USB 3.0 signs?

[dtodor]

Why would Freecom make an USB 3.0 portable drive and sell it ONLY through premium Apple resellers?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/13/freecom-gets-slim-with-mobile-drive-mg-portable-hard-drive-supp/

 

[Hellhammer]

Why not? USB 3 is backwards compatible and nearly all external HDs have USB 3 now. They are simply making it future-proof and I bet adding USB 3 support didn't cost them more than couple of bucks.

It's unlikely that Freecom would have some insider info about future Macs so don't get your hopes up too much

 

[NickZac]

Most external hard drives at Best Buy are even USB3 capable. The newer processors should usher in USB3 and if you are making thousands of units all at once, you have to consider the long term as you don't want to have 10,000 units which are obsolete as you will lose money when people won't buy them for the target price. It seems to be the consensus that USB3 will be the next dominant system to replace the current USB2, and personally I agree. I would not buy an external hard drive without USB3 as with USB3, you will have a much faster connection to your hard drive and I am willing to bet the next gen Macs will have USB3.

One way to go safe for sure is with the OWC drives which support USB1/2/3 and FireWire 800 and/or eSATA all in one external HDD or SSD. The flexibility is great as you do sometimes wind up using a computer with odd technology (I used FireWire 400 not too long ago) and having one hard drive which does it all is convenient.

 

[henry999]

One way to go safe for sure is with the OWC drives which support USB1/2/3 and FireWire 800 and/or eSATA all in one external HDD or SSD.

You may not have intended it, but your phrasing here implies that there are units which have both USB3 and eSata. I'm not sure that's the case (yet).

cheers,

Henry

 

[NickZac]

You may not have intended it, but your phrasing here implies that there are units which have both USB3 and eSata. I'm not sure that's the case (yet).

cheers,

Henry

Sorry, I should have clarified. OWC makes a lot of storage systems with multiple ports, which are all external drives and most are HDDs and not SSDs. Their current internal SSD is only up to SATA2.6 IIRC.

The number of ports on their externals vary, and currently you can get hard drives with either FW400/800+USB2/1+eSATA or USB3,2,1 and IIRC FW. OWC will start using USB3 on all of their higher end external drives in not too long (according to someone on the telephone). I really should have been my clear; my apologies.