Except an antiglare screen option is still available on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, and both the 13 and 15-inch MBP's still come with 8x slot-loading SuperDrives, built in GbE, FireWire 800, SDXC card readers with UHS-I support, as well as USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt ports. Apple, as well as many other vendors, offer external USB ODD's if you actually need one. CD's and DVD's really have gone the way of the floppy disk though. I can download a full DVD-9 in under 25 minutes with my current Internet service, which is only twice as long as it would take to read it from an 8x drive.
Apple continues to offer the best wireless solutions of any brand across the board (802.11a/b/g/n WiFi with 3x3 MIMO and Bluetooth 4.0), their displays are better quality (higher resolutions, more IPS panels than other vendors, very good factory calibration), they have the best multi-touch trackpads in the industry, their keyboards are quite decent, battery life is excellent, the unibody chassis is top notch. I get that dongles are kinda BS, but there really is nothing you can't do with the new MBPR that you could with the old one as long as you're willing to shell out for a few external accessories.
Encouraging to buy old models doesn't have bright future.
Pretty comical is also suggesting that a pro should buy TN screen for visual work in 2013.
Can you tell why Apple can't put IPS screen and two mass storages in one laptop? Why retina screen can't be anti-glare? Is the answer again to streamline the production to get bigger profits, that doesn't transfer to better products for pros?
I agree that cd & dvd are old tech, but they are widely used, just like fm-radio and OTA television signal. And I use happily external bus powered bd-burner with both my laptop and desktop. Just like we don't talk about firewire here, if we are talking about ODD, we should talk about blu-ray. Last year over 500 million bd-movies were sold in North America and you can't get that quality to your home in any other way. Next step will be bd-xl2 with 4k and this will come with much bigger probability than TB2. If all content that is now purchased/rented in physical copies, would be downloaded/streamed, you wouldn't be able to download 9 GBs in half an hour. Infrastructure would be choked.
Nevertheless I find it tragicomedial that with most advanced "pro" model from Apple, you can't connect 3 basic things (GbE, fw, dp) with this amazing TB. You need help from usb3 and after this you have just one usb port left, which lead instantly to need for usb3 hub and then you are in this problem: which usb3 hubs work with mac...
Mac desktops are even bigger problem for pro use, but I guess when pros ditch Apple's software they can also ditch hardware at the same time...
Neverthess it is quite strange that in every other aspect people here and there say that Apple can't focus on pros, since the market is so small, but when ever TB is mentioned, suddenly it's there only because Apple wants to focus on pro market.
Actually, the fastest, cheapest SxS card reader available is the Sonnet Echo Pro ExpressCard/34 Thunderbolt Adapter, which also happens to be bus powered. You could also just use SDXC cards in an ExpressCard adapter instead of paying insane amounts of money for SxS cards, and then pop them in the SDXC card reader built in to all current Macs.
You can't call that Echo Pro very price efficient way, at least when comparing the situation before, when reader was included in the price of laptop. Using sdxc would be good idea, but I don't buy the cards for my workplace...
Using adapters won't be possible in the future for SRMemory or AXSM.
Except that Thunderbolt allows Apple to make much more capable PCs in very small form factors, which is in turn allowing them to continue to increase Mac sales while the rest of the industry is experiencing a contraction, thereby boosting their market share, and their profit share, which was already higher than that of any other PC manufacturer by a considerable margin.
For many professionals, putting small form factor over functionality (also cooling, which leads to noise) is negative development. And there's no proof that Apple's bigger profits return in better computers for professionals. Especially when more than 90% of profits come from iOS devices...
And why would Apple possibly update the ATD just to add USB 3.0? The next revision will most likely inherit the design of the new iMacs with laminated cover glass to reduce reflections, and certainly fix the USB audio issues of the original model. I would also expect Intel to produce a Redwood Ridge Thunderbolt controller for release in Q2 of this year that has two DisplayPort sink protocol adapters so that a 2nd display can be connected directly to an ATD. And then perhaps we'll see USB 3.0 make an appearance, however Apple has yet to implement a third party USB 3.0 solution in any of their devices.
I never said "just usb3". Of course they bundle updates together to achieve bigger and longer volumes. Nice that Redwood chips corrects the design flaw that shouldn't exist from day one.
Btw, new glass can reduce the brightness of reflections, but they are still annoyingly sharp, so I don't feel much improvement in that sence. Maybe, for me, if the reflections remain sharp, they should be dimmed about 99% not to be annoying. Very light matte coating woulf blur the reflections enough for me and this would be vety easy to do, like Apple did with old ACDs.
No, SuperSpeed USB is just not cut out for uncompressed video. And Apple's product stack did not allow them to introduce USB 3.0 before Intel integrated it into their chipsets.
Most of us don't need uncompressed video.
And usb3 handles hd-sdi(1.4Gbps) well enough.
All other computer manufacturers had no problem with their product stacks.
Light Peak was designed around 4x 10 Gbit/s channels. That is precisely what Thunderbolt is. It has the ability to scale in the future to higher speeds. 20 Gbit/s channels are coming in 2014, and will most likely use the same copper connectors it uses today combined with new active copper cables. The next step, to 40 Gbit/s channels, will probably see a transition to optical transceivers and cables. 100 Gbit/s per channel will require new magic, seeing as it cannot be done yet. There is no dead end or trouble ahead for Thunderbolt's evolution.
I wouldn't bet on 20Gbps in 2014 macs. Maybe there's tech, but cost might be too much. Going to optical 40Gb will be major PITA for cost effectiness. If first generations of LP would have lowered the cost of optical interconnect, this wouldn't be so hard.
No. All the intermediate links in a Thunderbolt chain provide two non-blocking, full-duplex channels. It's a switched fabric architecture that provides point-to-point connectivity.
Intermediate links doesn't change that overall bandwidth from/to computer is just one link's max bandwidth.
Why would you not want to be able to connect your MacBook to your SAN when you're at your workplace? Try dimming the lights. It eliminates the reflections and creates a nice ambiance. Why a lot of beachballs?
You want me to count all reasons why especially in professional enviroments, desktop computers are preferred for desktop computers more than laptops?
I surely don't know why there's beacballs. Maybe it's about TB or FC drivers or just how badly FCP7 behaves in new iMac with ML. Or just the switch to fullHD video. Sadly I can't make the interior designs of those workplaces.
Uh, what? Have you actually ever tried to install and use AMD's Catalyst Control Center on a PC? I'll take Apple's RADEON HD drivers any day of the week over that crap. The NVIDIA ones also seem just fine to me. What possible complaint do you have with Mac USB drivers? Is it that Apple's SuperSpeed USB driver is considerably faster than the one built into Windows 8? HDMI support is just an aspect of the GPU driver. And perhaps you forgot that Apple has the best GPU switching of any platform currently available.
Nevertheless Apple has problems now with both hdmi and usb3 drivers. They should be the most less likely manufacturer in the world to have this kind of issues, but they do have these issues. I'd say this is all the time eating the image that very limited amount of models and having all strings (hard and software) leads to more stable system. Somehow this has been more and more not so. Maybe they just don't care so much about mac ecosystem.
I was trying to emphasize the difference between a hub and a switch. A hub is a simple multi-port repeater which does not allow full-duplex communication. A switch creates a virtual point-to-point or point-to-multi-point link between connected nodes and supports full-duplex transmission. Thunderbolt switches already exist; Thunderbolt hubs would be hilarious to watch but not very useful. The number of collisions per second could be just staggering.
Where are those TB-switches?
