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Belkin Upgrades Thunderbolt Express Dock with USB 3.0 and eSATA, Bumps Price to $399.99

theluggage said:
Secondly, how many people are really gagging for USB3 on their Mac?
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Chippy99 said:
Er, most of them??!?!

I bought a cheap Samsung 1TB USB3 drive last year for about £80 (including the cable!) and it flies along backing up Windows at about 150MB/s.

Who would *not* want that?
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Exactly. There's not a cheap, fast data transfer method available to us. FW800 is OK, but not as fast (or ubiquitous) as USB 3.0, and most other computers don't have it, requiring a FW800 + USB enclosure if you want to use it with other computers. Thunderbolt costs too much for housings and cables ($50 TB vs $2 USB 3.0 for cables). Plus, USB 3.0 is everywhere today - on external HDDs, flash drives, media card readers, etc. For the average user who actually cares about speed, it's well worth it considering it's now available (i.e. I wouldn't buy a Windows laptop over a MBP just for USB 3.0)
 
Chippy99 said:
Er, most of them??!?!
I bought a cheap Samsung 1TB USB3 drive last year for about £80 (including the cable!) and it flies along backing up Windows at about 150MB/s.
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...and you'd buy a $900 monitor to use it? Boy, that's big adapter to carry around.

Remember the topic - its not 'is USB 3 nice to have' but 'was USB3 an essential feature for last year's thunderbolt display'?

awer25 said:
(i.e. I wouldn't buy a Windows laptop over a MBP just for USB 3.0)
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Exactly - and more to the point, you wouldn't buy a Thunderbolt display just to get the USB3 interface.

(I might be persuaded to buy a Belkin dock with USB3 and eSATA if retailers can shave $100 of that RRP and/or throw in a cable)

Once most new Macs have USB3 I'm sure the next revision of the TB display will get it.
 
theluggage said:
...and you'd buy a $900 monitor to use it? Boy, that's big adapter to carry around.

Remember the topic - its not 'is USB 3 nice to have' but 'was USB3 an essential feature for last year's thunderbolt display'?
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Excuse me? I don't remember those rules.

You said "Secondly, how many people are really gagging for USB3 on their Mac?".
 
$45 for the thunderbolt cable?

give it a year and monoprice will carry them for $6
 
jgg204 said:
$45 for the thunderbolt cable?

give it a year and monoprice will carry them for $6
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I used to think the same thing, but TB cables aren't simple cables. They contain microchips that, I'm sure, are expensive to get. Monoprice makes great cables for great prices, but for this they need parts they can't make themselves.

Although if they can get the license, I'm sure they could easily make them for somewhere in the $20-30 range.
 
awer25 said:
I used to think the same thing, but TB cables aren't simple cables. They contain microchips that, I'm sure, are expensive to get. Monoprice makes great cables for great prices, but for this they need parts they can't make themselves.

Although if they can get the license, I'm sure they could easily make them for somewhere in the $20-30 range.
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monoprice doesn't make cables, they just resell straight from china.

and leave it to the chinese to copy the chip inside of the TB cable.

the same argument was presented when ink cartridges has chips put in them. it didn't take long for the chinese to copy them

----------
nuckinfutz said:
No they will not. First you have to understand why the cable is expensive.

http://9to5mac.com/2011/06/29/ifixit-tears-down-thunderbolt-cable-reveals-active-parts/

You're not going to get active chipsets (which are likely closely controlled by Intel) cheap.
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leave it to the chinese to copy anything and bring the price down

while my $6 price target was most likely an exaggeration, i don't think the generic ones on monoprice will be that far off
 
nuckinfutz said:
No they will not. First you have to understand why the cable is expensive.

http://9to5mac.com/2011/06/29/ifixit-tears-down-thunderbolt-cable-reveals-active-parts/

You're not going to get active chipsets (which are likely closely controlled by Intel) cheap.
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Makes you wonder what sort of insane design decision was behind this.

I mean, why didn't they just put those electronics inside the devices at both ends, and leave the cable passive? Then you only have to buy them once, rather than buy them every time you buy a cable. If you snipped 1" off each end of the cable, it would be a passive cable, right? So just take the 1" bits and put them inside the Mac and whatever its connecting to.

I can see of no technical reason whatsoever why they could not have implemented it this way. It just seems utter madness to have put the electronics in the cable.
 
Chippy99 said:
Makes you wonder what sort of insane design decision was behind this.

I mean, why didn't they just put those electronics inside the devices at both ends, and leave the cable passive? Then you only have to buy them once, rather than buy them every time you buy a cable. If you snipped 1" off each end of the cable, it would be a passive cable, right? So just take the 1" bits and put them inside the Mac and whatever its connecting to.

I can see of no technical reason whatsoever why they could not have implemented it this way. It just seems utter madness to have put the electronics in the cable.
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Costs.

Adding ~$20-$30 worth of additional parts in a $2200 computer isn't much. Doing the same thing for a $500 enclosure and the cost goes up significantly. Do that for Seagate's TB adapter and you're suddenly looking at a 30%+ jump in costs. If those parts fail before the rest of the hardware does, uh oh.
 
Come off it, there's no way those bits cost $20~$30 per end. The whole cable retails at $50. That means maybe $35 wholesale and $30 to Apple... for the whole cable assembly with 2 ends.

I figure $5 per end max.
 
Chippy99 said:
Come off it, there's no way those bits cost $20~$30 per end. The whole cable retails at $50. That means maybe $35 wholesale and $30 to Apple... for the whole cable assembly with 2 ends.

I figure $5 per end max.
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Untested parts with no guarantees they will work/perform as advertised, sure.

$5 per end and expect it to be similar quality as the real thing? In your dreams.
 
AidenShaw said:
One more nail in the T-Bolt coffin....
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Thunderbolt isn't going away. There's enough stuff trickling in to make it worthwhile, like 4K video equipment, hardware DSP units for audio, RAID arrays, etc. There's no reason USB3 and TB can't co-exist.
 
Chippy99 said:
Er, most of them??!?!

I bought a cheap Samsung 1TB USB3 drive last year for about £80 (including the cable!) and it flies along backing up Windows at about 150MB/s.

Who would *not* want that?
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Fanboys. I mean who else enjoys paying more for less 100% of the time? ;)
 
ghostface147 said:
I'm still waiting for a company to have a thunderbolt portable hard drive. None of those expensive raid arrays, just a simple 1 terabyte drive I can use for time machine.
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There is a reason they are not in the market, thunderbolt is designed for high throughput. A single 1tb drive will only hit around 120MB/s which usb3 is more then capable of for much less expense, there are single SSD thunderbolt drives as they need the extra throughput. Thunderbolt is expensive but it does have its uses especially in a professional market where 10Gb/s is needed or beneficial. For most people USB3 will be more then enough, and cheap too :)
 
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jcpb said:
Untested parts with no guarantees they will work/perform as advertised, sure.

$5 per end and expect it to be similar quality as the real thing? In your dreams.
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I am talking about what it costs apple you numpty ;-)
 
torana355 said:
There is a reason they are not in the market, thunderbolt is designed for high throughput. A single 1tb drive will only hit around 120MB/s which usb3 is more then capable of for much less expense, there are single SSD thunderbolt drives as they need the extra throughput. Thunderbolt is expensive but it does have its uses especially in a professional market where 10Gb/s is needed or beneficial. For most people USB3 will be more then enough, and cheap too :)
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Heck, USB 2.0 is more than enough for TB. I think one of my drives has USB3, but who cares. USB 2.0 is more than enough for any home user or hobbyist. If you're a pro, and working with A/V stuff, you might need USB3 or TB, but in that case, gear like this at $400 shouldn't be a big deal if that's how you make your living.
 
Chippy99 said:
Come off it, there's no way those bits cost $20~$30 per end. The whole cable retails at $50. That means maybe $35 wholesale and $30 to Apple... for the whole cable assembly with 2 ends.

I figure $5 per end max.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that cost was likely not the reason, but I think they surely had a justified reason for not doing it the cheap way. You certainly aren't a hardware engineer and know nothing about the technical reasons they made that decision - I don't either.
 
torana355 said:
There is a reason they are not in the market, thunderbolt is designed for high throughput. A single 1tb drive will only hit around 120MB/s which usb3 is more then capable of for much less expense, there are single SSD thunderbolt drives as they need the extra throughput. Thunderbolt is expensive but it does have its uses especially in a professional market where 10Gb/s is needed or beneficial. For most people USB3 will be more then enough, and cheap too :)
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Except my Mac doesn't have a USB3 port.
 
radiogoober said:
You certainly aren't a hardware engineer and know nothing about the technical reasons they made that decision - I don't either.
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What a bizarre and rather rude comment. How on earth do you presume to know what my qualifications are???

As it happens, although not specialising in hardware design, I am a physicist and have worked in IT for 30 years.
 
awer25 said:
Exactly. There's not a cheap, fast data transfer method available to us. FW800 is OK, but not as fast (or ubiquitous) as USB 3.0, and most other computers don't have it, requiring a FW800 + USB enclosure if you want to use it with other computers. Thunderbolt costs too much for housings and cables ($50 TB vs $2 USB 3.0 for cables). Plus, USB 3.0 is everywhere today - on external HDDs, flash drives, media card readers, etc. For the average user who actually cares about speed, it's well worth it considering it's now available (i.e. I wouldn't buy a Windows laptop over a MBP just for USB 3.0)
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Exactly. Cheap, plentiful and easy. Maybe some day TB is the same but not yet. I can tell you that I have on my Mac Pro a usb3 adapter card. The difference between file transfers on the usb3 devices vs the same on usb 2 devices is very noticeable indeed and saves time. It's also 100% compatible with pc's which helps. I will be very happy to have and use both TB and usb 3 for different reasons. This is not a competition.
 
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