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Thunderbolt 3 meets USB 3 type C

thunderbolt is nice but too expensive. Unless they can get thunderbolt devices to drop in price it will never be mainstream. usb c is not as powerful but its way more practical. We are already seeing usb c hubs with charging for 20 dollars.
 
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Acorn said:
thunderbolt is nice but too expensive. Unless they can get thunderbolt devices to drop in price it will never be mainstream. usb c is not as powerful but its way more practical. We are already seeing usb c hubs with charging for 20 dollars.
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TB is not meant to be mainstream. It's a high end professional interface.
USB3 is more than enough for the lambda user, but the possibilities with TB are way beyond USB.
 
This sets the stage for something many of us have wanted for a long time.....a new Thunderbolt Display. Machines with TB2 could drive it at 4K and folks who will be getting new machines with TB3 can drive it at 5K. I wonder if Apple will have a separate hardware oriented event in the fall for the intro of Alpine Ridge as part of the Skylake rollout.
 
MCAsan said:
This sets the stage for something many of us have wanted for a long time.....a new Thunderbolt Display. Machines with TB2 could drive it at 4K and folks who will be getting new machines with TB3 can drive it at 5K. I wonder if Apple will have a separate hardware oriented event in the fall for the intro of Alpine Ridge as part of the Skylake rollout.
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There is so many good displays around, I don't think an apple display is needed anymore. (I have 3 apple displays). They used to be very good and competitive, but now, you can get excellent displays from dell, nec, etc...
 
One thing worth noting, everyone assumes Apple is waiting on a 1 cable solution for a 5k external display. A 5k display still requires a video card that can output 2 displayport 1.2 streams, or a single displayport 1.3 stream. No displayport 1.3 video cards exist and it looks like it won't make it into this GPU generation. However, 1 thunderbolt 3 cable could carry 2 displayport 1.2 streams, making a 1 cable 5k display possible.
 
Stacc said:
... However, 1 thunderbolt 3 cable could carry 2 displayport 1.2 streams, making a 1 cable 5k display possible.
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You are assuming that the TB controller has two "offload" ports back into a single system. The original TB controllers had two DP v1.1a inputs but only one "offload" port. That is in part why can't hang a DP monitor off the back of the TB Display docking station. The one "offload" port is being used to send the signal inside so there is nothing to loop back and pass through to the other port in legacy mode.

For TB v2 it looks like Intel dropped down to just one DP v1.2 input and one output. It counted on the MST inside of a single v1.2 steam to deal with multiple signals. ( still really didn't get many solutions where devices which consumed DP v1.2 locally could also concurrently deal with a legacy pass through on the 'other' port. ).

TB v3 looks like "back to the future" in which crept back to two DP inputs ( this time at v1.2), but still very unclear will be able to offload two. There is a decent chance it is supported (since not moving to cover DP v1.3 this generation), but still will be stuck with TB display not being able to deal with a DP device on pass through mode ( as if there was much bandwidth left after pumping 5K of display bits through the cable ).

IMHO what Apple really needs is a 24" Retina display (which can be done with 4K like resolutions) that is far more affordable than what they will likely target at 5K display at. That could be done with TB v2.

Apple radically tweaked the iMac design in 2012 .... it is about time ( 3-5 year window ) for a major revamp. That is probably on a higher priority list than any TB Display docking station revamp. The latter is largely just a gutted iMac with some minor tweaks.
 
dollystereo said:
There is so many good displays around, I don't think an apple display is needed anymore. (I have 3 apple displays). They used to be very good and competitive, but now, you can get excellent displays from dell, nec, etc...
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But none have an integrated Thunderbolt dock and recharging of MacBooks. Nothing still takes the complete place of the old Thunderbolt Display. Indeed that product is now very long in the tooth.
 
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