Apple Thunderbolt Cable and Promise Thunderbolt RAID Systems Hit the Apple Store

[Thermonuclear]

Is T-bolt just another marketing scam?

So Apple says "Look at this shiny new interface" then the fan boys say "Ohhh, so shiny and new!" and reach for their wallets.

Getting 10 Gbps over short haul copper is neither shiny nor new. It has been around for nearly ten years as 10 Gbps Ethernet. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet

T-bolt: redundant, and soon to be obsolete. But don't let that stop you from spending fifty bucks on a five dollar cable.

 

[Azathoth]

50 bucks for the cable is a ripoff. I'm not saying it won't sell, just that there is an extreme profit margin on that (I'm guessing around 300-400%). Anyway, can anyone tell me the technical difference between that Thunderbolt cable and a miniDP to miniDP cable? I've read that a miniDP cable *will not work* as a TB cable, but why?

 

[z4n3]

I do not know why everyone is complaining about the price

1699.00 Euros for 12TB RAID system that is from the same company that took over Apples X-Raid and X-Serve business is VERY cheap, this coupled with a MacPro Server for 2899 euros you are looking at a home or small business server with 14Tb of RAID space, MacPro etc. etc. for just 4598 euros! which is nothing for the hardware you are getting!! I paid a little less than that for my Titanium PowerBook in 2001 which did not come with 14Tb of space

Maybe us Mac users from way back see everything cheap in comparison

P.S.

50 euros for a cable is nothing for those who have had to purchase a FireWire 800 Cable when they came out!

Just as FireWire was not for everyone, ThunderBolt is not going to be different, it all depends on your needs, if it is to move and store your pirated Blue-Ray collection! you do not need this, so price is irrelevant, if it is on the other hand to move or store your RED ONE video footage then this price is peanuts and a HUGE achievement and advance for small companies and freelance workers.

My 2cents

 

[manu chao]

Why are a bunch of hard drives so expensive? You can get them separately for the fraction of that price... It's like $100 for a 2TB drive, which would be $200 for 4TB, how the hell is $1000 justified for the same amount of storage?

Yes, two 2 TB drives might cost you $200 net (drives only) but four 1 TB drives will still cost you $350 at least + $100 4-bay case + $100 RAID controller. So, even if you built this yourself (using eSATA or FW800), you'd be looking at $550.
And that is before the server-grade harddrives, the brandname well-cooled 4-bay enclosure, the brandname RAID controller and the TB premium. And FW800 is 100 MB/s max (reality a bit lower) compared to 500 MB/s.

 

[Pentad]

lol. Long live USB! I'm personally fine with waiting 2 minutes longer for my file transfer.

Sadly, I understand you frustration but I wish it was only 2 mins longer! We use 3 TB backup drives (I think we spent $200 or $250 for them) and they are ungodly slow at USB2.x.

I've reached a point where I consider USB2.x unusable for large backups since they take *hours* now given the amount of data, FW800 is slightly better, but USB3 or TB would make things more reasonable.

I know many here support SSD TB devices but I do *NOT* want an SSD solution. For backup purposes, I can't imagine a drive smaller than a TB and honestly find 3 TB to be the sweet spot right now. A 3 TB SSD would be insanely expensive.

Either give me a a TB HD enclosure that support SATA/3 and SATA/6 or a TB to USB3 adapter.

-P

 

[SimonTheSoundMa]

The fiber cables that are coming have inline lasers and receivers. The laser will be built in to the connector, not the computer.

PCIe breakout box. Why not, the signal is PCIe, two channels at 10GB/s. That's fast enough for an Avid, Protools, AJA, SSDs etc. to go to a breakout box.

There is only one standard of connector, and it is mini Display Port. The USB form factor was just a development idea, and is not mentioned anywhere in the spec.

Light Peak was the development codename, it is now defunct.

As for carrying power, Intel already had that cowered by specifying TWO different Light Peak cables: the first with a pair of fiber optic strands, and the second with a pair of strands plus a pair of copper wires for carrying power and ground. This was all done before Apple made any T-bolt announcements.

Apple's T-bolt is NOT fast enough or a PCIe breakout box. Light Peak fiber is ten times faster and can do the breakout job with ease. Those that understand this will prudently wait for for the fiber version.

 

[Anaemik]

All I want is a simple 2.5" HDD enclosure so I can finally add an SSD to my iMac without opening it

Me too, but the reason I'd want to add an SSD would be to use it as my main drive, and from what I've managed to gather so far, in its current implementation TB devices are not bootable (although it is said that this will probably change at some point). I can sort of understand Apple not making TB bootable for now, but I hate their likely reasons - having customers locked in to their pricey and (comparatively) under-performing SSDs (when compared to a Vertex 3 or Intel 510 for e.g.) must be a nice perk that Apple is reluctant to relinquish just yet.

Here are my sources for TB not being bootable by the way:

http://www.tidbits.com/article/11993
http://ihnatko.com/2011/02/25/new-macbooks-new-interface-new-os/

 

[mdgm]

Shouldnt the whole thing have some sort of NAS functionality for this price?

A good device will not try to be a NAS and a peripheral drive you connect to a computer at the same time. If you want NAS functionality from it, share it from your Mac.

If you look at the good NASes out there, they only allow sharing over the network, you can't connect them to a PC and use them as a USB drive. You don't try connecting a PC to another PC via USB or Firewire or whatever for regular usage. They're not designed for that.

Now if Thunderbolt could provide an affordable way to do 10Gbit ethernet it could be very useful when it comes to using fast NASes which you could regularly connect to over gigabit ethernet, but perhaps directly connect to over 10Gbit ethernet when you really need super fast speed (of course the NAS would need a 10Gbit ethernet port).

 

[baryon]

Waiting for the day when you'll have four SD card-sized slots in your MacBook Pro, and you can just buy SSDs for the same price as today's hard drives and plug them in. No moving parts, no cables, no power source, no fuss!

Just a matter of years...

 

[Lone Deranger]

I wonder how loud/quiet these things are. 6 x 7200 RPM drives must be quite noisy.

 

[stefmesman]

Waiting for the day when you'll have four SD card-sized slots in your MacBook Pro, and you can just buy SSDs for the same price as today's hard drives and plug them in. No moving parts, no cables, no power source, no fuss!

Just a matter of years...

theres already SSD express cards for the 17'' macbook pro

 

[RobQuads]

All new technologies are expensive in the beginning, then the market saturates and prices go down.

USB3 cables cost a fraction of that Thunderbolt cable (OK not 'quite' as good tech but its still a new technology)

 

[spazzcat]

$50 just for the cable?!

You just spent $1999 on 8TB. Does $50 even matter at that point?

 

[mdgm]

I wonder how loud/quiet these things are. 6 x 7200 RPM drives must be quite noisy.

Depends on a variety of factors. You can find that a 6-drive device is quieter than 4-drive device as a 6-drive is designed to be bigger and can have a better bigger quieter fan and better airflow.

 

[manu chao]

Getting 10 Gbps over short haul copper is neither shiny nor new. It has been around for nearly ten years as 10 Gbps Ethernet.

And do you know the price of 10 Gbps Ethernet router?

 

[Azathoth]

50 euros for a cable is nothing for those who have had to purchase a FireWire 800 Cable when they came out!

My 2cents

And 50 euros for a cable it nothing compared to the 5000 USD for a 1m 50GHz Gore coaxial VNA cable. That's not the point - the fact is that able is making many hundred % profit by fleecing the consumer on some cables. I just don't like that kind of company mentality.

 

[Lagmonster]

Holy Moly thats pricey

Not that it isn't expensive, but I was actually guessing a bit higher for the first device to hit the market.

 

[djrobsd]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Huge apple fail. I don't care how fast thunderbolt is. I can go to best buy and get a USB 3.0 hard drive for 100 bucks, cable included. Thanks apple for screwing us over again by being so stubbOrn!!! PleAse oh god please someone come out with a thunderbolt USB 3 hub or Adaptor! I'll pay 100 just for that!!!!!

 

[TMay]

So Apple says "Look at this shiny new interface" then the fan boys say "Ohhh, so shiny and new!" and reach for their wallets.

Getting 10 Gbps over short haul copper is neither shiny nor new. It has been around for nearly ten years as 10 Gbps Ethernet. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet

T-bolt: redundant, and soon to be obsolete. But don't let that stop you from spending fifty bucks on a five dollar cable.

You keep doubling down.

Bold.

Thunderbolt is 10GB/s with an Intel roadmap to 100GB/s, both I'm guessing would be quite a bit faster than 10Gb/s Ethernet.

Thanks for playing.

 

[Azathoth]

And do you know the price of 10 Gbps Ethernet router?

But the Cat 6 / 6A cable for 10Gbps is *cheap*

 

[soco]

I have to agree with those saying the price is reasonable if you want the speeds.

Apple understands and openly takes advantage of the fact that they have the market cornered for LightPeak.

Good for them

 

[PlipPlop]

You mean back when Apple was making external hard drive enclosures?

I have an external scsi Apple hard disk from a long time ago. About 200mb I think

 

[Azathoth]

You keep doubling down.

Bold.

Thunderbolt is 10GB/s with an Intel roadmap to 100GB/s, both I'm guessing would be quite a bit faster than 10Gb/s Ethernet.

Thanks for playing.

Typo?

Thunderbolt is 10Gbps.

10GbE is 10Gbps.

Data throughput should be very similar, though the DMA mode on Tunderbolt should make it easier to saturate the interface.

 

[dethmaShine]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Huge apple fail. I don't care how fast thunderbolt is. I can go to best buy and get a USB 3.0 hard drive for 100 bucks, cable included. Thanks apple for screwing us over again by being so stubbOrn!!! PleAse oh god please someone come out with a thunderbolt USB 3 hub or Adaptor! I'll pay 100 just for that!!!!!

PleAse oh god please someone tell him this is not just a hard drive.

 

[stefmesman]

Typo?

Thunderbolt is 10Gbps.

10GbE is 10Gbps.

Data throughput should be very similar, though the DMA mode on Tunderbolt should make it easier to saturate the interface.

thunderbolt does 10Gbps back and forth simultaneously and has support for monitors... can 10GbE do that?... no

and on top of that its scalable to 100Gbps in the future on the same hardware.