Yes, Apple could easily add a 3rd party chip for lots of things.
It's obvious Steve Jobs has made a command decision to save money and hope no one will notice and/or Apple is just totally concentrating on the iPhone/iPad/iPod platforms.
Meanwhile Apple is one of the richest companies in the world and Steve Jobs is one of the richest men in the world.
It reminds me of an old quote my Dad used to say...
"You don't get rich by spending lots of money."
Of course Dad didn't have a BILLION DOLLARS in the bank like Apple though.
It kind of amazes me that while Apple has continually neglected the Mac platform with top notch graphics cards, BluRay, and now USB 3.0, and is restricting 3rd party companies on certain accessories, Mac sales continue to remain very strong.
For the record, the lion's share of Steve Job's wealth comes from his Disney holdings.
He bought the The Graphics Group for $10 million from Lucasfilms and renamed it Pixar. At first, Pixar sold a line of animation computers before they started creating animated shorts, they then moved on to some very successful feature films. Pixar was bought out by Disney in a stock transaction, and in the process Steve Jobs became the largest DIS shareholder (he holds more shares than Eisner).
But none of that means anything to Apple shareholders. His job is still to run Apple in a way that gets a decent return on investment to AAPL shareholders.
The reality is that you don't build an MBA (or even 13" MBP) by adding a bunch of additional chips or chipsets to what is already a tiny mobo. Which is the same reason those laptops don't have i3 or i5 processors, because suitable integrated graphics chips aren't available from Intel for the newer Arrandale processors, where Nvidia 320M integrated graphics and a C2D processor can actually get better overall performance.
Didn't your dad ever tell you life was full of tradeoffs?
😛
There is little evidence that USB 3.0 has that problem if use a modern multicore computer that isn't in the Atom/ARM market place. It was not the CPU that was the major issue. It was the lack of bandwidth to ship the low latency isochronous data traffic over.
USB 3.0 doesn't necessarily have that problem. (if force a revert to USB 2.0 circuitry it will.... but then you are strictly running USB 2.0 at that point. )
a. The SuperSpeed bus is a completely different set of wires. So if you plug in some pokey USB 1.1 keyboard and a chatty USB 2.0 web camera it has no impact at all on the SuperSpeed channel. (you might get very minor impact since share same PCI-e connection but that isn't likely to be a significant issue). Seperate sub-controllers run each different set of wires independently for the most part (some minor connection/metadata issues).
b. The SuperSpeed bus is duplex ( so that device and computer talk at same time). Again completely diffferent protocol than USB 2.0 where the computer's hub has to request each device to speak-only-when-spoken to.
If computer doesn't ask audio device for data updates often enough may loose data. Doesn't happen on SuperSpeed.
c. The bandwidth that can be reserved for isoschronous traffic is larger. Audio data (unless bound numerous tracks together ) isn't that much larger now than 3-4 years ago. That means more bandwidth than had before. Meaning less drop outs. Meaning cleaner data.
d. The increase in data traffic doesn't need anywhere near a 1:1 increase in CPU consumption. (in part because of b but also other factors incorporated into the new design. )
The primarily high end audio complaint left is when you stretch FW out to maximum distance ( dozens of meters ). LP will get much more traction there than USB 3.0 will.
The other self inflicted problem is where overload the computer's CPU generating audio (why? DSPs are more effective, but prehaps strapped for cash ) and run some other software component at 90+% CPU utiliztaion levels while at same time capture some large music data stream. Besides if pressing keys and fiddling trackpad on the computer you are generating USB traffic (and CPU overhead ) too. The duration of the CPU overhead is also a major contributor. Again since faster the duration is shorter ( if isoloate SuperSpeed channel to primarily just audio capture. )
If plug a USB 3.0 capable audio device into a USB 2.0 socket ... then yeah you will get the same old USB 2.0 problems. However, if plug a USB 3.0 device into a USB 3.0 socket you get a new, not saddled with dubious design constraints and not limited by backward compatibiliy network between the two devices. It is brand new game. Trotting out the old USB 2.0 litany of complaints about the new 3.0 is lame.
What
ARE you talking about? The problem with USB 2.0 isn't the bus, the problem is that moving data around requires CPU cycles that would be better utilized doing analog-to-digital encoding. (Which FireWire solved by adding their own controller instead of stealing cycles from the CPU.)
Do you actually use this stuff? Honestly, it sounds to me as if you know
nothing about digital recording. If that's the case, why play off as though you are some kind of expert?
🙄
I've not seen a USB 3.0 audio interface yet. Not from the big players. Not from the niche market. I know that the USB 2.0 devices (which is all we have at this point outside FireWire audio interfaces) aren't going to be "saved" by a USB 3.0 port operating in a backwardly compatible USB 2.0 mode.
Which only points out how immature USB 3.0 is, except maybe as a data storage topology. Which is exactly where we came in...
(SHEESH, some people's kids!)
