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Sonnet Announces Availability of Long-Delayed Echo 15+ Thunderbolt 2 Dock
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For a product that is ready for shipping it seems strange that the hand out poor renderings instead of real product photos. Even on their website there is only one real photo of the front and back.
Bit longer than that, even! I remember upgrading my Mac because of the promise of thunderbolt. It was supposed to have amazing docks, even the capability of an external graphics card. Yeah....a dream. The ONLY thing I use thunderbolt for now is a converter that cost me $100(!!!) that has one male thunderbolt end and a female USB 3.0 end. That's all it does. A single thunderbolt to USB 3.0 converter for my Mac Mini 2011, which doesn't have USB 3.0. Plugged into that is an 8-port powered USB 3.0 hub. That's the only use I've found for thunderbolt in all these years. It's a shame, really. What a waste of great technology if every peripheral for it (if it exists in the first place) is priced out of reason.
Bring the ultimate hub-dock for Mac:
4 Thunderbolt 3 ports.
8 USB 3.1 Type-C (reversible) ports.
2 SDXC reader supporting UHS-II maximum speed (312 Mbps; Bus Speed Default Speed/ High Speed/ UHS at
https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/bus_speed
4 FireWire 800 ports.
4 eSATA 3.2 ports.
2 HDMI 2 ports.
2 Gigabit Ethernet ports.
1 Audio In port (stereo).
1 Audio Out port (stereo)
4 Thunderbolt 3 ports.
8 USB 3.1 Type-C (reversible) ports.
2 SDXC reader supporting UHS-II maximum speed (312 Mbps; Bus Speed Default Speed/ High Speed/ UHS at
https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/bus_speed
4 FireWire 800 ports.
4 eSATA 3.2 ports.
2 HDMI 2 ports.
2 Gigabit Ethernet ports.
1 Audio In port (stereo).
1 Audio Out port (stereo)
You have to take into account that Thunderbolt 3 is right around the corner, so while it technically isn't obsolete TODAY, it will be in a very short time, unlike 5G that still, especially depending on your region, is anything but right around the corner.
Another aspect to look at is how long these sorts of devices usually are in use, so you very well may rock an iPhone 6s for 2 years from now and just slightly tip into 5G territory towards the end of those 2 years, meanwhile, TB3, as I said, will be available soon, so if you're in the market for a new Mac then, it'll be obsolete.
Any Mac that ships with Thunderbolt 2 by then, of course, will have a sign of obsoleteness as well, as harsh as it sounds, but Apple is using obsolete technology in various cases, not just when they don't update a Mac Pro quickly enough (*cough* it's 2 years again now, but the machine is sold by Apple at 2013 prices...), but also when they didn't include, albeit possible, USB 3 or at least BT LE in late-11 iMacs, just as an example.
Obsolete technology in new products isn't anything new, it happens with many many more technologies and companies and although I don't like it, I did not mean to single out Sonnet.
Just because it is INDEED obsolete then, doesn't mean that someone won't have a use for it, if you thought my train of thought was headed that direction.
I just find that it's a bad timing to release this piece of device instead of waiting a little bit and shipping with TB3 or TB3 right away if possible.
Glassed Silver:mac
I recall part of the delay for the release of this dock was the company's decision to wait for TB2 as the original project would have used TB1. Waiting for the next implementation would push it off into the future again.
You have to remember that Sonnet has been waiting for (literally) years. I remember when their first proposed dock was going to have TB 1. They delayed it when they heard that TB 2 was coming. Well we finally have the TB 2 dock -- right before TB 3 is to be released. They could have waited for TB 3, but then probably would have heard that USB-C was going to take over. Then they'd delay the release even further while they went back to the drawing board. At some point they needed to release it. For many people, TB 2 will be speedy enough. It's a shame that a firmware update can't make the device future-proof. I guess that's life for a vendor in the hi-tech industry.
They've waites too long. I was in the market for that dock, but couldn't wait a year, or two. So now I have it all in separate bits. USB 3 Hub, FW800 adapter, Superdrive and a bunch of external HDDs in USB and Firewire flavors. I could have replaced most of them with a neat dock. But waitojg for two years is not something you can ask of your customers today. I'm sure they lost a huge chunk of their potential market to the competitiok.
OK - fine - that makes sense. It wouldn't work if you plug the DP to HDMI adapter directly into the dock BTW - you need at least one other TB device in the chain before the second display. Of course, it wouldn't work at all if there wasn't a HDMI on the dock, which counts against the Sonnet.
If I knew 5G was coming to my area in the next 6-12 months then, no, I wouldn't buy an iPhone 6s just now unless I'd just lost/broken my phone. I do think there's a strong chance of me upgrading to a Mac with TB3 in the next 6-12 months. Actually, I'm now waiting on Apple to go to TB3 before upgrading: not because I desperately need TB3 now, but because I want something that is going to stay useful for years (TB3 includes USB-C and, even if TB3 doesn't take off, I'm fairly sure USB-C will).
I call this a miss, too. Too expensive for not enough ports, plus it's already outdated by the recently released (or imminent release of) new USB and Thunderbolt versions. It's cool that it houses drives, but a dock should be about the ports. It's like they focused nowhere appropriate and used a scattershot approach in feature inclusion.
I don't understand why so many of these things cost so much with so few ports. USB hubs themselves come with too few ports and poor arrangements. My one 7-port USB hub is problematic (can prevent some motherboards booting while attached) and is space-saving and fancy, where I'd prefer ergonomic (it has a metal attachment to make it sit upright so you can use it as a tiny square picture frame, but doesn't lay flat while weighed down with USB plugs; WTF kind of relevance to computing is that?).
Having a music studio setup means I need a lot more ports to avoid swapping plugs a lot. I went looking for a rack mountable USB hub and found the same problem. Not enough people buying them to lower the costs of manufacturing, I presume.
Of course, none of this hub and daisy chain tech works as reliably as it should anyway (most high end devices prefer being on their own root USB bus, while most FireWire, and I presume thunderbolt, devices hate daisy chaining and some even leave off the second port to prevent it being anything but the only/last device in a chain). Then there's Microsoft's execution of USB in Windows where it requires each USB socket to have its own driver installation. Total idiocy defeating the whole point of USB.
We are still a long way away from a unified and simplified computer connections standard.
I don't understand why so many of these things cost so much with so few ports. USB hubs themselves come with too few ports and poor arrangements. My one 7-port USB hub is problematic (can prevent some motherboards booting while attached) and is space-saving and fancy, where I'd prefer ergonomic (it has a metal attachment to make it sit upright so you can use it as a tiny square picture frame, but doesn't lay flat while weighed down with USB plugs; WTF kind of relevance to computing is that?).
Having a music studio setup means I need a lot more ports to avoid swapping plugs a lot. I went looking for a rack mountable USB hub and found the same problem. Not enough people buying them to lower the costs of manufacturing, I presume.
Of course, none of this hub and daisy chain tech works as reliably as it should anyway (most high end devices prefer being on their own root USB bus, while most FireWire, and I presume thunderbolt, devices hate daisy chaining and some even leave off the second port to prevent it being anything but the only/last device in a chain). Then there's Microsoft's execution of USB in Windows where it requires each USB socket to have its own driver installation. Total idiocy defeating the whole point of USB.
We are still a long way away from a unified and simplified computer connections standard.
By that standard all Macs available today are nearly obsolete because TB 3 peripherals are just around the corner.
From my experience, FW daisy-chaining is much more reliable than USB hubs. It sometimes feels like every second person has or had some problems with USB hubs.
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They're computers: of course they're nearly obsolete.
Seriously, "obsolete" isn't the best word, but now certainly isn't the best time to upgrade your Mac unless you have a pressing need - this year's releases have mainly been stopgap processor bumps and (we have to assume) more significant design changes, including USB-C and TB 3, are likely to appear next year when the full Skylake range is available.
Likewise with this dock: nobody could reasonably expect Sonnet to have started shipping a TB3 dock today - its just a bit late in the lifecycle of TB2 (and USB 3.0) to be launching a new, premium-priced, TB2 & USB3.0 dock with 2014 specifications.
Remember, TB3 is also USB-C and we are starting to see USB-C stuff emerging now.
There are people upgrading to TB Mac every day, but by being late in the lifecycle (I think the best and non-sensational description of the situation), Sonnet missed the vast majority of potential customers of TB docks to the all the other TB docks that came before it.
And the transition to TB 3 and USB-C is much bigger than the one from TB 1 to TB 2 or from USB 3.0 to 3.1 as it is not just a faster standard that is completely backward compatible and plug-wise interchangeable. It is a faster speed plus different plugs plus different capabilities (charging, using USB-C for things that used to be TB-only, eg, video signal). I am really curious how this whole situation will shake out and what physical connectors (with which features) Macs will have in one or two years from now.
I couldn't agree more. I don't know what took them so long. The original ship date was well over a year ago. I found other solutions.
Haha is that a firewire port on the back of that thing?
But seriously, a sturdy dock packed with features and a terabyte of solid state storage for a thousand bucks isn't bad at all.
But seriously, a sturdy dock packed with features and a terabyte of solid state storage for a thousand bucks isn't bad at all.
The changes will happen when Kaby Lake (Skylake v2.0) is available after the Q2/2016 because Kaby Lake supports USB 3.1 Gen. 2 (10 GBit/s) and TB3 (40 GBit/s) without additional chips.
'Obsolete' does not mean what you think it means.You have to take into account that Thunderbolt 3 is right around the corner, so while it technically isn't obsolete TODAY, it will be in a very short time, unlike 5G that still, especially depending on your region, is anything but right around the corner.
Another aspect to look at is how long these sorts of devices usually are in use, so you very well may rock an iPhone 6s for 2 years from now and just slightly tip into 5G territory towards the end of those 2 years, meanwhile, TB3, as I said, will be available soon, so if you're in the market for a new Mac then, it'll be obsolete.
Any Mac that ships with Thunderbolt 2 by then, of course, will have a sign of obsoleteness as well, as harsh as it sounds, but Apple is using obsolete technology in various cases, not just when they don't update a Mac Pro quickly enough (*cough* it's 2 years again now, but the machine is sold by Apple at 2013 prices...), but also when they didn't include, albeit possible, USB 3 or at least BT LE in late-11 iMacs, just as an example.
Obsolete technology in new products isn't anything new, it happens with many many more technologies and companies and although I don't like it, I did not mean to single out Sonnet.
Just because it is INDEED obsolete then, doesn't mean that someone won't have a use for it, if you thought my train of thought was headed that direction.
I just find that it's a bad timing to release this piece of device instead of waiting a little bit and shipping with TB3 or TB3 right away if possible.
Glassed Silver:mac
Once a technology is no longer usable, it is obsolete. I have a film scanner for APS film. It has a 9-pin serial port and even if you have an older computer with the right port, its drivers required Windows 98, and wouldn't install on anything newer, such as Windows ME or XP. That is obsolete.
Simply having tech that is not the latest doesn't meet the criteria for obsolescence. If it still works with the majority of systems that it was intended to work with, it isn't obsolete.
Oh good, someone else that gets it. I though I was alone in this line of thought. By everyone else's idea of obsolescence this product is already doomed because it has esata and FW800 built in!