Yes, I agree with you. And in it's infancancy it sure is limited with one port.
But once we can have several ports, it's really going to rip things up at a fraction of the cost. I should have stipulated this in my post.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Am i the only one who doesn't care about thunderbolt?
- Thread starter mjsmke
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yes, I agree with you. And in it's infancancy it sure is limited with one port.
But once we can have several ports, it's really going to rip things up at a fraction of the cost. I should have stipulated this in my post.
yeah but what are the real world read and write speeds on your 10Tb worth of HDDs and your back up drives? For me (like you) all data that I use daily is in the Mac Pro so I see no real benefit to TB until HDD speed really kicks it up or until SSD is affordable enough to get large enough drives to run both main data and back up on. Maybe if you had all your data in RAID 0 on fast HDDs along with your back ups in equally fast HDDs in RAID 0 you would see a benefit... but thats sketchy with 10 TB of essential data. As I see it, HDD read/write will be the limit for many users that have their data onboard and looking for back up solutions.
So to the OP... no, your not alone. Maybe in a few years it will be something to go after but not quite yet. I think more exciting will be the next 2 generations of CPUs for the desktops - sandy and ivy
Unlike FireWire, Apple released royalty free mini-display port. I think that's why you are seeing it pop up all over the place.
A good point about full size display port locking and mini display port not locking - although as was also pointed out in this thread mini-DP is pretty hard to accidentally dislodge. FW800 is easier to knock out and I'm using it for external storage right now with no issue so it's probably more a "nice to have" than a "fatal omission" at this point.
Thunderbolt is like USB when the first iMac's were release with it and everyone was like "USB what?!? Where's ADB?!?!". Within a couple of years we will be wondering what's holding up the fiber optic based Thunderbolt ports and accessories!
Hmm - Thunderbolt essentially extends PCI express - instead of the "x Mac" a mini stack. Interesting.
If I could get a choice of graphics cards with a Mini, that works for 90% of what I need! Reminds me of the SCSI Video adaptors for the Mac Plus's and SE's of old.
Everything old is new again!
cool, I obviously did not make it that far into the thread! Its interesting, I just cannot find where I need it yet. Nice feature for sure but just not something I am going to have to upgrade to get my hands on.
I suspect (hope!) that TB will have some potential to have a "cloud-at-home" architecture, particularly since bandwidth (caps, infrastructure) is going to be a domestic issue for at least the next 5-10 years, plus there will always be businesses that want to have their cloud hardware to be in-house from an IT security perspective.
Thus, one vision can be to have a closet in the home which interconnects with TB to form a host cluster that thin clients (including iPad?) wirelessly connects to, to apply those 'closet assets' for whatever heavy lifting is required (photoshop, video rendering, etc).
As such, the real question for a Mac buyer this month is that now with TB starting to appear, does it become an attribute that one should buy (or wait for) in anticipation of a TB-equipped Mac being value added from the perspective of a not-yet-clearly-established future use case?
Its hard to vote that one up or down, except perhaps for the Mac Pro which can be argued has a longer lifecycle use case for which one purchased in 2011 can be reasonably expected to hang around for at least 5+ years upon which it could be relegated down to merely being a file server for data. As such, this lifecycle perspective would suggest waiting on a Mac Pro if you can. Of course the big question there becomes..."but for how long?"...due to Sandy Bridge CPU timelines which make a near-term CPU bump quite unlikely. It would be nice to be wrong and have a Xeon surprise from Intel in April/May, but I'd not put any wagering money on that one quite yet.
-hh
Sorry for the wall of text, most of this has probably been said all before but here is some thoughts.
At first I was perhaps angry and bitter(not so much now) at the fact a new connection port was released just as I purchased a 2010 Mac Pro computer. And from what has been said so far is that this new port is not going to be available to the 2008,2009 and 2010 Mac Pros. But technology is going to evolve and perhaps a ThB card add-on may still may appear and even if it does not, well I guess it does not.
I think it is best to take in a wider perspective in that technology is evolving fast, faster it seems than the software or the peripherals that needs the technology to run it. Only recently (as in 2011)has the software that I intend to use able to run in 64bit mode and as it is new there probably will be some form of bugs so some revisions will have to be made. The PLAY engine on the Macintosh is not 64bit yet so there you see.
But one could be in a situation that they have brought a 4,6,8 or a 12 core computer a 64bit workstation but no software that runs in 64bit, how important is 64bit I do not have much technical knowledge but I understand that in 64bit the programs can access a lot more Ram and I even heard more cores as well perhaps a lot more of everything. So for someone who does intensive work and needs access to large amounts of Ram this will be great I think. So what I am saying and I think many people have said this already is technology is ahead and the software and tools still need to catch up, if you will, to the technology, it has to because they need time to make the software so that it runs optimal and runs with other programs not creating conflicts with other software, so it all runs smoothly and together with the hardware that it uses.
Regarding technology I recently found out a music keyboard manufacture is releasing a new keyboard in a few months and it has implemented an internal, least I think it is internal SSD drive to stream the samples and sounds. I think it is a leap forward for a keyboard to have this. It is the first keyboard to my knowledge that has an SSD that can be used for live performance. It is a bit different then having a computer system set up with SSD’s though as a keyboard, to be used live I imagine it should be great.
What I am getting at again(from Wikipedia) SSD has been marketed to the military and certain industries around since the mid 90s according to Wikipedia (under the availability section) but its relevance to consumers seems to be only recent and even more so recent in the hardware that uses that technology such as the keyboard I mention. What this suggests is that new technology will appear but takes time for it to be implemented, so ThB is a new port, perhaps the new standard, though now the peripherals need to appear to take advantage of this new technology for the consumers that is the people, the buyers need to believe in it and take it on board for companies that are interested in it to consider this as something that is the next step.
It could be this year or next year or some year that there will be many things, many peripherals that have the ThB port from monitors to SSD drives to soundcards. But that is just it, now it has to catch up to this new technology. I think trying to see a wider picture helps to see things from a different perspective, or paradigm that one would not have had before.
Thanks for sticking through this wall of text and have a nice day.
At first I was perhaps angry and bitter(not so much now) at the fact a new connection port was released just as I purchased a 2010 Mac Pro computer. And from what has been said so far is that this new port is not going to be available to the 2008,2009 and 2010 Mac Pros. But technology is going to evolve and perhaps a ThB card add-on may still may appear and even if it does not, well I guess it does not.
I think it is best to take in a wider perspective in that technology is evolving fast, faster it seems than the software or the peripherals that needs the technology to run it. Only recently (as in 2011)has the software that I intend to use able to run in 64bit mode and as it is new there probably will be some form of bugs so some revisions will have to be made. The PLAY engine on the Macintosh is not 64bit yet so there you see.
But one could be in a situation that they have brought a 4,6,8 or a 12 core computer a 64bit workstation but no software that runs in 64bit, how important is 64bit I do not have much technical knowledge but I understand that in 64bit the programs can access a lot more Ram and I even heard more cores as well perhaps a lot more of everything. So for someone who does intensive work and needs access to large amounts of Ram this will be great I think. So what I am saying and I think many people have said this already is technology is ahead and the software and tools still need to catch up, if you will, to the technology, it has to because they need time to make the software so that it runs optimal and runs with other programs not creating conflicts with other software, so it all runs smoothly and together with the hardware that it uses.
Regarding technology I recently found out a music keyboard manufacture is releasing a new keyboard in a few months and it has implemented an internal, least I think it is internal SSD drive to stream the samples and sounds. I think it is a leap forward for a keyboard to have this. It is the first keyboard to my knowledge that has an SSD that can be used for live performance. It is a bit different then having a computer system set up with SSD’s though as a keyboard, to be used live I imagine it should be great.
What I am getting at again(from Wikipedia) SSD has been marketed to the military and certain industries around since the mid 90s according to Wikipedia (under the availability section) but its relevance to consumers seems to be only recent and even more so recent in the hardware that uses that technology such as the keyboard I mention. What this suggests is that new technology will appear but takes time for it to be implemented, so ThB is a new port, perhaps the new standard, though now the peripherals need to appear to take advantage of this new technology for the consumers that is the people, the buyers need to believe in it and take it on board for companies that are interested in it to consider this as something that is the next step.
It could be this year or next year or some year that there will be many things, many peripherals that have the ThB port from monitors to SSD drives to soundcards. But that is just it, now it has to catch up to this new technology. I think trying to see a wider picture helps to see things from a different perspective, or paradigm that one would not have had before.
Thanks for sticking through this wall of text and have a nice day
.Booyah! I'll sue yah!
Unless you buy your (insert tech item here) the day it is released, you are already out of date. If you do buy on the bleeding edge of innovation you get a buggy, unreliable piece of crap 50% of the time. These inconvenient truths are not going to go away anytime soon.
The pragmatic approach is to buy the refresh when you absolutely need the upgrades it offers and then don't look at the new release market for at least 6 months to save hairloss. My Mac refresh cycle is 3-5 years depending on advancement, raging against the marketing machine only hurts my blood pressure.
Enjoy your uberMac, the future will look after itself.
"My new computer has the clocks and it rocks but it was obsolete before I opened the box." - Weird Al Yankovic
Unless you buy your (insert tech item here) the day it is released, you are already out of date. If you do buy on the bleeding edge of innovation you get a buggy, unreliable piece of crap 50% of the time. These inconvenient truths are not going to go away anytime soon.
The pragmatic approach is to buy the refresh when you absolutely need the upgrades it offers and then don't look at the new release market for at least 6 months to save hairloss. My Mac refresh cycle is 3-5 years depending on advancement, raging against the marketing machine only hurts my blood pressure.
Enjoy your uberMac, the future will look after itself.
"My new computer has the clocks and it rocks but it was obsolete before I opened the box." - Weird Al Yankovic
hehhe.. Thunderpants!
Yeah, same here.. I could care less about Thundercats using Thunderports..
Seriously, though I am sure 3rd party developers will come out with a way for this port to work on the mac pros of 2008-2010..
Yeah, same here.. I could care less about Thundercats using Thunderports..
Seriously, though I am sure 3rd party developers will come out with a way for this port to work on the mac pros of 2008-2010..
You don't really have any need for Thunderbolt in a system with PCIe slots. It's useful for laptops and AIO systems that don't, which is currently what it's aimed at.
I'll be the contrarian.
I am honestly very, very excited about Thunderbolt. I just purchased a MBPro and plan to be aggressive in migrating (i.e. selling/upgrading) my systems. I agree that Sandy/Ivy are even more important but TB raises the value equation in upgrading.
I will be buying a RED camera this year and this shoots at 3,4,5 times the resolution of HD. So this is of real-world relevance for me. I also know how long I currently wait for my card reader to transfer my current Canon photographs. A TB card reader is a no-brainer.
On top of all this...I look forward to building a new high speed network where multiple computers and platforms can share and manipulate beyond-HD footage in real time. 3d HD content will also have higher broadband requirements.
Thunderbolt impacts professional users and as MP users it's hard for me to understand why people would complain about an amazing breakthrough like this.
We are starting to see SSD drives and SSD-hybrid drives that are poised to change the rules of the game in storage. A new storage protocol is a timely development.
The impact for consumers will be a reduction in cable clutter. The impact for pros will be performance. I say: BRAVO!
I am honestly very, very excited about Thunderbolt. I just purchased a MBPro and plan to be aggressive in migrating (i.e. selling/upgrading) my systems. I agree that Sandy/Ivy are even more important but TB raises the value equation in upgrading.
I will be buying a RED camera this year and this shoots at 3,4,5 times the resolution of HD. So this is of real-world relevance for me. I also know how long I currently wait for my card reader to transfer my current Canon photographs. A TB card reader is a no-brainer.
On top of all this...I look forward to building a new high speed network where multiple computers and platforms can share and manipulate beyond-HD footage in real time. 3d HD content will also have higher broadband requirements.
Thunderbolt impacts professional users and as MP users it's hard for me to understand why people would complain about an amazing breakthrough like this.
We are starting to see SSD drives and SSD-hybrid drives that are poised to change the rules of the game in storage. A new storage protocol is a timely development.
The impact for consumers will be a reduction in cable clutter. The impact for pros will be performance. I say: BRAVO!
It's certainly cool tech. But for my purposes, it would much more be a question of the raw firepower of the processor.
TB is a nifty bonus, assuming there are peripherals that support it. Will I buy TB card if they ever manage to successfully implement one? Sure. Does it make me regret owning a computer with internal drive bays out the wazoo, massive memory capacity, and a pretty damned snappy processor?
Not in the slightest.
TB is a nifty bonus, assuming there are peripherals that support it. Will I buy TB card if they ever manage to successfully implement one? Sure. Does it make me regret owning a computer with internal drive bays out the wazoo, massive memory capacity, and a pretty damned snappy processor?
Not in the slightest.
It still consumes 4x PCIe lanes though, regardless of the system (they're just routed to the TB chip instead of a slot).
So in the case of a desktop (system with slots, not an AIO),the inclusion of a TB port will mean the designers have either fewer lanes to distribute for PCIe slot configurations (shared or dedicated topologies).
Always a catch...
The biggest question to me...no let me rephrase that... the MASSIVE question to me...
Is can/will we see externalized cases with GPUs, etc. If so then we would see the end of the MacPro...but Pro users could add such external boxes to other Macs and enjoy the expanded/extensible capabilities.
My career is 50% 3d motion design and such a box would be very exciting to me, esp. if we could see high end GPUs finally come to the Mac. OpenCl and Cuda are the future.
But all this may be my own private pipe dream.
Is can/will we see externalized cases with GPUs, etc. If so then we would see the end of the MacPro...but Pro users could add such external boxes to other Macs and enjoy the expanded/extensible capabilities.
My career is 50% 3d motion design and such a box would be very exciting to me, esp. if we could see high end GPUs finally come to the Mac. OpenCl and Cuda are the future.
But all this may be my own private pipe dream.
As it stands now, not very likely, as the current TB chip is designed to have the GPU's output wired directly to the chip (DisplayPort output from an integrated GPU <separate or on the CPU's die; SandyBridge mobile parts have the GPU integrated on the CPU's die>). Though it's possible to use the I/O portion (built on 4x PCIe lanes), it wouldn't be all that fast to move data from the system to the GPU over TB (TB = 1.25GB/s; 4x Gen. 2.0 PCIe lanes = 4 * 500MB/s = 2GB/s) .
This could change later however, as the publicized theoretical max of TB is 100Gb/s. When of course, is another matter, assuming it can be done in production parts (not just under ideal lab conditions + doing the Funky Chicken).
You can already use the Cinema Display with it. Any existing Mini DisplayPort adapter will work too.
I doubt it. But it would be cool to be able to use a bank of external CUDA boxes.