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A perfect time for Mac users to be buying Intel Thunderbolt accessories!

TB3 is open to everyone now and Apple are heavily invested in it. I would expect to see even more TB3/USB4 ports on Mac's since they can now develop chips that have 10/20 ports for the new Mac Pro if they want.
 
I remember this lady at my Starbucks had a 500GB Lacey hard drive glued to the lid of her MacBook with the same yellow spray foam a handyman uses to patch holes in stucco. Horrific look.
Did you throw up in your mouth a little be honest?
 
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Several other NVMe TB3 40Gbps enclosures have speeds in the 2000+ MB/s range. Getting that fully sustained over an extended period of time is not realistic, however.


Yeah, the underlined seems to be what they're stressing in the ad, i.e., "real world performance". I think sometimes we see a couple of benchmark based peaks of like 2000-2500, but average performance in a day, across of a range of different uses, it's effectively a good bit less.
 
Does anyone else even sell a "user populated" empty enclosure like this?
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Larry just hooked me up with one. Score!
Great. I think you will notice the increase of speed from your emoji Apple Macintosh 128k. ha
 
I don't think that ARM (Apple Silicon) Macs support TB3. I still want one though - for now - it'd be an awesome external Bootcamp drive.

Not yet. TB3 support in Intel Macs is based on the Intel Chipset. Apple could easily add it to their chipset as well. Although Apple helped Intel develop TB3 I wonder if there are any legal issues for Apple to bring it to their own silicon.
 
Can you point me at a USB 3.1 (or 3.2, for that matter) drive/enclosure that actually gets anything close to this speed in real-world usage?
I have a 3.1G2 m2 downstairs. I specifically bought a “cheap” m2 (1500 write I think?) because i couldn’t find tb3 enclosures locally at the time. I’ll try to remember to run a speed test on it tomorrow.

Does anyone else even sell a "user populated" empty enclosure like this?
There are several brands available yes. I just bought (after having a heap of trouble with their USB stuff, so fingers crossed) an Orico Tb3 m2 case, and a new m2 has been ordered to populate it. I’ll report speeds/etc once the m2 arrives and I get it assembled.
 
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A perfect time for Mac users to be buying Intel Thunderbolt accessories!
Apple is going to support TB for many years. Just look at how they emphasize the XDR displays during the keynote. I doubt they are going in a different direction.
 
Designed to support any 2280 M.2 NVMe SSD, the key benefit of the Envoy Express is that users can install their own drive in it, including OWC's Aura SSDs with up to 4TB of storage or larger-capacity options in the future.

Ok I want to buy this but can't find the 4TB SSD that's mention. I don't want to buy the wrong one
 
Not yet. TB3 support in Intel Macs is based on the Intel Chipset. Apple could easily add it to their chipset as well. Although Apple helped Intel develop TB3 I wonder if there are any legal issues for Apple to bring it to their own silicon.
I don’t think it matters. Tb is becoming open and amalgamating with the USB4 standard as far as I can ascertain.
 
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I wonder, if Envoy Express works with older Thunderbolt 1/2 Macs as well, if connected with appropriate cables/adapters. Those Macs have also needed a similar solution.
 
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Intel has apparently made Thunderbolt royalty free now. The question is whether ARM will implement it. The nice thing is having everything like USB and Thunderbolt on the same port now. USB 4 which I believe is scheduled for late 2020 or early 2021? will support speeds up to 40GBPS like thunderbolt 3 and Display Port 2.0 should be out then supporting displays up to 16K. Late 2021 should offer some really nice upgrades for MacBook Pros :)

But will it/they be the same connector/connectivity or will people have to throw out the old and buy the new ?
 
is this fast enough to install windows on and play games in it as if it was internal disk?
 
As I understand it, it’s up to Apple to implement these standards (such as USB4) on their own chips rather than Arm? They aren’t using Arm’s chips, just licensing the specifications. Or am I wrong about this?
They can license Intel or some other company's TB3/USB4 silicon design an integrate it into their SoC (Ax chips); they do not have to roll their own from scratch. These hardware functions are not, necessarily, separate chips anymore. SoCs are called that because they're "macro" chips comprised of a collection of other interconnected chips, just like the "old days" with a motherboard with many, many chips interconnected.
 
Weird... I have been using the JEYI TB3 m.2 NVMe enclosure from AliExpress for about a year now... 🤷🏽‍♂️ (512GB SSD from Amazon installed.) $78 for the enclosure. I use the enclosure for my Catalina install and I use the paltry 128GB internal storage for Bootcamp.
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This thing says to be shipped in August... wonder if there are some new things coming up by then? why would they want to push pre-ordering so early?
 
I was going to say that I don't like integrated cables attached to expensive hardware. As a product design engineer, I am well aware of the fact that interconnect, cables, are always the first thing to fail after moving parts. I really like how OWC solved this problem. That's thinking outside of the box by thinking of inside of the box. Clever.

Kudos!
 
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I've been looking for an affordable TB3 enclosure for a while now and this looks decent.

But, why is it capped at 1500Mbps? TB3 is rated to 40Gbps (20Gbps effective each way)
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Good price for a TB3, but how have they managed to make it so slow?

Agree.. I don't get it? Even USB 3.1 gen 2 can do 1000Mbps. TB3 is supposed to handle 40Gbps. What is going on here?
 
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