I guess Macs will never have USB 3.0 or Blu Ray.

USB 3.0 is inferior to Thunderbolt anyways. I agree the lack of Blu Ray is a bit of a minus, but 1080p Blu Ray video rips are readily available via torrents so it hasn't affected me. It's the inablility to burn Blu ray discs to back up my photos that irks me, but that can be solved by having an external BD burner.

USB 3.0 is available via 3rd party Express Cards, but why bother now that Thunderbolt kicks USB 3.0's ass?

I seriously thought Apple was gonna add BD drive at least as an option. I mean, when you are asking 1799 for your 15" lappy, BD should be standard if you are gonna have an optical drive at all.

^ yeah i agree.

There are very few peripherals that can fully make use of USB 3.0's speeds - how many more can make use of Thunderbolt's?

Plus - the vast majority of consumer peripherals connect via USB - 3.0 is backwards compatible with them.

I can see Thunderbolt being great for the professional who really needs that extra bit of juice - but I don't think it will be a standard that will catch on. USB 3.0 will take over before that happens.

Apple just trying create another standard it can control like Firewire. We all know how far Firewire got with Apple.

^ This isn't a standard created by Apple. It's actually a standard created by Intel called Lightpeak. Apple just so happens to include it this year when the official launch date for Lightpeak is next year. Many others have jumped on board for this I/O. I am sure it will co-exist well with USB 3.0. I'm definitely ecstatic about this because you can run a monitor, external drives, as well as other peripherals using one wire! The I/O is a Displayport connector.

"Thunderbolt (originally codenamed Light Peak) is an interface for connecting peripheral devices to a computer via a peripheral bus. Thunderbolt was developed by Intel and brought to market with technical collaboration from Apple Inc. It was introduced commercially on Apple's updated MacBook Pro lineup on 24 February 2011, using the same port and connector as Mini DisplayPort."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)

So yes Apple did help develop/ implement it! So they stand to profit from this technology if it becomes a standard. Just like how they stood to profit if FireWire became a industry standard. Apple didn't develop the FireWire itself either but was a major player in trying to make it an industry standard.

"FireWire is Apple's name for the IEEE 1394 High Speed Serial Bus. It was initiated by Apple (in 1986[2]) and developed by the IEEE P1394 Working Group, largely driven by contributions from Apple, although major contributions were also made by engineers from Texas Instruments, Sony, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, and INMOS/SGS Thomson (now STMicroelectronics)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394_interface

^ then re-word what you mentioned earlier with the sentence that you have in bold. 'Helped in the development' and 'created another standard' are worlds apart.

with the post you originally posted it makes it seem that you work for the national inquirer...trying to create a story from just the headline.

Did I say they created the Thunderbolt? Or did I say they are trying to make Thunderbold another industry standard because they stand to make billions off from it? s. Why else would they put an unproven technology into their MacBooks when an Blu-Ray drive would make so much more sense? Apple is all about owning everything in their ecosystem. They would rather use unproven technology that they own then go out and put something that they don't own/develop/make a shit load of money in their systems. I'm not knocking them for it I'm just saying that's how Apple as a whole think. They want to own/control everything that goes into their products top down.

The great thing about Thunderbolt is that all you need is one cable to connect your peripherals + monitor + whatever. The sustained thoughput is faster than USB 3.0's theoretical max, IIRC.

Firewire peripherals are used by just about every professional that works in photography or cinematography. Many Sony VAIO laptops have it too, as did my old 17" HP laptop, and it came in quite handy.

The bottom line is that only time will tell.

I would have been happy with eSATA, but I found out after I bought my eSATA enclosure & ExpressCard that eSATA isn't bus powered! Not exactly user friendly if I wanted to sit at a cafe editing shit for clients. FML...

That's why their products work so well.

To this date, I have not seen an interface that can utilize one single connection to transfer multiple high bandwidth peripherals. (ie; monitors, hard drives etc etc). Even if it was done so with the collaboration of Apple, it doesn't deter the fact that it's one of the most promising interfaces to date.

I don't care if they want to have market share in every single thing they put on their systems, that's not even for me to worry about. Every company wants to own a piece of something. That's how the corporate world works. You can simply not support Apple products by NOT buy them, I only care for products that will benefit me. Much like how Thunderbolt seems like a very viable interface that will make my workspace faster and more efficient.

I agree that Firewire is still being used by most video professional but last I looked Apple demographic for it's products is for the average consumer who don't do heavy video editing. Firewire just never found a market, for the most part USB 1.1 was fast enough for every peripheral except hard drives and video cameras (transferring video to hard drive stuff), and I'm not sure but if I recall by the time external hard drives became popular USB 2.0 was out, why use firewire when you can use USB.

No one is dissing Apple Top Down approach to it's ecosystem. Most if not all companies envy them! All i'm saying is Apple makes choices on what makes them or potentially can make them the most money. And many times these choices aren't in line with that their consumers really want. But due to their awesome marketing most consumers are happy to let Apple dictate what they think you may need or not need.

I still think Firewire was a failed attempted by Apple to monopolize the data interface game, which USB won and now I feel like that same is going to happen to Thunderbolt.

Isn't that what one is taught in the first day of Business 101? ALL businesses strive to do that! What CEO or president of a company is going to say, "Let's provide a service or product that will make us less money?"

Well the whole mini-display port thing failed hard and they still refuse to use a real standard like HDMI even though pretty much every laptop in the world uses HDMI or HDMI+VGA.

You can get a Mini Display port to HDMI adapter.

Just got a new dock for my 13in MBP. It's one of the best accessories I have bought;

http://www.hengedocks.com/

Looks nice. Is it made of aluminum or plastic?

plastic

It's true, their sustained throughput is faster than USB 3.0's - but there aren't any peripherals that you can use where the USB 3.0 would be a bottleneck.

I can see how it would be great to be able to connect everything through one port, but it just means you will need to buy a million accessories to connect things to that one port. Connect just a monitor, one adaptor. connect a monitor and a usb device, another adaptor.


and yes, firewire was developed with Apple, but also with Sony - which labels it as their iLink port.

It's funny, because when I worked at a Sony Centre in London - we'd have a lot of customers who would buy a DV or HDV camcorder from us - where you need a a firewire cable to plug into their computer. A lot of them have MPB's to work on their stuff - but when they wanted to plug in their camcorder - they would ask me how to do it. I told them they needed a convertor to go from the standard Firewire 600 from a Firewire 800 - which MBP's have. Apple, being the only product on the market to use that port, SHOULD have an adaptor. But everytime I send someone to go to the Apple Store, they come back, saying that they don't sell it. I'm not sure if it's the idiot genius's that work there - or they actually don't sell an adaptor for their own product.

I use FW800 for my hard drives cause the speed difference IS noticeable vs USB2.0.

The new MBP excites me, but...my early 2007 MBP is still running a-ok. Guess Ill wait till the 2nd or 3rd version of this new Thunderbolt generation of MBP's.

That's unfortunate.

Yeah I thought so too..but I think aluminum on aluminum would leave some nasty marks when inserting and removing it.

Is the build quality good enough that you're happy with it?