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That may well be the case but what use is a machine with a single USB-C Port.

Apple are completely inflexible these days when it comes to the Mac range.

In days gone past Apple would have provided ports for older hardware such as Firewire 400 and Firewire 800.

The older Retina MacBook Pro Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 and traditional keyboard is infinitely more productive.

The latest Touchbar, USB-C MacBook Pro is a ladies handbag abomination.

Typed on a Late-2009 iMac

OLDER MACS ARE BETTER.


What every Thunderbolt 2 or Thunderbolt 3 (or is it USB-C? Who knows?:rolleyes:) ....is a minimum of 3 Thunderbolt 2/3 connections. Otherwise, it's a little wasteful for many and downright useless for me.
 
Bro the sheeple will come after you soon
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Teh to espensiv bye del
[doublepost=1493781163][/doublepost]As a self-professed espert, I wanna join teh others in pointing out the taht this espensiv Apple proprietary "Thundercloud" and "UBS 3" is to much of the $$$$

Better too buy teh Dell as its open source. I esmoke a pipe and that shows my biting whit.

(/s as in /some o this might be satire)
 
I am waiting impatiently for my order to be fulfilled by OWC. The release date has been delayed twice already and I would not be at all surprised to see it delayed again at the end of this month. "Due to unforeseen extrinsic factors and to ensure a better customer experience - blah blah blah."

I need it to use my T3 MBP with a film scanner that is Firewire only. I have tried daisy chaining T3 to T2 and T2 to FW800 and that did not work, with the scanning software reporting communication errors. The T3 -T2-FW800 worked to a hard drive but the two way communication for 7200 dpi multiple pass film scanning is more intensive and I assume there must be a protocol problem. It used to work with the T2 to FW800 on my previous rMPB running 10.12, so it is the T3 causing the problem.
 
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For those concerned about the hissing noise I mentioned, OWC tells me their engineers have identified the source of it and are working on a solution.
 
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For those concerned about the hissing noise I mentioned, OWC tells me their engineers have identified the source of it and are working on a solution.

That is very good news as I have a low tolerance for noisy things and this had me thinking of cancelling my pre-order. The big question is - will this delay things even more?
 
That may well be the case but what use is a machine with a single USB-C Port.

Apple are completely inflexible these days when it comes to the Mac range.

In days gone past Apple would have provided ports for older hardware such as Firewire 400 and Firewire 800.

The older Retina MacBook Pro Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 and traditional keyboard is infinitely more productive.

The latest Touchbar, USB-C MacBook Pro is a ladies handbag abomination.

Typed on a Late-2009 iMac

OLDER MACS ARE BETTER.

And when the ports became obsolete they were dropped. And some people still use DVDs!

usb c is a near perfect solution. One connected many protocols... they shouldn't have named it the port the same as the protocol... it's confusing. USB consortium should have called it Multiport or Porty McPortface or something.

People bang on about dongles... why dongle just get the cable you need usb-c to whatever is needed... they are all cheap.

I will agree with the extended keyboard though... I hacked mine to be Bluetooth 4.

As for the touchbar MacBook. I have dozens of uses for it and use it very productively with cinema 4d, adobe and FCP and writing apps
 
People bang on about dongles... why dongle just get the cable you need usb-c to whatever is needed... they are all cheap.

- devices with captive cables (e.g. I use an Apple LED Cinema Display at work, with captive MiniDP and USB-C). Note that this includes every USB-A memory stick in existence, keyboards, mice etc. OK, my main mouse can do bluetooth, but it charges by USB so if it dies I have a box of old mice that will tide me over. I've got a USB TV tuner dongle that I only use occasionally but isn't landfill just yet. I've got a Flirc USB-A IR receiver for my RasPI that you program by plugging into a Mac/PC.

- I've got various external USB devices. Some have USB-A sockets. Some have USB-B 2.0 sockets, Some have USB-B 3.0 sockets. Some have microUSB 2.0 sockets. Some have microUSB 3.0 sockets. I think I'm done with anything that has miniUSB - oh, but my iPad has Lightning and there are a couple of old iPods that I might want to use when I go somewhere I don't want to take my phone (anybody seen USB-C to 30 pin? Didn't think so) Thing is these all came with a whatever-to-USB-A cable so I have plenty of them and can leave them threaded behind desks, monitors etc. Even $10/cable soon adds up if you look at replacing a significant fraction of those.

- Last I looked, there was no usb-c to mini DisplayPort cable (and not a huge choice of dongles).

- In any case, I have other computers that I still use - a spare old laptop if my 'daily driver' fails, an old MacPro that is my last machine that will run fat binaries and certain ancient software should I need to refer back to some old projects, a RasPi, a HP home server for backup/filestore, a PC that I use for Linux and experimenting with Hackintosh... and all of these, surprise surprise, have USB-A 2.0 or 3.0 sockets. Being forced into a mixed economy of USB-C and USB-A would be a pain in the butt.

- one option I'm considering at the moment is whether an iMac for the desk + MacBook or non-TB MBP would be a better solution than a single do-it-all, high-end MBP. Guess what... current iMac has USB-A + TB2 (update definitely possibly maybe this year, or not), current MBP has USB-C/TB3 (and, on the non-TB only two of them, one of which may be needed for the charger - so some sort of multiport adapter is essential).
 
It is not Apple issue. Hey, Intel has to make some $... Right?

Thunderbolt 3 docks for PC (Dell, Lenovo, and etc) cost about same.

It is the laptop manufacturer's issue. They decide what ports to include. They decide whether or not to include adapters, docks, or dongles, and what to charge for them. Or not.

Apple is charging record prices in the modern computing era, and severely limiting upgrade or part replacement ability. Any extra cost is noteworthy.
 
The choice to underpower the OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock is beyond my comprehension. This could have been the best dock around, but the measly 60W of power will eventually deplete the battery of your MacBook Pro 15" if you're doing any sort of medium or heavy load (read professional) type of work. This could have been so good... now it's just not. Try again OWC.
 
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Yes, the Caldigit TS3. New orders don't ship til July, though.

Their website still says "Mid May 2017" next to pre-oder button.

http://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-3-dock/

The table at the bottom of page still have shipping as late Q1 2017. That is more than blown at this point. Wonder if the delays completely threw off the timing with the contract factories ( who had to move onto other clients with stuff that could ship) or that demand is unexpectedly that high (even after had readjusted order start times this Spring).
 
Their website still says "Mid May 2017" next to pre-oder button.

http://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-3-dock/

The table at the bottom of page still have shipping as late Q1 2017. That is more than blown at this point. Wonder if the delays completely threw off the timing with the contract factories ( who had to move onto other clients with stuff that could ship) or that demand is unexpectedly that high (even after had readjusted order start times this Spring).

You can see the July date in their US store. According to support (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/which-tb3-dock-for-your-15mbp.2028702/page-10#post-24564974) it's now Late-May for older preorders, June/July for new ones.
 
- devices with captive cables (e.g. I use an Apple LED Cinema Display at work, with captive MiniDP and USB-C). Note that this includes every USB-A memory stick in existence, keyboards, mice etc. OK, my main mouse can do bluetooth, but it charges by USB so if it dies I have a box of old mice that will tide me over. I've got a USB TV tuner dongle that I only use occasionally but isn't landfill just yet. I've got a Flirc USB-A IR receiver for my RasPI that you program by plugging into a Mac/PC.

- I've got various external USB devices. Some have USB-A sockets. Some have USB-B 2.0 sockets, Some have USB-B 3.0 sockets. Some have microUSB 2.0 sockets. Some have microUSB 3.0 sockets. I think I'm done with anything that has miniUSB - oh, but my iPad has Lightning and there are a couple of old iPods that I might want to use when I go somewhere I don't want to take my phone (anybody seen USB-C to 30 pin? Didn't think so) Thing is these all came with a whatever-to-USB-A cable so I have plenty of them and can leave them threaded behind desks, monitors etc. Even $10/cable soon adds up if you look at replacing a significant fraction of those.

- Last I looked, there was no usb-c to mini DisplayPort cable (and not a huge choice of dongles).

- In any case, I have other computers that I still use - a spare old laptop if my 'daily driver' fails, an old MacPro that is my last machine that will run fat binaries and certain ancient software should I need to refer back to some old projects, a RasPi, a HP home server for backup/filestore, a PC that I use for Linux and experimenting with Hackintosh... and all of these, surprise surprise, have USB-A 2.0 or 3.0 sockets. Being forced into a mixed economy of USB-C and USB-A would be a pain in the butt.

- one option I'm considering at the moment is whether an iMac for the desk + MacBook or non-TB MBP would be a better solution than a single do-it-all, high-end MBP. Guess what... current iMac has USB-A + TB2 (update definitely possibly maybe this year, or not), current MBP has USB-C/TB3 (and, on the non-TB only two of them, one of which may be needed for the charger - so some sort of multiport adapter is essential).


I do agree with the memory stick issue - but I am buying now has dual ends with the Type A and C. Doesn't help when someone give me one with stuff on it though.

usb-c to mini DisplayPort cable - £8 on eBay

Will be interesting to see what this "pro iMac" bring later this year.
 
You can see the July date in their US store. According to support (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/which-tb3-dock-for-your-15mbp.2028702/page-10#post-24564974) it's now Late-May for older preorders, June/July for new ones.

I saw that the store has the more refined updated data. But if the "Mid May" has now become "late May" and the table is still has the old "late Q1 2017", then it is starting to teeter from a lure to draw folks into the pre-buy process ( maybe won't notice the "late Q1" and "Mid May looks quick when it is abound mid-April-to-mid-May time frame Mid" ) so that may just get over disappointment landing on the "oh now July ... you were too slow in pre-ordering" ) sales context.


However, for those who do look at the info. Well this was suppose to ship Q1. then blew to early May , then blew to Mid-may. So it is late-May even for folks who have been queued up for almost 6 months and now I'm at the end of the line in July which may slide to what............ August given that track record ?

Perhaps it is "well there is a longer line for this one than the other alternatives so maybe it is better" meme they might be playing on but fixing the static web page is just so much more straightforward communication with the potential customers. Can do that without covering up completely the timeline has been slipping ( e.g., "now late Q2 was late Q1 " )
 
OWC has let me know they have a fix for the hissing issue I noticed and it will be implemented on all shipping units.

We have had some reports / observations of the Dock emitting a very faint noise in certain circumstances. The component responsible for this has been identified and a solution that mitigates this issue has been implemented. All retail, production units shipped will include this implementation and not be subject to this emittance.

Of further note, if you have a unit which this noise has been observed - it is not cause for any concern, it is not a defect or defective component. Even the noise itself is exceptionally low decibel should it occur and observation of the noise is outside of typical Dock use cases. While we have taken the steps to eliminate it, this was done more to eliminate misunderstanding.
 
Latest I was told by OWC was that it is delayed in certification. No ship date estimated, so I would guess July is when we might see actual product. Interesting that all the reviews out there are based on uncertified product.
 
Latest I was told by OWC was that it is delayed in certification. No ship date estimated, so I would guess July is when we might see actual product. Interesting that all the reviews out there are based on uncertified product.

Delayed again? What a joke. And the fact that people have to contact them for a status update is ridiculous. Sadly, it seems everyone vendor is in the same boat. Sometimes being an early adopter sucks.
 
The reports of it being noisy and the sad confirmation that it is only 60 watts has me thinking of cancelling my order.
The 60 Watts limitation coupled with missing their release schedule for going on 5 months has me on the sidelines. What a mess. The problem is that, as bad as their rollout has been, this product at least promises functionality nearest to what should have been included in the latest MBP release, a display port, a memory card reader and at least 2 USB 3.1 type A ports. It is beyond me why, with the real need for this functionality, not to mention 10 hours of time on battery rather than the 3-4 i actually get, Apple didn't themselves develop an Apple branded docking station. They've gone from it just works to it kind of works.
 
Delayed again? What a joke. And the fact that people have to contact them for a status update is ridiculous. Sadly, it seems everyone vendor is in the same boat. Sometimes being an early adopter sucks.

The Elgato one is shipping June 6. My Caldigit is supposed to ship in the next two weeks.
 
Anyone hear of any updates on shipping? I cancelled my preorder with BHphoto for the Caldigit and decided to go with the OWC because of more/better (for me) port options at same cost. I have a 15" MBP but am using two LG 5K monitors so presumably the full power charging can come from the one plugged directly into the notebook, so the 60w power from the OWC may be less of a problem, I hope...
 
I've asked a couple of times in recent weeks, but haven't heard back unfortunately.
 
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