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ThunderBolt Products Starting to Roll Out at NAB

Tech198 said:
Usually, when a new technology comes out from Apple like Thunderbolt, (mini display port in look a like), I usually think "Why would other "non" Apple manufactures like WD, Promise etc... adopt Thunderbolt? as USB 3.0 or eSATA is their bracket... where as Apple likes to keep to themselves only tailoring to their own devices (eg. using WDS (or extenting wireless via Airport Express), for example. is not possible unless you have Time Capsule (Apple) )

I guess I was wrong when I saw this one on MacRumors.
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The major difference between TB and FW adoption is that FW was 100% Apple whereas TB was envisioned by Apple and then handed off to Intel for development and implementation.

Since Intel is a major supplier of MBs to PC box manufacturers it can more easily push TB than Apple could FW. Moreover USB 3 is an Intel creation too so it has even greater power to play puppet master.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
The major difference between TB and FW adoption is that FW was 100% Apple whereas TB was envisioned by Apple and then handed off to Intel for development and implementation.

Since Intel is a major supplier of MBs to PC box manufacturers it can more easily push TB than Apple could FW. Moreover USB 3 is an Intel creation too so it has even greater power to play puppet master.
Click to expand...

A dumb question (probably?):

I am not a video expert; not a music producer; not a sound engineer; no relation with servers, whatsoever.
So from that perspective, what is in store for me with respect to thunderbold?

- A normal consumer

I am not a strict normal consumer but I guess 99% of the world is.
 
dethmaShine said:
A dumb question (probably?):

I am not a video expert; not a music producer; not a sound engineer; no relation with servers, whatsoever.
So from that perspective, what is in store for me with respect to thunderbold?

- A normal consumer

I am not a strict normal consumer but I guess 99% of the world is.
Click to expand...

As a typical consumer, same as a prosumer, or pro -- speed. For example, backing up your iDevice, importing big megapixel photos and HD videos will be a whole lot quicker.

It will also make connections easier as TB can handled video, audio, and data in the same cable.



KnightWRX said:
Citation needed.
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It's amazing how people who hang out at a site dedicated to Apple don't really know anything about Apple R&D. This is so old news. But here for your edification:

http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm

Take hard note of the sentence: "Developed by Intel (under the code name Light Peak), and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple."
 
Chupa Chupa said:
As a typical consumer, same as a prosumer, or pro -- speed. For example, backing up your iDevice, importing big megapixel photos and HD videos will be a whole lot quicker.

It will also make connections easier as TB can handled video, audio, and data in the same cable.





It's amazing how people who hang out at a site dedicated to Apple don't really know anything about Apple R&D. This is so old news. But here for your edification:

http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm

Take hard note of the sentence: "Developed by Intel (under the code name Light Peak), and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple."
Click to expand...
Bolding mine... As a point of contention. Especially since iDevices don't even saturate the USB bus. I doubt Apple will spend more money to use faster Flash storage. Especially when (as of right now) Windows PCs don't have ThunderBolt.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
As a typical consumer, same as a prosumer, or pro -- speed. For example, backing up your iDevice, importing big megapixel photos and HD videos will be a whole lot quicker.

It will also make connections easier as TB can handled video, audio, and data in the same cable.
Click to expand...

When is that going to happen?

I am not against Thunderbolt; not at all. I would love to have that kind of features in my iMac and a new Macbook Air if possible.

But when are we going to see those devices which take full advantage of Thunderbolt/LightPeak ports.
For eg,

- would it be possible to backup and sync full 64GB full iPad in 20s?
At the moment, NO.
- would it be possible to backup a whole TB of harddrive on an iMac in < 15 min?
At the moment, NO.

The question is:

For a consumer/pro-sumer, is Thunderbolt redundant for now? Will it take another generation of macbook pro's to generate pro-consumer Tunderbolt supported products?

Thanks for answering.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
As a typical consumer, same as a prosumer, or pro -- speed. For example, backing up your iDevice, importing big megapixel photos and HD videos will be a whole lot quicker.

It will also make connections easier as TB can handled video, audio, and data in the same cable.





It's amazing how people who hang out at a site dedicated to Apple don't really know anything about Apple R&D. This is so old news. But here for your edification:

http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm

Take hard note of the sentence: "Developed by Intel (under the code name Light Peak), and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple."
Click to expand...

That doesn't say anything remotely similar to "envisioned by apple.". In fact, it suggests the opposite - intel thought of it, and Apple helped "bring it to market."
 
diamond.g said:
Bolding mine... As a point of contention. Especially since iDevices don't even saturate the USB bus. I doubt Apple will spend more money to use faster Flash storage. Especially when (as of right now) Windows PCs don't have ThunderBolt.
Click to expand...

Theoretically, but those of us that remember the iPod FW days know reality from benchmarks.

PlipPlop said:
TB will only start to get popular when its released on Windows.
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True, which is why Apple has a 1 year head start. Manufacturers will be jumping to get onto the Apple early adopter bandwagon b/c the profit margins will be fat. It will then spill over to the PC world.

dethmaShine said:
When is that going to happen? I am not against Thunderbolt; not at all. I would love to have that kind of features in my iMac and a new Macbook Air if possible.

But when are we going to see those devices which take full advantage of Thunderbolt/LightPeak ports.
For eg,

- would it be possible to backup and sync full 64GB full iPad in 20s?
At the moment, NO.
- would it be possible to backup a whole TB of harddrive on an iMac in < 15 min?
At the moment, NO.

The question is:

For a consumer/pro-sumer, is Thunderbolt redundant for now? Will it take another generation of macbook pro's to generate pro-consumer Tunderbolt supported products?

Thanks for answering.
Click to expand...

TB isn't redundant right now, it's dormant. The TB port on the MBPs right now is effectively useless until there are peripherals to connect to it. But as this thread demonstrates they are coming. First to the pro market but it will drip down during the course of the year. I think Mac OS X 10.7 and iOS5 are going to provide more urgency for TB in consumer markets as well. WWDC will be the big kick off.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
Theoretically, but those of us that remember the iPod FW days know reality from benchmarks.
...snip...
TB isn't redundant right now, it's dormant. The TB port on the MBPs right now is effectively useless until there are peripherals to connect to it. But as this thread demonstrates they are coming. First to the pro market but it will drip down during the course of the year. I think Mac OS X 10.7 and iOS5 are going to provide more urgency for TB in consumer markets as well. WWDC will be the big kick off.
Click to expand...

I understand, I am just saying that the flash media that the iDevices use are holding back the transfer rates, not the interface.

If Apple were to use more than 2 flash chips and spread around the bits (much like ssd) then maybe we could see speeds pick up.

TB will be more urgent when Windows PC's get on board.
 
RBR2 said:
Intel says that direct connection to both PCIe and the graphics processor is required for Thunderbolt, but I wonder just why it would not be possible to use a PCIe card for a "data only" connection to external TB storage devices and leave the video to the existing connections? It seems to me that there should be a sufficiently large market for such a card to warrant third party development. I don't think that anyone would be upset at having a second connector for their display...seeing as how they have one now...and would be very happy to have a data connection quicker than FW 800.

Intel denies that Apple have an exclusive use of Thunderbolt, but it does not seem as though the PC motherboard manufacturers are making much of an effort to let people know that they will be offering Thunderbolt native motherboards anytime soon.
Click to expand...

Boo! I didn't know it "required" a connection between the GPU and PCIe. I don't see the reasoning behind a direct connection to the GPU, anyone (not an engineer here)? I also agree, that for the sake of data connectivity, a PCIe card would be a realistic expectation. I certainly wouldn't be bothered with another connection, especially if that connection would eventually be the primary connection to my external devices ("Light Peak"/"ThunderBolt" does allow for daisy chaining?).
 
bedifferent said:
Boo! I didn't know it "required" a connection between the GPU and PCIe. I don't see the reasoning behind a direct connection to the GPU, anyone (not an engineer here)? I also agree, that for the sake of data connectivity, a PCIe card would be a realistic expectation. I certainly wouldn't be bothered with another connection, especially if that connection would eventually be the primary connection to my external devices ("Light Peak"/"ThunderBolt" does allow for daisy chaining?).
Click to expand...

Because it uses mDP for the connection. It would be confusing to users to have a data only port that looks like their video port (of course this really only affect Macs since most PC's come with DVI/HDMI...)
 
Chupa Chupa said:
TB isn't redundant right now, it's dormant. The TB port on the MBPs right now is effectively useless until there are peripherals to connect to it. But as this thread demonstrates they are coming. First to the pro market but it will drip down during the course of the year. I think Mac OS X 10.7 and iOS5 are going to provide more urgency for TB in consumer markets as well. WWDC will be the big kick off.
Click to expand...

Cool.

First has to be first somehow. ;)

I hope that iOS 5.0 and Mac OS X 10.7 (esp FCP) make TB much more clear to the peripheral makers and to the mass consumer.

Cheers.
 
Wouldn't matter anyway if you were using a ThunderBolt external hard drive. Very few mechanical hard drives can even reach 1Gbps-2Gbps. You'll need several of the fastest SSDs in RAID to even reach ThunderBolt speeds.

USB 3.0 FTW. More practical.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
It's amazing how people who hang out at a site dedicated to Apple don't really know anything about Apple R&D. This is so old news. But here for your edification:

http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm

Take hard note of the sentence: "Developed by Intel (under the code name Light Peak), and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple."
Click to expand...

What's amazing is how you haven't provided a citation to match your earlier post :

Chupa Chupa said:
TB was envisioned by Apple and then handed off to Intel for development and implementation.
Click to expand...

So again, Citation needed. The citation provided does not indicate Apple envisionned TB, only that they collaborated with Intel on the project, which might or might not be after the fact that Intel envisionned the tech and not Apple.

Again, you state Apple basically came up with it, burden of proof lies on you for this. I don't think I've ever heard that about LightPeak until this thread. It always either was a joint venture or an Intel tech developed in collaboration with Apple.
 
BeSweeet said:
Wouldn't matter anyway if you were using a ThunderBolt external hard drive. Very few mechanical hard drives can even reach 1Gbps-2Gbps. You'll need several of the fastest SSDs in RAID to even reach ThunderBolt speeds.

USB 3.0 FTW. More practical.
Click to expand...
USB 2.0 brings my CPU to its knees, can't imagine how bad USB 3.0 is. Some people have **** to do for the 2 hours its transferring.
 
diamond.g said:
Ah, so ultimately there will still be 7+ cables, just not connected to the computer itself.
Click to expand...

If it's connections to your laptop, that's a win right there. Once you've set up the other connected devices, you won't have to mess with them whenever you go somewhere with the laptop.
 
The Thunderbolt Wiki has a diagram showing the TB controller's access to things. The accompanying description ("Thunderbolt can be implemented on graphics cards, which have access to DisplayPort data and PCI express connectivity, or on the motherboard of new devices, such as the MacBook Pro.[5][17][22]") implies that a TB compatible PCIe graphics card could bring older systems up-to-date. That would be interesting.
 
BeSweeet said:
Wouldn't matter anyway if you were using a ThunderBolt external hard drive. Very few mechanical hard drives can even reach 1Gbps-2Gbps. You'll need several of the fastest SSDs in RAID to even reach ThunderBolt speeds.

USB 3.0 FTW. More practical.
Click to expand...

This week, mostly. In a year or three?

Don't forget that ThunderBolt can support USB x, as well as several other connection standards, including DisplayPort, hence any display connection standard that you can drive through it.
 
steveh said:
If it's connections to your laptop, that's a win right there. Once you've set up the other connected devices, you won't have to mess with them whenever you go somewhere with the laptop.
Click to expand...
The only connection I want going to my laptop is power. Everything else needs to be wireless. That is winning, duh. ;)
 
I hate being a party popper but this is exactly the same hype when Firewire was first released. I hope TB won't suffer a similar fate and end up being the port used only by a small segment of the market because of price and availability issues. TB is just too fantastic and I really want it to succeed but as you guys all know, its not the best tech that becomes the most successful and dominant.


BeSweeet said:
Wouldn't matter anyway if you were using a ThunderBolt external hard drive. Very few mechanical hard drives can even reach 1Gbps-2Gbps. You'll need several of the fastest SSDs in RAID to even reach ThunderBolt speeds.

USB 3.0 FTW. More practical.
Click to expand...

If TB can I/O data from a platter drive as fast as an internal SATA II/III connection that would still be a significant improvement versus the current external hard drive connection speeds we have today.
 
RBR2 said:
The Thunderbolt Wiki has a diagram showing the TB controller's access to things. The accompanying description ("Thunderbolt can be implemented on graphics cards, which have access to DisplayPort data and PCI express connectivity, or on the motherboard of new devices, such as the MacBook Pro.[5][17][22]") implies that a TB compatible PCIe graphics card could bring older systems up-to-date. That would be interesting.
Click to expand...

Great find. Let's hope Apple releases a card for the Mac Pro.

diamond.g said:
The only connection I want going to my laptop is power. Everything else needs to be wireless. That is winning, duh. ;)
Click to expand...

Induction charging will get rid of that one day too, I hope.
 
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