Word. That demo video is sick. Guess I can put my 5 bay eSATA enclosure up on eBay now
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Notes of Interest on Thunderbolt and MacBook Pro
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Word. That demo video is sick. Guess I can put my 5 bay eSATA enclosure up on eBay now
Hopefully Apple starts making use of the Thunderbolt port, particularly if other OEMs won't start incorporating them until next year. Otherwise, it could be a while before compatible devices come out to make use of the port (other than for displays).
At the very least, USB 3.0 to TB adapters would be helpful since it would open up Apple devices to USB 3.0 peripherals. I don't expect Apple to offer them, but perhaps an enterprising third party will.
At the very least, USB 3.0 to TB adapters would be helpful since it would open up Apple devices to USB 3.0 peripherals. I don't expect Apple to offer them, but perhaps an enterprising third party will.
BTW, why is it you aren't allowed to replace your own battery. I heard it voids the warranty. And anytime I have taken off the back cover there are big stickers saying DO NOT TOUCH THIS EVER!!!
Any chance the usb adapter that will come out for thunderbolt will actually work with USB 3.0 devices? that would be really sweet.
Damaged screw and...
Everyone is very interested in ThunderBolt, I am more interested in what iFixIt says about the new machine.
A damaged screw and a loose zip connector are issues that should never happen in any machine.
For me Apple gave the right answer with this upgrade: keep your current computer, save $$$ and wait for 2012 MacBook PROs or Core i5 Airs with Backlit keyboard.
I personally am more in the Air thing now. Waiting for their refresh, more battery life (yes, my 15 early 2010 with Intel SSD never went over 6h), less weight and appealing esthetic.
Thats my opinion.
Everyone is very interested in ThunderBolt, I am more interested in what iFixIt says about the new machine.
A damaged screw and a loose zip connector are issues that should never happen in any machine.
For me Apple gave the right answer with this upgrade: keep your current computer, save $$$ and wait for 2012 MacBook PROs or Core i5 Airs with Backlit keyboard.
I personally am more in the Air thing now. Waiting for their refresh, more battery life (yes, my 15 early 2010 with Intel SSD never went over 6h), less weight and appealing esthetic.
Thats my opinion.
Thanks Firestarter for the info about Target Disk Mode. And, from what I remember from my classes, anytime data is being transferred, you measure it in bits (i.e 54 megabits per second, 480 megabits per second, etc), any time it's storage (i.e hard drives), you use bytes to measure it, (250 gigabyte Hard Drive, 16 gigabyte flash drive, etc). Is that still the way it's done? Or is Thunderbolt so fast that they had to jump to measuring in bytes?
From my understanding, many manufacturers use the megabits number because it is larger and most consumers don't know the difference.
If 2 companies were selling portable hard drives and 1 hard drive guaranteed 100Mb transfer speed while the other guaranteed 12.5 MB transfer speed, which do you think consumers would buy?
ya think something like being wrong/childish/spoiled/mis-guided/delusional will stop the hating? ..it's a nice thought.....
You know if you craigslist that 2 month old macbook this week before most people realize theres a new one out, you could probably get decent cash for it. I usually see people selling 2010 MBP's for around 900-1000. That wouldn't be too big of a hit.
That's the truth. I work in the IT department at a private prep school, and all the teachers have laptops, many of them with docking stations for in their offices. The majority of them never leave the dock, and when they do, the power cable comes with it for their classes. Heck, even in IT, we all have laptops, hooked up to displays and keyboards (mostly Macs, so not a lot of docks). They almost never get unplugged as well, unless we have to take it somewhere and troubleshoot.
My home machine is a different story...not even 3 years old, and well over 500 cycles...I need a new machine...or battery (preferably a new machine) lol
So basically, Apple was lying about battery life all these years.
Convenient, is it not? You know, it just methodology...
Convenient, is it not? You know, it just methodology...
Being a QA guy in my engineering office.... This lack of engineering quality checking process, nor oversight is a pretty big slip for a tech giant like Apple to let slip through. How many more have slipped through ?
P.S. Can ifixit return the faulty MBP?
I'd expect to see things like 4-port USB 3.0 boxes that attach to a Thunderbolt port. Like you said, probably not from Apple, but from third parties. Once they get a whiff of what's possible, I'd expect them to start capitalizing on it.
jW
If there's a convention, it's not set in stone.
SATA interfaces use serial data transfer, but the 'SATA 150, 300, 600' are megabytes, not megabits.
In the demo video he used it in the context of transferring a large file, which is sensible.
Mac _ Pro, not MBP... (and I'm a brit, so 1000 dollars for it would be a vey big hit lol
) I was referring to the no PCIe card thing. I'm really not that concerned at this point, it just would have been nice if intel/Apple had let people know it would be the case, like that would ever happen... I would have bought a Thunderbolt card, but I wouldn't have not bought my MP if I'd known there wouldn't be the option (the running theme when you buy Apple products...)
whow, i am impressed. now i can copy a 4 GB file in 5 seconds, wherelse it used to take 50 seconds before. my life has now changed. i really need the new mac book, because i copy 4 GB files every day!
to be honest: why does apple include such experimental technology into their mac books? it is as necessary as a built in coffee cooker, or a built in shoe cleaner. instead, it would have been NICE to again include the remote control (worth 2 dollar production cost) or lower the price to be more competitive.
i fear, that in the next macbook apple will include a hyper resolution of 19.200 x 10.800 pixel, or an array of 10 facetime cameras, simply, because they CAN!
to be honest: why does apple include such experimental technology into their mac books? it is as necessary as a built in coffee cooker, or a built in shoe cleaner. instead, it would have been NICE to again include the remote control (worth 2 dollar production cost) or lower the price to be more competitive.
i fear, that in the next macbook apple will include a hyper resolution of 19.200 x 10.800 pixel, or an array of 10 facetime cameras, simply, because they CAN!
No. The old cable + separate transceiver was more expensive than the combo cable + integrated transceiver , but the combo was not less than the cable all by itself. The point is that optical cable is going to be more expensive than copper ( although copper prices are increasing). The optical cable is going to be more expensive anyway. Having to throw electronics into both ends of the cable is going to drive up costs.
Who wants slower/most expensive video ? Looks at the path. You need some display port to pci-e converter on the graphics card and then another pci-e to display port converter to pump it back into the display channel on the TB controller. Not only that but now you are sucking up PCI-e bandwidth pumping data for no good reason. You can but it is needlessly complex. Apple could write Mac OS X purely in assembler language. That wouldn't be a good engineering design decision though.
The folks more likely to implement the PCI-e card are the graphics card vendors. Who is Intel squeezing out of the graphics business? The graphics card vendors. You think it is going to be high on the graphics card vendors 'to do' list is to incorporate an Intel controller into their references designes so that Intel gets money for every card that gets sold. If TB peripherals gets extremely popular maybe. Right now with Apple the only system vendor (who by the way doesn't have any TB peripherals itself. ). All the peripaherals at the demo are TB only. (the do disk systems didn't have any FW/USB/etc ports just TB. Don't be surprised when there is a price premium for these devices. )
The other problem is that the graphics engine on the card would have to share bandwidth to memory/CPU with the non video data being pumped by TB. Right now graphics cards use x8 or x16 PCI-e lanes themselves without adding bandwidth to the external RAID array to the mix. PCI-e v3.0 will help. Folks have wondered a bit about why a graphics card would need 16 v3.0 lanes when 8 would being equiv to 16 v2.0 lanes. So maybe when PCI-e v3.0 becomes mainstream this will be less an issue.
[although kind of wonder if these TB controllers can deal with PCI-e v3.0. ]
Finally, the last reason is non-techinical. It will be confusing to many users. One of the marketing points of TB is that you can hook a display into it. So if someone did a "PCI-e only" card ( only hook the card to the PCI-e bus like what is done in the storage peripherals ) then when someone plugs their dispaly into the card and no video comes out ..... that is yet another support communication about why it is suppose to but doesn't. Additionaly, the more folks do that the more likely display vendors won't pick up TB. The argument will be that more host TB ports don't have video data coming out anyway, so why should I add this expensive controller to my cost senstive display.
1 display because there are zero , including Apple, displays with TB sockets. They are display port only. So has to be last device on the daisy change. When there are dual ported TB displays ( which will probably cost more ) then probably and drop more than one onto the chain.
It is likely limited to 7 devices because of latency. You can only extend a PCI-e bus so far before have latency issues. When the TB line speed increases with optical ( copper is probably stuck at this current 10Gbps ) then will get not only more length but more devices.
Not sure it works that way. Seems likely there is a mode the controller goes into to recognize whether the device on the other side is speaking DP so just communicates purely in DP or whether all the comm is done in TB mode when TB device on the other side. There is just no mix in the traffic if only a DP decoding device on the other side.
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Crap about real thunderbolt speed
Sorry but I think that the guy in that endgadet video is exaggerating a bit. While I completely understand that Thunderbolt is fast (clearly shown by the speed meter) Final Cut is not throwing those 4 streams back out on the bus - it is throwing a composite image (1 stream) back to the monitor.
Yesterday, Apple and Intel introduced a new cabling system called Thunderbolt into the new MacBook Pros. As with any new technology, there are a lot of new questions and issues that are raised. Tested.com offers a good overview of the new technology, and Macworld offers a good Frequently Asked Questions about Thunderbolt. We've compiled some of the more interesting notes here.
- First, this Engadget video shows Thunderbolt in action on one of the new MacBook Pros, and does a good job showing the advantages of the faster bandwidth.
- CNet's live coverage reveals that there are no plans to offer Thunderbolt PCIe cards. In fact, Intel says that you will need a new computer/motherboard to get Thunderbolt. That means Mac Pro owners won't be able to add it on to their systems.
- CrunchGear notes that while Apple doesn't have an exclusive on Thunderbolt, they have a head start:
- Engadget reports that Thunderbolt will be both backwards and forwards-compatible when it gets the new optical cabling:
- Many have noted the new MacBook Pros have shorter battery life specs than last year's MacBook Pros. TechCrunch notes that Apple has been using a different testing protocol to report battery life:We won't know until reviewers start testing them with identical benchmarks how much shorter the new MacBook Pro battery life actually is.
Article Link: Notes of Interest on Thunderbolt and MacBook Pro
Sorry but I think that the guy in that endgadet video is exaggerating a bit. While I completely understand that Thunderbolt is fast (clearly shown by the speed meter) Final Cut is not throwing those 4 streams back out on the bus - it is throwing a composite image (1 stream) back to the monitor.
Got to start to roll out the tech at some point. You can just use the port as a display port. That's probably what 95+% of the users are going to do for first year or so.
However, this tech plays into where Apple wants to push PC designs. There is reduce need for a boxes with PCI-e slots with TB. The next iMac will get this tech to. The small but vocal group of folks who constantly groan about "I need a mini tower with a PCI-e slot or two" will be often be able to make do with external TB device. ( can't upgrade video to some bleeding edge card but it has utility). Likewise the groaners on the "ExpressCard on MBP" group. You've got TB .... have a nice day.
It is one of the cases where folks asked for PCI-e slots in less expesnive boxes, eSATA ports, and ExpressCard sockets and Apple delivered Thunderbolt. They are nuking all those requests with one socket.