that point an Air with USB 2 wouldn't be any cheaper to produce than one with USB 3.
As much as I'm passionate about Apple, the reality is they tend to resist mainstream technical advances. Even worse, they convince many of the Apple Faithful there's no need.
I'm already using USB 3.0 that's built into my new Windows 7 Laptop & Desktop, and it's really nice to have the speed. There's no denying it. Kind of like the speed Apple lovers are finally discovering now that Apples finally gotten serious about SSD's. Even if they were late to the party on those as well.
(now watch the haters rate this post negative)
My brand spankin new Mac Pro, should already have included USB 3.0!
That's my take on it
I'm already using USB 3.0 that's built into my new Windows 7 Laptop & Desktop, and it's really nice to have the speed. There's no denying it. Kind of like the speed Apple lovers are finally discovering now that Apples finally gotten serious about SSD's. Even if they were late to the party on those as well.
(now watch the haters rate this post negative)
My brand spankin new Mac Pro, should already have included USB 3.0!
That's my take on it
I don't understand why USB 2.0 is still around in ANY machines !
Get rid of it and just use USB 3.0
Its backwards compatible.
Get rid of it and just use USB 3.0
Its backwards compatible.
If Apple goes all ARM and to a more iOS like operating system for laptops and desktops then I'm going back to Linux as my primary OS. I work in the genetics research area and what I needs is top of the line hardware (lots of cores and lots of RAM) with a Unix-like operating system. Right now in my group of software engineers we are using macbook pros with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD drives. A lot of the code I write ends up running on a Linux High Performance Computing cluster, OS X is now the Unix workstation of choice for many of us in research.
I can see using something like ARM for an Air or a low-cost desktop, but not for the high end systems.
I got my mum an base model iMac with TB port. Its never used and neither will it ever get used. USB on the other hand always gets used. I suggested she get a external HDD for Time machine explaining the importance of back up. I got a 1TB WD Passport USB3 drive for a ridiculous cheap price of 69 GBP. Plugged it in hey presto, everybody happy!
The only downside? She cant get the better speeds of USB3 because Apple (Steve Jobs) was so bloody stubborn in embracing this fast adoption of I/O now widely in use and at respectable prices for 85+% of users. Hopefully it will change very soon now that Steve is gone. He wont have any real say in what happens in Macs from now on. Tim Cook doesnt seem so stubborn and i think with Tim at the helm, Apple will be more understanding of customers. Jobs for all his brilliance was a selfish ****. It was either his way or the highway. You could probably guess correctly that it was very frustrating for his R&D dept when just about everything they suggested he just said no.
The future is much brighter without jobs in the way now. USB3 will probably come sooner rather than later. Its a no brainer.
The only downside? She cant get the better speeds of USB3 because Apple (Steve Jobs) was so bloody stubborn in embracing this fast adoption of I/O now widely in use and at respectable prices for 85+% of users. Hopefully it will change very soon now that Steve is gone. He wont have any real say in what happens in Macs from now on. Tim Cook doesnt seem so stubborn and i think with Tim at the helm, Apple will be more understanding of customers. Jobs for all his brilliance was a selfish ****. It was either his way or the highway. You could probably guess correctly that it was very frustrating for his R&D dept when just about everything they suggested he just said no.
The future is much brighter without jobs in the way now. USB3 will probably come sooner rather than later. Its a no brainer.
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I would have thought it was quite obvious that Apple is still considering USB3. Are they expecting Thunderbolt to replace USB or something? Because I don't think it will. We won't be seeing Thunderbolt as a standard as its probably too much for the average user and it would be odd to have macs in five years time with super fast Thunderbolt and still just USB2.
Lets look at a real example of TB shall we...
(http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html)
One TB connection into my laptop/desktop and I get:
1) Three USB 2.0 ports (which can of course can support USB hubs)
2) FireWire 800 port (which can daisy chain multiple devices)
3) Gig Ethernet Port
4) TB port (which, for example, could connect to another cinema display... and/or daisy chain multiple devices)
5) 2.1 speaker system (likely USB attached)
6) HD camera with microphone (likely USB attached)
...oh and two dedicated 2 DisplayPort channels.
Yeah clearly USB 3.0 is the greater interconnect here
The item 1-6 above are only a simple bridge chip away from PCIe and require no special drivers, etc. on the host to support (host sees PCIe devices). PCIe-USB standard part, PCIe-FW standard part, PCIe-Ethernet standard part, etc. all hung off a TB chip/port.
Will USB 3.0 replace USB 2.0 on Apple products... sure no reason not to do that once the chips for them are integrated into chipsets and/or lower to a good price point for integrating into displays, etc.
TB will happily support the addition of USB 3.0 as well.
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Oh dear. Apple will include it when its built into the chipsets. There isn't any point spending the extra time and money on R&D and testing to add it in before then. Is it widely available? Yes. Is it widely in use? No.
Compared to USB 2.0, the leap is nowhere near as useful so adoption has been slower. A few vendors have used it to try to differentiate themselves from others but Apple has no need to do that.
If they are looking at 3rd party controllers, they are probably to use in iPhones and iPads, not Macs.
Compared to USB 2.0, the leap is nowhere near as useful so adoption has been slower. A few vendors have used it to try to differentiate themselves from others but Apple has no need to do that.
If they are looking at 3rd party controllers, they are probably to use in iPhones and iPads, not Macs.
Lets look an real example of TB shall we...
(http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html)
One TB connection into my laptop/desktop and I get:
1) Three USB 2.0 ports (which can of course can support USB hubs)
2) FireWire 800 port (which can daisy chain multiple devices)
3) Gig Ethernet Port
4) TB port (which, for example, could connect to another cinema display...)
5) 2.1 speaker system
6) HD camera with microphone
...oh and two dedicated 2 DisplayPort channels.
Yeah clearly USB 3.0 is the greater interconnect here
The item 1-6 above are only a simple bridge chip away from PCIe and require no special drivers, etc. on the host to support (host sees PCIe devices). PCIe-USB standard part, PCIe-FW standard part, PCIe-Ethernet standard part, etc. all hung off a TB chip/port.
Will USB 3.0 replace USB 2.0 on Apple products... sure no reason not to do that once the chips for them are integrated into chipsets and/or lower to a good price point for integrating into displays, etc.
TB will happily support the addition of USB 3.0 as well.
I dont think anyone is saying its the greater interconnect in that regard to connecting multiple devices and daisy chaining. Its a bit like comparing an all singing all dancing Swiss Army knife that has 50,60 tools to do all but in reality all people really want is a simple knife. Simplicity at a very affordable price and backwards compatible with their collection of numerous USB devices. TB is an amazing piece of tech but the majority of users simply cannot afford it and it will never ver have the common association that customers have with USB.
I am going to say this again and hopefully for the last time. Clearly most of you are too young to remember how long it took for USB 1 products to come out so hold your horses before proclaiming something a disaster as though it is fact.
There's one reason why Apple may update the USB ports on their iMac, Mac Pro and MacBook Pro models to 3.0 support: there are a LOT of USB 3.0-compatible external hard drives already on the market.
Now, Apple could implement USB 3.0 support through the Thunderbolt port, but I'd like to know what adapter you need to plug in to get that type of support.
Now, Apple could implement USB 3.0 support through the Thunderbolt port, but I'd like to know what adapter you need to plug in to get that type of support.
You should stop going to tea Party Reunions. You should also stop watching Fox news. You sound like a person who never reads. I bet you haven't been to many other states in the USA.
I have lived for than four more years in different countries, USA, France and Canada. I am not going to tell you where I am from because it is going to be difficult to deal with all your prejudices. the USA is a nice country but it is not as great as you think. I understand why people like the USA, but there many other great places to live. Have you been to Canada?
P.S. 1.- The Eiffel tower wasn't created in las Vegas.
2.- Jesus didn't speak English.