iPhone 5 Thunderbolt?

[Z400Racer37]

hey guys,

just wondering what people think about Apple possibly gone all out and added the smaller dock connector, and made it thunderbolt compatible? it takes forever to update my podcast videos through the current 30-pin, and the mockups of the slimmer MBP show 2 thunderbolt ports... is there any feasible reason why Apple's standard thunderbolt shape could not have been modified to fit the smaller dock, or any technological limitation that would make it so it couldn't be done? Could they possibly be beginning a move away from usb (2 or 3) peripherals to faster thunderbolt?

interesting....

 

[Sincci]

I don't see this one happening for two reasons.

Currently the bottleneck for transfers isn't the usb 2 interface, but the actual flash chips inside the phone, they just aren't fast enough so changing the interface to thunderbolt wouldn't make it any faster. Also at this point Thunderbolt isn't adopted widely enough, so using only tb and dropping usb support would mean that only people with macs that are from 2011 or later could use it.

 

[robbieduncan]

Thunderbolt requires a relatively large and expensive dedicated chip to work. There is no space for this.

 

[Moonjumper]

Full Thunderbolt support seems very unlikely because of size and price constraints. But I do wonder if some kind of connection to it is possible. There have been rumours of Firewire connections to the new MacBook Pros using Firewire to Thunderbolt adaptors, and the original iPods were Firewire.

If there was some kind of Thunderbolt support, it won't be at the expense of USB because TB is not widespread enough.

Size does seem to be an important driver for the new connector, but I hope that it will also be able to take more power. The current connector wasn't designed for charging iPad size batteries.

 

[Z400Racer37]

I don't see this one happening for two reasons.

Currently the bottleneck for transfers isn't the usb 2 interface, but the actual flash chips inside the phone, they just aren't fast enough so changing the interface to thunderbolt wouldn't make it any faster. Also at this point Thunderbolt isn't adopted widely enough, so using only tb and dropping usb support would mean that only people with macs that are from 2011 or later could use it.

So what would Apple need to do to make data transfers faster? are there faster chips in development (are they currently dram?)? or, and i know they are obviously concerned with space, but would more physical chips (not necessarily more GB) help? more contacts to push data through? it is pretty slow as is...

as for compatibility with existing machines, thats a good point, and one that i didn't think of. i do believe however that thunderbolt throughput capacity would eventually have to win out... but like you said there is going to be a need for thunderbolt to usb converters.

 

[Z400Racer37]

Full Thunderbolt support seems very unlikely because of size and price constraints. But I do wonder if some kind of connection to it is possible. There have been rumours of Firewire connections to the new MacBook Pros using Firewire to Thunderbolt adaptors, and the original iPods were Firewire.

If there was some kind of Thunderbolt support, it won't be at the expense of USB because TB is not widespread enough.

Size does seem to be an important driver for the new connector, but I hope that it will also be able to take more power. The current connector wasn't designed for charging iPad size batteries.

yeah, i wonder if a connection is possible as well. as i said in my last comment, i think the move to thunderbolt is inevitable over time, and if i remember correctly, Apple was the first company (if not one of the earliest) to ship a computer without serial or parallel ports, and only usb, so i imagine that they would be really on top of this shift as well. and as for the size, I'm hoping that they can come up with something proprietary (and eventually become a standard) that can increase throughput potential ( as the chips are apparently the limiting factor as of now) and also the charging capacity as you mentioned.

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thanks for all the input guys!

 

[Sincci]

Of course you can already make faster chips if they would want to, it's just not cost effective at the moment. Also, I seriously would doubt that Apple would use TB instead of USB 3.0 for a faster interface with the iPhone since USB 3 is much cheaper, it's already backwards compatible and fast enough (you really don't need 10Gbps to upload videos to your iPhone).

The only reason why we haven't seen USB 3.0 in Apple's hardware is that there hasn't been a native support for it in Intel's chipset's. With the latest one (ivy bridge) there is one, so there's no reason for Apple to not use them. TB isn't a replacement for USB, if anything it's more like replacement for FireWire.

 

[PracticalMac]

I don't see this one happening for two reasons.

Currently the bottleneck for transfers isn't the usb 2 interface, but the actual flash chips inside the phone, they just aren't fast enough so changing the interface to thunderbolt wouldn't make it any faster. Also at this point Thunderbolt isn't adopted widely enough, so using only tb and dropping usb support would mean that only people with macs that are from 2011 or later could use it.

If that is so, then how can u explain SSD's with, IIRC, 500 Mbps read/write (large file is faster)? USB2 average is 350 Mbps.

Without a doubt USB2 is a huge bottle neck.

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Of course you can already make faster chips if they would want to, it's just not cost effective at the moment. Also, I seriously would doubt that Apple would use TB instead of USB 3.0 for a faster interface with the iPhone since USB 3 is much cheaper, it's already backwards compatible and fast enough (you really don't need 10Gbps to upload videos to your iPhone).

The only reason why we haven't seen USB 3.0 in Apple's hardware is that there hasn't been a native support for it in Intel's chipset's. With the latest one (ivy bridge) there is one, so there's no reason for Apple to not use them. TB isn't a replacement for USB, if anything it's more like replacement for FireWire.

Currently no Apple machine has USB3, and lack of Intel support is not excuse to to add it via 3ed party hardware.

It would be cart before horse to put USB3 in iP5, very little chance one will see USB 3.

Unlikely TB, but perhaps Apple made a small enough chip?