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Apple to Introduce Light Peak (High Speed Connection Technology) Soon?
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My gut feel is that, if Apple debuts Lightpeak (or whatever they will call it) this year, it will most likely debut on the 2011 iMac refresh or their Mac Pros, rather than the MacBook Pros. I doubt the power management for Lightpeak is mature enough at this point for Apple to put it on their portable devices and compromise their much-vaunted battery life.
Whatever the case, I'd really love to see this technology in action, sooner rather than later.
Whatever the case, I'd really love to see this technology in action, sooner rather than later.
We're a long way from that. Plus most devices are still wired, so it'd be a pain if they simply went wireless now.
I hope this news is true but frankly for a really innovative company, Apple is rarely this fast to pick up on new tech.
Here is an awesome idea. We all use our power bricks, why not incorporate LP into the power brick, and magnetic plug that goes into the laptop ALWAYS!
Then essentially the powerbrick is the hub with 3 LP connectors on it, with changes for expansion with "Hubs."
100 posts in this thread, and no one has brought up the patent that was the headline just a few days ago.
If Apple was to name the port something other than "Light Peak", why would it look like what is pictured in the first post? A USB-like connecter is something Apple would have considered no later than 2005. It's 2011. Apple's next connector will be magnetic based.
I think that patent is a replacement for this:
I am not quite as enthusiastic. Instead of carrying the cables you now need to carry the adaptors, which invariably tend to be much more expensive than a simple cable. Also the likelihood that somebody has a spare adaptor, should you have yours forgotten, is way smaller...
Other than this, it simply comes back to availability and economics of scale. USB 3.0 is already widely supported in a lot of external harddrives and the like. I don't think the manufacturers of these devices want to ad another interface which costs money in hardware and licensing. So most devices will be USB 3.0 simply because it makes more sense for the manufacturers. History of Firewire repeating...
I heard there has been little mention of light peak this year. Virtually nothing at CES. Makes one wonder if Intel is still interested in this. Are manufacturers going to be keen on adding yet another port to peripherals at this point? Maybe not.
But if the new MacBook Pros don't have either USB 3.0 and/or SATA-6 then they are a big fail.
But if the new MacBook Pros don't have either USB 3.0 and/or SATA-6 then they are a big fail.
Not really sure where you're coming from on almost all of these.
Low cost- the cost of a wireless access point as opposed to running cable to every port in an office is at the least equal.
Reliable- wireless is perfectly reliable if you do it right.
High Bandwidth- Depends on the application. For e-mail and sharing photos through facebook (i.e. what 90% of Applefans use their Apple equipment for), 802.11g is more than adequate.
Low Power- The power requirements for wired and wireless systems are the same.
Variable range- ever heard of wireless repeaters or bridge mode? You can get wireless coverage over much more area than you can get wired coverage.
Low latency- same as bandwidth.
You are part right.
If you have only LP ports and you use FW, Ethernet or DisplayPort then you will need a dongle. However, MacBooks don't have eSATA, HDMI which you won't be able to use anyway, but you will with LP.
Now, USB are directly compatible, no dongle there, wether you have a USB 2.0 or 3.0.
FireWire History will be the opposite of LP. As LP WILL be the standard for anything else. Manufacurers can adopt USB or LP and they will be both directly compatible. Throughout the years FW, eSATA etc... will be replace by LP, there will be only LP. But if you want a different kind of protocol to be use, you just need to make a firmware without making a new type of connector.
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I agree that wireless is the future and I'm sure that Apple is investing in some serious research there. That said, I don't know why they couldn't introduce faster wired standards in the meantime. Apple can pat their head and rub their tummy at the same time, so to speak.
I do see a problem with the lightpeak dongles we're going to need for our existing monitors, hard drives and iOS devices, though. Could be a messy transition.
I agree that wireless is the future and I'm sure that Apple is investing in some serious research there. That said, I don't know why they couldn't introduce faster wired standards in the meantime. Apple can pat their head and rub their tummy at the same time, so to speak.
I do see a problem with the lightpeak dongles we're going to need for our existing monitors, hard drives and iOS devices, though. Could be a messy transition.
If that's the Lightpeak connector, they've got it wrong: It's USB all over again. No quick way to tell which side is "up".
Every once in a while I attempt to plug a USB and the inherent pressure needed to plug it makes me fear I may be doing it wrong, so I switch and try with the "right" side only to find out I was right from the start but didn't push strong enough.
(Especially in -say- the back of the iMac, where you can't directly see the innards of the female socket)
In this respect, Firewire was waaaay cooler.
Every once in a while I attempt to plug a USB and the inherent pressure needed to plug it makes me fear I may be doing it wrong, so I switch and try with the "right" side only to find out I was right from the start but didn't push strong enough.
(Especially in -say- the back of the iMac, where you can't directly see the innards of the female socket)
In this respect, Firewire was waaaay cooler.
The picture you are drawing in indeed quite enticing.
However, before I have the real product at hand I am very wary about a number of these promises. They seem almost to good to be true. Can you point to a source, that confirms the USB compatibility of LightPeak?
I don't think multi-protocol support is as easy as a firmware upgrade - and even if it is - somebody has to write and release the firmware. Not sure if Apple is the most open company in this regard...
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There isn't nothing official about it, but Intel was dealing for having the USB connector for LP. We can only hope.
Detektiv-Pinky said:
There isn't nothing official about it, but Intel was dealing for having the USB connector for LP. We can only hope.
No. If you look at it, it can be connected in either orientation.
Making them compatible (presumably with extra pins for LP) would be a smart move.
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Add a gigabit ethernet plug and you have a winner.
Next step is a 27" monitor with builtin power supply and ethernet: the only connection required to the Mac Book is the new integrated MacSafe/LightPeak cable.
I dont understand why some people think this change will take 5 years: remember how quickly the market reacted when the iMac with USB was introduced, and how quickly the mac market went from SCSI to Firewire.
It's worse than that, IMO. Most newer USB hard drives are already supporting USB3. I don't see any Light Peak support. If I buy a new Mac, I want any USB3 hard drives I own to work as fast as possible (e.g. my new 3TB USB2 external transfers well over 30MB/sec USB3 but only 15-20MB/sec USB2, which I don't really understand since the former is not even beyond the bandwidth of USB2, but that's what the drive tests show). Being stuck with USB2 just because Jobs doesn't think it's as good as Light Peak limits me as a consumer. Like it or not, USB3 is here to stay precisely because it supplants USB2 with full backwards compatibility. In other words, if you need USB2 & 1 support anyway and USB3 doesn't add much if anything to the price, why in the world would you want to put USB2 in instead? It needs a USB port regardless, so put 3 in and make your customers happy.
I have no problem with Apple offering Light Peak, but that doesn't mean I don't want a USB3 port on a product as well. I want to use the fastest option available with any given piece of hardware/hard drive I own. Apple didn't want to go to USB2 when it came out either and refused to include it at first, pushing FW400 instead. The problem is (and still is) that if the device you need to connect (for whatever reason) doesn't include FW400, you're then stuck with crappy USB1, which is horribly slow. Try to even find a FW400 (let alone 800) supported external drive at a store like Best Buy these days. You might find a limited passport type product that still has it, but you'll have limited choice on hard drive size, etc. and it will probably cost more than a USB3 drive alone. At the 3TB size, I saw no choices except USB3. Should I wait a few years until someone offers a Light Peak enclosure for a 3TB drive before I buy one?
Apple simply doesn't have the market share to use its products as leverage to push Light Peak so why irritate your user base with outdated USB2 offerings? Of course, it could simply be because Apple's partner (Intel) hasn't released a USB3 chipset yet, Apple is simply pretending to have no interest when it's more like they have no real choice, at least not without having to add the extra hardware themselves (increasing costs).
Erm, what you'll have is probably two light peak ports on the computer, so you'd have two cables anyway. I imagine that there are light peak 'switches' as well if you need more - or maybe light peak is chained like firewire? Anyway, if you've got four devices connected, at some point you've got four cables. If one breaks, you lose a peripheral. With light peak you get to choose the peripheral to lose because the cables are all the same. If your displayport cable breaks, you can't use a USB one instead!
Not that I've ever had a cable break (apart from a cheap USB cable with LEDs in it!) so I think the question isn't really useful in the first place.
He means on the motherboard - it's going to be a discrete controller chip, so it takes up more space in an already space-constrained area.
However I expect that Apple would drop the Firewire controller, and offer LightPeak->Firewire adaptors in the Apple Store for $29.
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No. Sorry. Video professionals don't care about FireWire. We care about speed, and right mow we're dealing with esata raids for the most part. Or internal raids on pro towers.
miles01110 said:
No. Sorry. Video professionals don't care about FireWire. We care about speed, and right mow we're dealing with esata raids for the most part. Or internal raids on pro towers.
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So you're high too? Most major motion pictures, television shows and almost all corporate video/ events are utilizing Apple and FCP or Avid. A good percentage of the Avid units are PC, but in my world, it's all Mac. Apple is by far the choice of video professionals and graphic designers. We already share massive amounts of storage across multiple editing suites with fiber optic networks. I can't believe people think Apple is so entrenched in consumer market when it's business share grows year after year. It's the choice of lawyers by far as well. Newspapers and the print publishing world too. Anyone that wants to use their computer and get the operating system out of the way.
koobcamuk said:
So you're high too? Most major motion pictures, television shows and almost all corporate video/ events are utilizing Apple and FCP or Avid. A good percentage of the Avid units are PC, but in my world, it's all Mac. Apple is by far the choice of video professionals and graphic designers. We already share massive amounts of storage across multiple editing suites with fiber optic networks. I can't believe people think Apple is so entrenched in consumer market when it's business share grows year after year. It's the choice of lawyers by far as well. Newspapers and the print publishing world too. Anyone that wants to use their computer and get the operating system out of the way.
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Whatever they call it, it will undoubtedly be magical.
Whatever they call it, it will undoubtedly be magical.
Yeah, the DATA part of it is based on light (at least in the optical variant).
That doesn't preclude them sticking in copper cables around the optical cable to provide power.
that's how Apple killed FW800
Bad idea - it's hard to establish a standard if only the top end niche supports it. LightPeak needs to be on every system to help convince 3rd party vendors to invest in products.
Apple killed FW800 by only supporting it on a few top models. The mass market peripherals didn't bother adding FW800 because the penetration was so limited.
I'd hope that Apple has learned that lesson.
What wireless channel are you using? If most of your neighbors are using the default of channel 6 (in the US at least) you can get much better reception by switching to channel 1 or channel 11. (The channels overlap - so moving to channel 5 from channel 6 would only be a small improvement. The top, bottom and middle channels don't have significant overlap.)
Or $59.99, $99.99 and $129.99 ....
Bad idea - it's hard to establish a standard if only the top end niche supports it. LightPeak needs to be on every system to help convince 3rd party vendors to invest in products.
Apple killed FW800 by only supporting it on a few top models. The mass market peripherals didn't bother adding FW800 because the penetration was so limited.
I'd hope that Apple has learned that lesson.
What wireless channel are you using? If most of your neighbors are using the default of channel 6 (in the US at least) you can get much better reception by switching to channel 1 or channel 11. (The channels overlap - so moving to channel 5 from channel 6 would only be a small improvement. The top, bottom and middle channels don't have significant overlap.)
Or $59.99, $99.99 and $129.99 ....
So how would mobile users attach things?
I could see Apple making a MagSafe + LightPeak Hub that was small enough to sit on your desk and provide loads of ports, but they won't put it into the actual power adaptor that might not be in use all the time (it's a laptop!).