It's thunderbolt - not bird. Lightpeak and display port are separate and supposedly freely licensable (not sure about lightpeak b/c of Intel) I believe the combo that Apple has is thunderbolt which means that it has to be licensed. Thunderbolt is not the same thing as lightpeak
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Notes of Interest on Thunderbolt and MacBook Pro
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It's thunderbolt - not bird. Lightpeak and display port are separate and supposedly freely licensable (not sure about lightpeak b/c of Intel) I believe the combo that Apple has is thunderbolt which means that it has to be licensed. Thunderbolt is not the same thing as lightpeak
Never a good sign when people confuse your product with malt liquor and white trash cars.
I'm happy Macs once again have a high-speed data port after skipping eSATA and USB 3. However, I'm confused/suspicious why they chose to combine data and video signals. Well, from Apple's perspective it's great. One less port for them to add to their notebooks. One cable to hook up to a Cinema display for video, sound, camera, USB and Firewire ports.
Is Light Peak (Thunderbolt sans video) going to exist as a standalone variant/standard? The inclusion of the video channel as a requirement for Thunderbolt is going to make it just that much more difficult for 3rd parties to produce add-in cards (hence the statements at the opening of this thread). Was the adding of video a move by Intel to help shut out third parties, sell more logic boards/processors, gently push more manufacturers towards its integrated video controllers? All of the above? Won't this place an artificial limit on the number of these ports that can be added to a machine? Right now my MP has 4 FW800 ports. If every Thunderbolt port requires video, I don't see my next MP having 4 Thunderbolt ports. Where does the TB port go an a MP? The motherboard? The video card? If the motherboard, are they routing the video card signal back out through the motherboard? Or will this be an Intel HD-fed signal? Will it cut down on the number of connections on the video card?
So many unanswered questions. The inclusion of video really muddied the waters.
Is Light Peak (Thunderbolt sans video) going to exist as a standalone variant/standard? The inclusion of the video channel as a requirement for Thunderbolt is going to make it just that much more difficult for 3rd parties to produce add-in cards (hence the statements at the opening of this thread). Was the adding of video a move by Intel to help shut out third parties, sell more logic boards/processors, gently push more manufacturers towards its integrated video controllers? All of the above? Won't this place an artificial limit on the number of these ports that can be added to a machine? Right now my MP has 4 FW800 ports. If every Thunderbolt port requires video, I don't see my next MP having 4 Thunderbolt ports. Where does the TB port go an a MP? The motherboard? The video card? If the motherboard, are they routing the video card signal back out through the motherboard? Or will this be an Intel HD-fed signal? Will it cut down on the number of connections on the video card?
So many unanswered questions. The inclusion of video really muddied the waters.
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Yes, I knew that they used a RAID, but I remember reading somewhere that one of the systems they demonstrated was using an OCZ Vertex 3 SSD and I though that might have been what Braindead360 was talking about (i.e. Braindead360's claim that there are no SSDs that are faster than 250-300MB/s). However, as you point out, that wasn't the Pegasus.
with a new port Apple can sell accessories for it at ridiculous margins because there is no one else to do it since Intel just released the dev kit
if that is the case then it is DOA.
No one is going to make stuff for Thunderbolt since it has Apple limiting connector and no one trust Apple. Apple screwed the pouch on firewire and they are going to do it again with TB.
Never a good sign when people confuse your product with malt liquor and white trash cars.
I know it's Thunderbolt lol
Just making fun of the name. and, Yes, Thunderbolt is just a re-branding of Lightpeak. If you are trying to say that Thunderbolt is the actual port (and not the tech) then you are wrong. Intel's lightpeak includes the port that is used to connect to it.Hardly anyone does. One minute the argument's in favor and assurance that a mere 2MB of ram is more than enough in a 13" MBA, the next it's boasting of supersonic speeds of some copper wire. What a contradictory & hypocritical line of thinking. I'm really beginning to wonder how much longer this charade can last. But then again the conversion rate of normal people into Apples Gullibles, these sales numbers may climb for many months to come.This is awesome! I just wish I had a real use for it...
Get yourself together.
DisplayPort is superior to HDMI. Why waste time on that old, ****** connection?
Show me one monitor sold at any consumer store (other than Apple) that supports display port, let alone mini-display port. Get your box of adapters and dongles ready because you're going to need them with Apple. They sell everything that no one wants and then charge a small fortune to convert it to the formats that people actually use.
If Light Peak is Mini-Display Port then the format is already dead. No one will support it. The fastest interface on earth won't do you a bit of good if you have nothing to connect to it! Just look at the lack of FW400 and FW800 drives compared to USB2/3 and eSata. Your friend comes over with his 3TB USB3 drive and you have to use USB2 because Apple decided they want to be the first to offer something no one else wants or will use while the rest of the world quietly upgrades all their hardware to USB3 with 100% backwards compatibility. Meanwhile, Apple continues to ship USB2 just like they did with USB1 when they tried to force Firewire on everyone. The problem is that Apple is too small a player in the overall computer market to "force" ANYTHING on ANYONE. They originally included Firewire only on the iPod and quickly realized the only thing it would do is kill the iPod, not get everyone to switch to Firewire. Worst of all, not including USB3 is just plain STUPID regardless. The cost is inconsequential. The ports are already there and some equipment will be USB3 regardless. Why screw your customers ability to interact with the real world in some freaking greedy push to try and make everyone use only the format you invested in?
I'm getting really sick of Apple's stupid hardware decisions. My next computer will not be from Apple. At best, it will be a Hackintosh. I already have a MBP for Logic music production and an 'ancient' PowerMac to serve my whole house audio/video system and do secure shopping, etc. I need Power/Speed on my next machine and Apple doesn't seem to want to deliver it, let alone at a reasonable price.
Unlikely that they're go just Thunderbolt.
Apple needs to sell iDevices to folk who only have USB.
Dell has included Displayport on their mid- & high-range displays for years. Samsung not as long, but again - their better products do support Displayport. HP's high-gamut displays do, too.
A thing to consider - Apple has the year-long head start because they paid to have the chip made by Intel and provided space and support for it on their motherboards. I would guess the Thunderbolt chip could have swapped space with a USB3 host chip - and then everyone would complain how lackluster the new MBPs were.
When Ivy Bridge (chipset numbers likely to be 77 vs 67 in Sandy Bridge) hits early 2012 it's a fair bet that OEMs will have the opportunity to selectively buy into Thunderbolt with certain versions - allowing them to stratify their product lines accordingly. It might or might not require the separate physical chip that the current implementation does.
FWIW, native USB3 support comes from Intel in that same chipset.
I guess I just don't see the conspiracy or bad decisions that you do on this one. If anything, I'm on my way to buy one because while not the complete redesign that maybe I was hoping for, I feel like it's more future-proofed with Thunderbolt than it would've been with USB3 - for my needs, at east.
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... and since Dell does not sell their mid/high range at consumer stores, Magnus wins this one.
Not only would I like clarification that Thunderbolt cables and devices
can be Hot Plugged safely, but I sure would like clarification regarding
DIY ability to change these new MBP's from a mechanical HD to an SSD.
can be Hot Plugged safely, but I sure would like clarification regarding
DIY ability to change these new MBP's from a mechanical HD to an SSD.
didn't we here that same thing with firewire vs. usb2 ?
for example:
the advantage that the cpu isn't used for thunderbolt is a rather 'false advantage' since it is bought by needing interface controllers in the device which simply cost more.
which results in slightly more expensive devices and thus,like firewire, again to professional market where a few hundred bucks more spent is irrelevant if minutes can saved every day
regarding hotplugability: i suspect _that_ requirement is preventing adding pci express cards through thunderbolt
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Let me fix that...
The "industry" could decide to pass on the Mini-DisplayPort copper hack, and wait for optical.
I will.
Why? They're backwards and forwards compatible, and the optical implementation is likely to have the transmitter 'baked in' to the connector at the computer side.
It wouldn't surprise me if native optical connectors on the computer were more than 5 years off. Electrical from the computer will be so much more useful - since it'll power small peripherals.
Actually. Dell (the newer XPS laptops), HP (the newer ENVY laptops), and Toshiba (random various models) have started replacing VGA with Mini DisplayPort on their laptops. I'm pretty sure once Dell and HP have MDP on their entire lineup, they're likely to include DP on their monitors (in Dell's case, trickling it down from the U-series to the other lines). ThunderBolt gives PC manufactuers more of a reason to use Mini DisplayPort over legacy connectors because of the now dual-purpose nature of the connector, which leads to more simplicity.
Futhermore, FireWire wasn't only Apple's standard (even though they were the primary contributor), it was also Sony's (another whore for the proprietary) and some others'. When DV-based camcorders were dominant, FireWire was a necessity for users. But with camcorders having shifted towards being flash- and HDD-based, that dependency is gone (which was part of Apple's reasoning for dropping FireWire in the MacBook).