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What would thunderbolt mean to the average user?

egglybagelface said:
Having the Thunderbolt port be the same as the mini display port makes absolutely no sense. It's safe to say that one would use Thunderbolt when using an external harddrive, being tethered down to a desk, in most cases when you're doing something that labor intensive (video editing for example) you'd also be using a larger monitor WHICH USES THE MINI DISPLAY PORT!

So, what? Use Thunderbolt with the external and deal with the small screen, or use the minidisplay port for the monitor and use the external on the sloooowwww usb connection. Seems like a dumb move.

HOPEFULLY this is just going to be a problem with the 13". Like how they combined the Audio In and Out in the previous generation. If the 15" and 17" have this combined Thunderbolt/Minidisplay port, the thing is totally useless for any real pro uses.
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Thunderbolt is built to be daisychained. Plug your external monitor into the Thunderbolt connector and plug in a series of hard drives on the other side of the monitor (or whatever). Connect to multiple monitors and hard drives at home with just the one connection to your MBP. How is that dumb?

Intell said:
It seems people are forgetting the current limits of hard drives. SATA II, which is the bus used on most modern hard drives, has a max speed of 3.0Gps. SATA III, which was just finalized sometime last year, has a max speed of 6Gps. And even then only the very top of the line SSDs need anything faster then SATA I, which maxes out at 1.5Gps. Light Peak has a max speed of 10Gps. Thus, Light Peak drives will be no faster then eSATA drives.
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Why wouldn't you want to future proof the bandwidth of your video and storage technology if you could? A Thunderbolt connector can still terminate into USB 2 or 3 or even eSATA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kidmWiqKzqY&feature=player_embedded
 
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It looks very, very cool

In this video.

Also, a comment listed below the article:


"There are two ways to use Light Peak. If all devices have Light Peak connectors, you can daisy chain them all together as in the video demo. Each device uses the protocol that it needs simultaneously... the Monitor is speaking video HDMI-like protocol and the hard drive is speaking something closer to a data protocol over USB or Firewire.

Or...

You could connect a breakout box via Light Peak that has USB 2, FIrewire, Ethernet, HMDI and USB 3 ports. Then you use standard HDMI connector for monitor, USB 2 for hard drive and Ethernet connector for network.

Either way, you only need one connector on your PC/Mac. Then, either a daisy chain for "new devices with Light Peak Ports" or a breakout box and standard connectors.

If you want to use current Monitor/Keyboards/Drives: use the breakout box.

Or buy new devices next year when they arrive on the market with Light Peak connectors."
 
Intell said:
It seems people are forgetting the current limits of hard drives. SATA II, which is the bus used on most modern hard drives, has a max speed of 3.0Gps. SATA III, which was just finalized sometime last year, has a max speed of 6Gps. And even then only the very top of the line SSDs need anything faster then SATA I, which maxes out at 1.5Gps. Light Peak has a max speed of 10Gps. Thus, Light Peak drives will be no faster then eSATA drives.
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DAS + raid = weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
 
So I got a question. With lightpeak (yes I realize they haven't made anythign for it yet) would it be possible for htem to make a monitor that connects through lightpeak and have it have several lightpeak connections that you could plug peripherals in? Or would you have to chain one thing to another to another (not that for what I'm getting at it changes anything, just think it would be less messy for them all to connect to one thing)? And would it be possible to have lightpeak keyboards and mice?

Reason I ask is if so, for us laptop users who also use it as a desktop, imagine how much easier it would make it to unplug the laptop for mobile use and replug it back in as a desktop. You'd just plug everything into the monitor that stays on the desk, and just plug/unplug the monitor into the laptop (as well as the plug I suppose). That's a helluva lot better than what I have to do now (power plug, monitor, backup hard drive, mouse, iphone/ipod connection).
 
tigress666 said:
So I got a question. With lightpeak (yes I realize they haven't made anythign for it yet) would it be possible for htem to make a monitor that connects through lightpeak and have it have several lightpeak connections that you could plug peripherals in? Or would you have to chain one thing to another to another (not that for what I'm getting at it changes anything, just think it would be less messy for them all to connect to one thing)? And would it be possible to have lightpeak keyboards and mice?

Reason I ask is if so, for us laptop users who also use it as a desktop, imagine how much easier it would make it to unplug the laptop for mobile use and replug it back in as a desktop. You'd just plug everything into the monitor that stays on the desk, and just plug/unplug the monitor into the laptop (as well as the plug I suppose). That's a helluva lot better than what I have to do now (power plug, monitor, backup hard drive, mouse, iphone/ipod connection).
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Read my post, dearie.
 
Watch this lightpeak application demo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kidmWiqKzqY&feature=player_embedded

I would imagine that in the near future we'll see an Apple Cinema Display with a single Thunderbolt connector. Then the monitor will have USB, firewire, ethernet, and another Thunderbolt port for daisy chaining other monitors/devices.

In Apple's ecosystem I think Thunderbolt will behave primarily as a super all-in-one docking connector for laptops (not that there aren't other uses but this will be the main pitch).

Edit: Whoops, just noticed the video link in the post above. Either way, if you haven't watched this video yet do it now :)
 
LawSuit over name

Two unrelated items can have the same name as long as there is no reasonable confusion between the products. For example Delta Faucets and Delta Airlines. Maybe someone may be confused if you say I just got a new cable for my Thunderbolt...but it would be a difficult case to fight either way (from Apple or HTC's point of view),
 
There have been commitments from Lacie, Pegasus, and others.

Most are servers, but Lacie did announce a midrange thunderbolt capable drive, and itll probably be around 3-400.
 
I just can't get over how psyched I am that Thunderbolt will leverage the existing mDP connector, not just for Apple peripherals but apparently the Intel implementations as well! That'll go a long way toward making this stuff widely available in big box stores.



And for anyone who said Apple was foolish for passing on USB3, well, this will do USB3 and a whole lot more. Kudos to Apple and Intel (did I just type that? LOL!) for blazing a new trail.
 
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hcho3 said:
iPhone, iPad and iPod touch will be the first ones to get these features.
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Probably not. Alienate their hundreds of millions of users because they all use USB?

They'd have to include two cables in every box... I just can't see that happening.

Blunderbolt won't beat USB 3.0. Chances are Intel is pushing it harder because they'll make more licensing fees off it.

It's all about compatibility.
 
It sounds like a significant speed improvement, even for standard hard drives. USB 2 usually transfers what? 40 MB/s? So if Light Peak is capable of transferring 1.5 Gbps - which is what a poster above said was the max. you could get out of a standard HD - that sounds good enough to me. It would sure beat backing up via USB.
 
External GPU's. Although, I am SURE Apple will drag their feet in this department.

Could you immagine a Sandy MBA with an external GPU?

Sounds pretty sweet to me.
 
Intell said:
It seems people are forgetting the current limits of hard drives. SATA II, which is the bus used on most modern hard drives, has a max speed of 3.0Gps. SATA III, which was just finalized sometime last year, has a max speed of 6Gps. And even then only the very top of the line SSDs need anything faster then SATA I, which maxes out at 1.5Gps. Light Peak has a max speed of 10Gps. Thus, Light Peak drives will be no faster then eSATA drives.
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That's full duplex 10gbps shared for all devices in the daisy chain.The ideal setup from a performance oriented view would likely be having a complex array of devices working in tandem. Say you have 2 devices on the daisy chain, they'll each only be able to utilize up to 5gbps per stream, give or take.

This could mean one device, say a video capture card, could transfer data to another, perhaps an external SSD at 5Gbps speeds, while the external drive. is copying data over to the host operating system's drive at 5Gbps speed, while the host operating system uses its downstream to simultaneously backup its contents to the external SSD at 5Gbps. There'd still be some room to spare but thinking about the theoretical mechanics makes my head hurt.


greytmom said:
You could connect a breakout box via Light Peak that has USB 2, FIrewire, Ethernet, HMDI and USB 3 ports. Then you use standard HDMI connector for monitor, USB 2 for hard drive and Ethernet connector for network.
USB 3.0 is no slouch. Two USB 3.0 devices could theoretically saturate the PCIE side of Thunderbolt all on their own. A multiprotocol connection like this would be great for an AV receiver though, which acts as a sort of switchbox for most home theater systems, meaning you might never use all the connections at once. A thunderbolt AV receiver with a desktop quality GPU would be rather sweet for a laptop owner...
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isnt the transfer rate on thunderbolt hd like lacie's little big disk coming this summer limited by the transfer rate of the ssd?

arent the ssd in the lacie intel 510 (sata 3?) so they max out at 6gbs. so whats the point if the thunderbolt can pump out at 10 gbs if the data is only getting transferred at 6?

or does the ssd run at 10gbs with some other controller?
 
means nothing since there are no devices out to support it.

we'll be able to answer the question in the thread title better once we have an idea of what kind of hardware support it will actually get.
 
smoak888 said:
isnt the transfer rate on thunderbolt hd like lacie's little big disk coming this summer limited by the transfer rate of the ssd?

arent the ssd in the lacie intel 510 (sata 3?) so they max out at 6gbs. so whats the point if the thunderbolt can pump out at 10 gbs if the data is only getting transferred at 6?

or does the ssd run at 10gbs with some other controller?
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What this means is that, even if you fully saturate a 6gbs device, you'll still have plenty of bandwidth for other data transfers to other devices on the daisy chain (possibly including USB or FW connectors on a breakout box). And another (full duplex) channel coming back.

Plus the separate full duplex DisplayPort channels.
 
Thunderbolt means Apple isn't rolling out faster Firewire, which means Apple users who invested in Firewire should be less happy.

Wikipedia said:
FireWire S1600 and S3200

In December 2007, the 1394 Trade Association announced that products would be available before the end of 2008 using the S1600 and S3200 modes that, for the most part, had already been defined in 1394b and was further clarified in IEEE Std. 1394-2008.[5]

The 1.6 Gbit/s and 3.2 Gbit/s devices use the same 9-circuit beta connectors as the existing FireWire 800 and will be fully compatible with existing S400 and S800 devices. It will compete with the forthcoming USB 3.0.[17]

S1600 (Symwave[18]) and S3200 (Dap Technology[19]) development units have been made, with the latter promising a consumer version by late 2010.
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