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ThunderBolt Products Starting to Roll Out at NAB
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Unlikely. USB still retains advantages in ubiquity, cost and far more devices supported per connection (128 vs 16). I would see WiFi and Bluetooth as bigger USB competitors.
I want to see a Thunderbolt dock.
Thunderbolt in on one side.
On the other side, USB, eSATA, Firewire 800, Displayport out (for monitors), audio in/out, gigabit ethernet. Maybe even have space inside for an internal hard drive or two.
This way, when you get home and want to use your laptop at your desk with external monitor, keyboard, etc.. just plug in two cables. Thunderbolt and power.
This would be so awesome, and would pretty much eliminate the need for many of us to have a desktop machine.
Thunderbolt in on one side.
On the other side, USB, eSATA, Firewire 800, Displayport out (for monitors), audio in/out, gigabit ethernet. Maybe even have space inside for an internal hard drive or two.
This way, when you get home and want to use your laptop at your desk with external monitor, keyboard, etc.. just plug in two cables. Thunderbolt and power.
This would be so awesome, and would pretty much eliminate the need for many of us to have a desktop machine.
The people who continually repeat, "There are no Thunderbolt devices" will be crushed, I'm sure. 
Not sure if I would consider "AJA, BlackMagic, and Promise" to be "industry demand." I'll give ya Promise.
I would think having names like Western Digital, Sony, HP, Maxtor, Iomega, and Seagate a lot more proof that TB is being adopted. USB 3.0 has been gaining momentum by leaps and bounds over the past year.
I have a feeling TB is going to be the next Firewire: sure, it works, but USB is so much more dominant at basically the same speeds. But I don't really care at the end of the day...just something much much faster than USB 2.0 for my hundreds of gigs of data that I copy/move around a bit.
And yes, for the true true true speed fans that need the best of the best of the best in their profession...sure, buy what you need.
I'll give ya Promise.I would think having names like Western Digital, Sony, HP, Maxtor, Iomega, and Seagate a lot more proof that TB is being adopted. USB 3.0 has been gaining momentum by leaps and bounds over the past year.
I have a feeling TB is going to be the next Firewire: sure, it works, but USB is so much more dominant at basically the same speeds. But I don't really care at the end of the day...just something much much faster than USB 2.0 for my hundreds of gigs of data that I copy/move around a bit.
And yes, for the true true true speed fans that need the best of the best of the best in their profession...sure, buy what you need.
nope...USB is gonna be here longer than the floppy disk. USB's already got 15+ years under it's belt. Floppy disk essentially was here from 1978-2000 for the personal computer market. Roughly. 22 years.
Although USB 3.0 is certainly welcome for the faster speeds, it is really not needed for some devices like keyboards, mice, and printers. Again, everyone loves speed, but going to 3.0 is not a need for many devices. Not to mention that going to 3.0 is backwards compatible so there is far far less risk for someone to invest in 3.0 than to move to TB.
My bet is USB will be here easily until 2025...but of course other technologies may limit USB's importance (and thus USB may be for the basic stuff like mouse, keyboards, etc)
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TB at this stage will only be useful to a few people.
IT's really down the road when SSDs get bigger and cheaper and when TB is put into a MBA (without any other ports) that it will matter much more.
Right now? It's ahead of its time especially if there is a tb tax involved.
IT's really down the road when SSDs get bigger and cheaper and when TB is put into a MBA (without any other ports) that it will matter much more.
Right now? It's ahead of its time especially if there is a tb tax involved.
This couldn't be further from the truth. TB is so much more versatile than USB can really ever be with tons more speed
Firewire 800 isn't fast enough to saturate multi-drive RAIDs, either.
I'm really looking forward to Mac minis with Thunderbolt. Hook them up to some nice 4+ drive external RAIDs with Thunderbolt and I can replace a bunch of aging Xserves and PowerMac G5 servers with much smaller and much faster replacements.
For video/digital cinema post & production, which NAB is all about, AJA and Blackmagic are very much major players.Not sure if I would consider "AJA, BlackMagic, and Promise" to be "industry demand."
Lethal
NAB Discussion Comment
Evidently not too many folks watched all the segments from yesterday's post about FCP in one of the NAB discussions. Towards the end of that discussion, the biz dev guy from 3ality described a demo at Intel he attended. Recalling (a little fuzzy on this) he said Intel had set up a processor in one location, and the processors memory in another location ONE MILE DISTANT connected by ThBolt. They then ran some cpu/memory intensive demo. He was blow away that it ran super fast. Try doing that with USB.
All I can say is, "Thank God." Near term I get rid of tons of cables -- I have seven attached to my MBP on my desktop right now (external monitor, FW800 for external drive, Ethernet, FW400 for scanner, USB for keyboard, USB for printer, and audio out to external speakers). Long-term it is possible Thunderbolt will enable changes we can't envision right now.
My only issue is the name "Thunderbolt" and the weird lightening bolt (that to date has always meant "touch this an you die from electrocution"). Light Peak was nearly perfect IMHO. Oh well, I'm guessing some committee group came up with this.
Evidently not too many folks watched all the segments from yesterday's post about FCP in one of the NAB discussions. Towards the end of that discussion, the biz dev guy from 3ality described a demo at Intel he attended. Recalling (a little fuzzy on this) he said Intel had set up a processor in one location, and the processors memory in another location ONE MILE DISTANT connected by ThBolt. They then ran some cpu/memory intensive demo. He was blow away that it ran super fast. Try doing that with USB.
All I can say is, "Thank God." Near term I get rid of tons of cables -- I have seven attached to my MBP on my desktop right now (external monitor, FW800 for external drive, Ethernet, FW400 for scanner, USB for keyboard, USB for printer, and audio out to external speakers). Long-term it is possible Thunderbolt will enable changes we can't envision right now.
My only issue is the name "Thunderbolt" and the weird lightening bolt (that to date has always meant "touch this an you die from electrocution"). Light Peak was nearly perfect IMHO. Oh well, I'm guessing some committee group came up with this.
Forgive my ignorance, but wasn't "Light Peak" supposed to be implemented via fiber optics for internal implementation? I always gathered from the last three years of research that "Light Peak" would become a universal system controller, replacing the need for multiple controllers such as FireWire, USB, etc as it would control components from internal devices such as HDD's to external devices such as iDevices, displays and HDD's. This would allow for less parts, faster speeds (although current HDD's may not benefit due to speed limitations, unlike SSD's) and smaller/lighter forms for portables.
I've seen what TB can do and it's great. But what I'm saying is that it will be HARD for TB to step into a USB-dominated computer industry and just kill USB altogether from all angles. Will TB be faster than USB 3.0?...in real world use by 90% of the consumers/prosumers out there? Maybe. Maybe not. It's like asking Bluray to come in and just dominate the DVD market...it's been trying and 3+ years BluRay is doing well, but the average Joe understands he needs to re-purchase all this movies as well as purchase a hi-def tv and stereo receiver to take advantage of all the features of Bluray (I love Bluray, by the way). It's time, money, and not everyone sees the value or HAS A NEED for that value.
Will people throw out all their USB devices and twiddle their thumbs waiting for TB devices other than hard drives (cameras, printers, video cams, keyboards, mice, flash keys,)? No. Of course not.
Speed vs. Speed is 1 argument...versatility is another. But again, what I'm really saying is to look around you and ask yourself if the world is just going to dump USB technology for TB? Nope. TB will likely coincide with USB 3.0 just like eSATA and Firewire.
We'll see in a few years where we are.
First we are seeing pro solutions, then we'll see TB adapters for USB3 pop up... then as TB fitted computers reach a large enough number (this fall?), we'll see manufacturers adding support to ext enclosures and drives.
Imagine RAIDed SSDs...
Imagine RAIDed SSDs...
My issue with USB has always been that it goes through the CPU. At the speeds of USB 3.0, this could really bite performance.
How are you going to reduce the number of cables? It seems like you would still need the same number of cables.
if by "internal" you mean "inside the box," that seems unlikely. The main benefit of fiber optics is over distances greater than those inside a PC. Signals on PCB's travel at something like 25% of the speed of light (depending on dielectric), which may seem slow, but is very speedy compared to the long cables used to connect PCs to external peripherals.
Ah, gotcha. Guess I misread/misunderstood the info. So it's truly meant for peripheral devices and will not replace internal components. For some reason I thought it was a universal (internal/external) system. Oh well.
Still bummed there will not be a "Light Peak" PCIe for Mac Pro's.
Looking forward to hard drives with this connector.
I bought two 2TB drives for my imovie library. I use one as a backup clone. I felt at the time I bought these that I was finally set. All movies on one drive for less than $100 (each). I see now that I will have an upgrade in a few years for speed purposes. By then perhaps 4TB or greater drives will be common and cheap.
The backup process will be a lot faster.
The other game changer with these drives will come with time machine backups. Right now the speed improvement by direct connection is not great enough to forgo the ease of wireless backups. Well if your hard drive changes 200gb content each day that might not be the case.
But when the thunderbolt drives come around, perhaps the speed advantage will be so great that people will opt for plugging their drives in directly once a day to backup rather than use wireless backups.
I bought two 2TB drives for my imovie library. I use one as a backup clone. I felt at the time I bought these that I was finally set. All movies on one drive for less than $100 (each). I see now that I will have an upgrade in a few years for speed purposes. By then perhaps 4TB or greater drives will be common and cheap.
The backup process will be a lot faster.
The other game changer with these drives will come with time machine backups. Right now the speed improvement by direct connection is not great enough to forgo the ease of wireless backups. Well if your hard drive changes 200gb content each day that might not be the case.
But when the thunderbolt drives come around, perhaps the speed advantage will be so great that people will opt for plugging their drives in directly once a day to backup rather than use wireless backups.
I agree. USB isn't going anywhere. The thing that really gets me excited about TB is what other's have said: The ability to have a hub of some sort coming from one TB connection and at the other end having let's say a USB, FW, DP, Audio, and Ethernet. The ability to do things like that is what makes TB really stand out a something much better than USB has the capabilities to do.
reducing the number of cables connected to his computer is what he would be doing. Just one TB could possibly handle all of the cables through a hub.