Thunderbolt is so far ahead of EVERYTHING else, Thunderbolt everywhere inevitable.
Define "everywhere".
Thunderbolt is a video connector, so it'll replace VGA & HDMI. DisplayPort is on EVERY new Mac (via the mini DisplayPort connector) and Thunderbolt connects through the SAME mini DisplayPort connector. USB will be for mice & other slow devices, and really, you probably won't "need" USB in 5 yrs.
You really think TB is gonna replace the video cable/video technology industry? No way. USB, as you said, is great and fine for "slow" devices...but you are defining slow as a mouse. USB 2.0 is currently TERRIFIC for (consumer use case list): mice, keyboards, digital cameras (as they are typically 2-4GB of data), USB Flash keys (1-8GB typically), printers (you typically send at most a 25page doc to your home printer...not to mention a high percentage of wireless printers are available for $150), Flip cameras storing 8GB of vid, and finally...transferring maybe 20-50GB of data. Those are the uses for 90% of consumers out there and USB 2.0 is plenty fast (even though everyone loves something faster). The 10% other people are the ones who want to copy 500GB often...or attach a digital vidcam and offload 100GB of footage...that's it my friend.
USB3 is NOT well supported nor adopted by third party vendors either because it too is pretty new, and "Average Consumers" are content with USB2.
Where have you been? There are currently over 130 external hard drives available with USB 3.0...all about $5 more than their USB 2.0 predecessor of the same size. Are there USB 3.0 printers and digital cameras yet? I dunno...but again, USB 3.0 is really meant for large amounts of data in comparison to USB 2.0 (not to mention that everyone in the world will gladly love to have a faster technology). USB 3.0 has been "out" for over a year. Where's TB? Oh yea...sometime this summer. And have you seen the pricetag for that TB drive that was listed somewhere else on MR previously?! Like $1700+. If you're willing to spend $1700, you can buy tried, tested, and working stuff now that is much cheaper and likely the same or very close to performance...but if you want to be the early adopter, go ahead.
For similar costs, end users could get 10 Gigabit Thunderbolt (twice the speed of 5Gb USB3). And Thunderbolt can daisy chain 6 devices from a single port, and it supports 4Gb FiberChannel networking (SANLink - Fibre Channel adapter) and more devices are coming quickly (much quicker then for USB3).
Ok. And how does that help 90% of consumers with their typical use cases? And tell me again where I can find more than 130 TB devices like I already can with USB 3.0.
You are missing the whole point of this thread. Go back and look at my previous posts and others. TB is a GREAT technology. Nobody doubts that. USB 3.0 is ALSO A GREAT TECHNOLOGY. Who will be adopted the most (interesting that Intel owns both of these technologies)? In most people's eyes, since USB is already the clear standard, it will be USB 3.0...due to it's speed, 1 year jump, it's backwards compatibility (which is huge), and it's brand/market recognition.
For the diehard prosumer people out there that need the fastest, blazingest, hottest i/o...you're gonna buy yourself some real internal hard drives an not limit yourself to USB or FW or TB...or load up your workstation with 64GB of RAM...and/or get yourself some SSDs...and/or get yourself some Don't bottleneck yourself with an external drive.
Again, TB is a great performance technology. But performance does not guarantee a product will be the most widely adopted/owned.
