My essay on Thunderbolt ports vs PCIe Slots

[flat five]

....but if the "Thunderbolt Tax" drops to a relatively minor* level by Christmas 2013, I'd be quite happy to be wrong. Time will tell.

unfortunately, i highly doubt we'll see a considerable drop within the next 4 months.. the early mac pro adopters will probably be paying a lot more for their (TB2) peripherals than if they waited til this time next year.

[/amateur hour cost projector]

 

[Tesselator]

Nice essay.

I can see the point of folks saying we are accepting a comparison to a 4 year old solution but that's what we got to compare to. Apple isn't WinTel. Apple isn't hackintosh. Apple is Apple. So, as they say, we should compare apples to apples. If one buys into the Apple "life-style" then the new design is pretty great and all the points below apply directly and accurately. If you're a free man then the Apple life story has probably never been for you anyway - other than once in 2006. Always, there have been technologically superior alternatives for a lot less money - and in every category Apple produces products in; phones, MP3 players, laptops, consoles, desktops, and workstations - all without exception (but for once in 2006 of course when they offered a workstation with decent specs for the same price as a DIY system given the same specs. The very next system (MP3,1) was back to being "different" and from a place most of us have heard of as - the reality distortion field - somewhere near the outer limits.

Why Thunderbolt

This essay starts on the premise that mobile computing is the trend, even amongst creative professionals, and that the PC is in decline, and along with it, vendor interest in developing and supporting PCIe expansion cards for PCs. And we all know that the Mac Pro workstation market is a tiny fraction of that. Those of us who have tried to update our Mac Pros also know how small that market is first hand thanks to the limited selection, poor vendor support, spotty drivers, and often silly compromises we've all come to expect as normal... It's ridiculous to me that we get one or two new GPUs every few years. It's insane that I need to run a power cable from my optical bay to power a USB 3 card because the only choice for native driver support is so poorly designed. It's maddening that finally 3 years after SATA3 SSDs became common, we could find a bootable SATA3 card that wouldn't bottleneck our drives. It's unimaginable to me that I might actually wish this state of affairs continue, never mind be passionately fighting (fruitlessly) for its continuation.

That brings me to Thunderbolt... What is it really? From a Mac Pro or PC perspective, it's just a PCIe x4 slot turned into a port. From a mobile computing perspective, that's huge... A pair of (switched) x4 PCIe slots on every Mac exposed as a small pair of ports. That takes mobile computing to a whole new level of expansion. And that means, there's a massive potential market for peripherals that plug into this port. A way bigger market than ever existed for PCIe cards for the Mac Pro. It's still early days, but this is a better place to be than in a declining market that couldn't garner much vendor interest.

Even PC motherboards and laptops are getting in on the game, and PC laptops have just as much to gain from TB as MacBooks and iMacs. This expands the market further and will attract even more vendors and create economies of scale to reduce prices. It's going to take some time but this will reach a critical mass soon enough.

The new Mac Pro

Now, how does Apple implement TB ports vs PCIe slots on the new Mac Pro?

There are three ways to implement TB (which carries DisplayPort video and x4 PCIe for data peripherals) and the three implementations are differentiated by how the DisplayPort signal gets to the TB controller...

1. IGP on a consumer/mobile CPU providing DisplayPort to the TB controller (Asus is going this route)
2. Cable kludge that routes DisplayPort from a discrete GPU to the TB controller (ASRock chose this)
3. Custom GPUs providing DisplayPort to the TB controller (Apple chose this)

Note that none of these precludes PCIe slots. However, in any of these implementations PCIe lanes are either dedicated to TB or switched/shared with other on-board PCIe peripherals/slots.

Apple chose to dedicate the PCIe lanes to internal peripherals (dual GPUs and at least one, maybe two PCIe SSDs, and integrated USB3 - the items most of us have added to our own Mac Pros) AND, on top of that, there are three TB controllers (6 ports) that have a x4 bus connection each.

While many don't/won't see this as a net gain, I do.

My current Mac Pro cannot have dual high-end GPUs, one or two PCIe SSDs, USB3, and three x4 PCIe peripherals all working at the same time. It simply can't do it. The new Mac Pro can. In fact, the new Mac Pro ships with more capability out of the box than you can possibly configure in the current Mac Pro (since a second high-end GPU covers one of the x4 slots) AND it allows you to add at least three x4 PCIe peripherals on top of that all while driving a trio of 4K displays.

Apple has chosen a direction which removes the Mac Pros expansion capabilities from the hands of the declining PC market (and all but dead Mac Pro PCIe card market) and puts it clearly in the hands of a market with orders of magnitude more promise... Every Mac sold in the last two generations has come equipped with TB ports and that is starting to get attention. For vendors, they can make a TB product and have a potential market of Millions of Mac owners. And now, Mac Pro owners are going to participate, and likely drive this market further (way more than a new Mac Pro with PCIe slots would) with their deep pockets and demanding requirements for performance .

Now despite the benefits of having more capability out-of-the-box and plenty of TB expansion, there's still the objection that you can't upgrade your GPU. Of course this is true, but here are a couple of considerations:
1. Upgrading the GPU in the past has not been widely adopted either... Limited choices offering much if any legit support, power supply constraints, expensive (over priced cards), etc... as a result, only a brave few would bother and even then, it only really makes sense to undertake this every two to three years anyway.
2. Upgrading the GPU in the past has not been warranted in many workflows and many are still productive after a few years with the GPU that shipped with their system.
3. Computers are systems and rarely does unlocking one bottleneck not reveal another immediately whereby the ultimate solution is an upgrade of several key components to really unlock new computing potential. At this point it's usually warranted to upgrade the whole system anyway (including CPU, I/O, and GPU).
4. Many purchasers of computers (especially Mac Pros) are companies that never upgrade assets on a capital depreciation schedule. When a solution no longer meets the need it is replaced.

The sum of all this is that the number of people truly and negatively impacted by non-upgradable GPUs is small enough to be offset by the benefits of bringing TB to a much larger group of workstation users so they can realize the benefits of greater choice, better support, and more affordable and timely peripherals as discussed earlier.

Now, here on Mac Rumors, the number of people impacted by non-upgradable GPUs appears high, but these forums are the home to enthusiasts who are the most likely to tinker and upgrade systems so that's expected.

 

[brand]

the early mac pro adopters will probably be paying a lot more for their (TB2) peripherals than if they waited til this time next year.

That is pretty obvious given thats how technology has always been.

 

[flat five]

That is pretty obvious given thats how technology has always been.

that's me. captain obvious

 

[philipma1957]

Why Thunderbolt

This essay starts on the premise that mobile computing is the trend, even amongst creative professionals, and that the PC is in decline, and along with it, vendor interest in developing and supporting PCIe expansion cards for PCs. And we all know that the Mac Pro workstation market is a tiny fraction of that. Those of us who have tried to update our Mac Pros also know how small that market is first hand thanks to the limited selection, poor vendor support, spotty drivers, and often silly compromises we've all come to expect as normal... It's ridiculous to me that we get one or two new GPUs every few years. It's insane that I need to run a power cable from my optical bay to power a USB 3 card because the only choice for native driver support is so poorly designed. It's maddening that finally 3 years after SATA3 SSDs became common, we could find a bootable SATA3 card that wouldn't bottleneck our drives. It's unimaginable to me that I might actually wish this state of affairs continue, never mind be passionately fighting (fruitlessly) for its continuation.

That brings me to Thunderbolt... What is it really? From a Mac Pro or PC perspective, it's just a PCIe x4 slot turned into a port. From a mobile computing perspective, that's huge... A pair of (switched) x4 PCIe slots on every Mac exposed as a small pair of ports. That takes mobile computing to a whole new level of expansion. And that means, there's a massive potential market for peripherals that plug into this port. A way bigger market than ever existed for PCIe cards for the Mac Pro. It's still early days, but this is a better place to be than in a declining market that couldn't garner much vendor interest.

Even PC motherboards and laptops are getting in on the game, and PC laptops have just as much to gain from TB as MacBooks and iMacs. This expands the market further and will attract even more vendors and create economies of scale to reduce prices. It's going to take some time but this will reach a critical mass soon enough.

The new Mac Pro

Now, how does Apple implement TB ports vs PCIe slots on the new Mac Pro?

There are three ways to implement TB (which carries DisplayPort video and x4 PCIe for data peripherals) and the three implementations are differentiated by how the DisplayPort signal gets to the TB controller...

1. IGP on a consumer/mobile CPU providing DisplayPort to the TB controller (Asus is going this route)
2. Cable kludge that routes DisplayPort from a discrete GPU to the TB controller (ASRock chose this)
3. Custom GPUs providing DisplayPort to the TB controller (Apple chose this)

Note that none of these precludes PCIe slots. However, in any of these implementations PCIe lanes are either dedicated to TB or switched/shared with other on-board PCIe peripherals/slots.

Apple chose to dedicate the PCIe lanes to internal peripherals (dual GPUs and at least one, maybe two PCIe SSDs, and integrated USB3 - the items most of us have added to our own Mac Pros) AND, on top of that, there are three TB controllers (6 ports) that have a x4 bus connection each.

While many don't/won't see this as a net gain, I do.

My current Mac Pro cannot have dual high-end GPUs, one or two PCIe SSDs, USB3, and three x4 PCIe peripherals all working at the same time. It simply can't do it. The new Mac Pro can. In fact, the new Mac Pro ships with more capability out of the box than you can possibly configure in the current Mac Pro (since a second high-end GPU covers one of the x4 slots) AND it allows you to add at least three x4 PCIe peripherals on top of that all while driving a trio of 4K displays.

Apple has chosen a direction which removes the Mac Pros expansion capabilities from the hands of the declining PC market (and all but dead Mac Pro PCIe card market) and puts it clearly in the hands of a market with orders of magnitude more promise... Every Mac sold in the last two generations has come equipped with TB ports and that is starting to get attention. For vendors, they can make a TB product and have a potential market of Millions of Mac owners. And now, Mac Pro owners are going to participate, and likely drive this market further (way more than a new Mac Pro with PCIe slots would) with their deep pockets and demanding requirements for performance .

Now despite the benefits of having more capability out-of-the-box and plenty of TB expansion, there's still the objection that you can't upgrade your GPU. Of course this is true, but here are a couple of considerations:
1. Upgrading the GPU in the past has not been widely adopted either... Limited choices offering much if any legit support, power supply constraints, expensive (over priced cards), etc... as a result, only a brave few would bother and even then, it only really makes sense to undertake this every two to three years anyway.
2. Upgrading the GPU in the past has not been warranted in many workflows and many are still productive after a few years with the GPU that shipped with their system.
3. Computers are systems and rarely does unlocking one bottleneck not reveal another immediately whereby the ultimate solution is an upgrade of several key components to really unlock new computing potential. At this point it's usually warranted to upgrade the whole system anyway (including CPU, I/O, and GPU).
4. Many purchasers of computers (especially Mac Pros) are companies that never upgrade assets on a capital depreciation schedule. When a solution no longer meets the need it is replaced.

The sum of all this is that the number of people truly and negatively impacted by non-upgradable GPUs is small enough to be offset by the benefits of bringing TB to a much larger group of workstation users so they can realize the benefits of greater choice, better support, and more affordable and timely peripherals as discussed earlier.

Now, here on Mac Rumors, the number of people impacted by non-upgradable GPUs appears high, but these forums are the home to enthusiasts who are the most likely to tinker and upgrade systems so that's expected.

Just starting with your first sentence or premise that mobile computing is rising and pc's are dying are you over or under 40 years old? Here is why I ask. USA has aging population that is tapped ,broke , whatever. So going mobile may slow down and a rock solid pc with great skype like power may be the new future. To back my counterpoint lust look at the Executive Real Estate relocation companies and realize that moving is a dying business not growing. While computer companies may want you to be mobile for their bottom line therealty may be it ain't coming true for a while..

 

[flat five]

Just starting with your first sentence or premise that mobile computing is rising and pc's are dying are you over or under 40 years old? Here is why I ask. USA has aging population that is tapped ,broke , whatever. So going mobile may slow down and a rock solid pc with great skype like power may be the new future. To back my counterpoint lust look at the Executive Real Estate relocation companies and realize that moving is a dying business not growing. While computer companies may want you to be mobile for their bottom line therealty may be it ain't coming true for a while..

I'm not making the connection between executive real estate relocation companies(?) and mobile computing.. clarify?

 

[zephonic]

@OP:well said, bro.

 

[VirtualRain]

Thanks for the positive comments and great discussion.

I agree it's not fair to compare the new Mac Pro to a 2012 machine which is really a slight evolution on the 2009 design, but a lot of the stagnation over that time has been partly Intel's fault. In terms of components and capability, the Mac Pro during that period was a reference Intel workstation design which was arguably a justifiable approach. Sadly though, even today, the C600 chipsets for the E5 don't offer USB3.

Their choice was essentially to produce yet another reference design (more of the same) or start from scratch by asking some tough questions and making some tough decisions... some of which we'll never know the background to. But, the more I think about some of the decisions they had to make and where we've been, the more the new design makes a lot of sense to me.

EDIT: Oh, and if you're concerned about the cost of TB peripherals, check out the sale prices on Amazon for Western Digitals TB Duo products. Their 8TB can be had on Amazon.ca for $649 which includes a cable. Their 2TB Velociraptor TB Duo can be had on Amazon.com new for $590 (MSRP of $959) and used (repackaged?) for $424. The latter is giving the TB enclosure away for free considering the cost of the drives. A pair of those Velociraptor Duo's in RAID0 will give you 4TB with faster STRs than an SSD! And, the TB situation will only get better.

 

[slughead]

As such, I really see much of the contemporary praise for the Tube as really being "Yay! They finally did *something* for us", where the customer expectations were so low it could have been as little as USB3 and SATA3 with the old CPU (figuratively speaking).

Maybe that was Apple's super-sneaky plan the whole time: make a crappy product for years so when a somewhat decent one is created, it blows everyone's mind.

"OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THIS YOOOOUU ESSSS BEEE THREE? IT MUST BE FROM THE FUTURE!"

 

[slughead]

As I mentioned in another thread, part of the reason there is a lack of Thunderbolt devices is because there is a lack of Thunderbolt on a lot of Macs. If you've been making devices meant for Mac Pro users, you've been forced to make PCI-E devices. That's not a judgement on Thunderbolt, that's the reality of the Mac Pro not shipping with Thunderbolt until now and only PCI-E.

Lack of thunderbolt on Macs? Wait a minute, don't ALL macs apart from the Mac Pro have thunderbolt? Don't those account for >90% of macs sold?? 95%??

You really think the remaining 5% is enough to move the market?

 

[philipma1957]

I'm not making the connection between executive real estate relocation companies(?) and mobile computing.. clarify?

Movement of jobs and moving in general causes the need for mobile computing. Job movement is down job relocations are down.

Less need for mobile computing.

Many large business companies use tele-conferencing to reduce travel expenses. Using an iMac or any decent all- in- one pc is ideal for that.
An example is Federal government very big employer more the 2 million workers. Lets say an IRS agent 90,000 of them Needs CE course for accounting . in the 90's they went to a center rented for the course maybe 1000 agents went to a hotel in Kansas City and took the course. Now they use an all in one pc and take the same course . Back in the 90's they needed a laptop to go to kc now the office pc is fine.

A lot of companies follow the bottom-line approach. Even though a mobile pc/mac is nice and works well if you do not need one that is even cheaper for the company.


This is the viewpoint of a lot of large companies. Also remember a laptop/tablet is a huge security risk


Well all know the damages caused by Edward Snowden

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/w...den-wikileaks-asylum-20130801,0,5224509.story

A lot of corporate theft is done with mobile gear. I have a friend that works on an all-in-one

no usb ports work to prevent file theft.

I do agree with you in that mobile gear rocks and is far better then it ever has been.

 

[dyn]

I had not thought of this. This is a very good point. However, this is more the fault of Apple for neglecting Mac Pro hardware than it is a problem with PCIe itself.

Let's face it: the Mac Pro was never ever really upgradable. PCIe never was the problem, we could fit whatever PCIe card we could find in it. Unfortunately things are not as easy as installing something physically. It needs to function in the software we use. Just go through the many topics about USB3 and SATA3 in the Mac Pro that we have here on the forums. Getting it to work seems to be nearly impossible; requires a lot of tinkering and most of all...luck.

PCIe never was the problem, getting it to work in OS X is the problem. With Apple and Intel hammering on Thunderbolt this might change for the better. We might actually get a Mac Pro that is upgradable because we can not only plug it in physically but we can actually use it as intended in OS X and the software we run on it. It seems that hardware manufacturers are now more eager to support their hardware on OS X.

If the Mac Pro had actually been updated instead of left to rott on the shelves not-updated (read: still doesn't have on-board USB3, PCIe 3.0, OR SATA III for G_d's sake), your comparison wouldn't be as good.

It's only a temporary fix and a very expensive one too. If you have a Mac Pro and you want the new stuff then you'll have to buy a new Mac Pro. Exactly the same situation as with all the other Macs. Already sold Macs also need to be upgraded. Which brings us back to the same problem: we can go out and buy whatever PCIe card we like and physically put it in the Mac Pro. Getting it to work in OS X will still be a challenge if you don't get the proper hardware. It all comes down to having support from the manufacturers for OS X.

Another thing that makes Thunderbolt more useful than PCIe is the same reason that Firewire is a big success in various industries. It's more future-proof. There are people who still use FW400 devices today and it is easy to do so. Support is great and you can still hook it up to the newer Macs (even the MBA, MBP Retina; another advantage of Thunderbolt). I can switch easily between notebooks and desktops so I can match the computer to my needs and still use my peripherals. With PCI, PCI-X and PCIe that isn't so much the case. When you buy a new machine you are stuck with one that will have that slot, it will have to be the correct size (an x8 card won't fit in an x4 slot; the x4 is too small), the case will have to be able to fit the card (this will be a problem with the longer cards) and if you go from desktop to laptop you need to buy a complete new set (computer + peripherals). These slots not being future-proof is the number one reason why in most companies certain machines never get replaced; they simply can't.

The only problem that both PCI/PCI-X/PCIe and Thunderbolt will have is (again), support from the manufacturer. With proper support Thunderbolt is a better idea than PCIe slots because it is more future-proof. That's the power of Thunderbolt and the reason why you want it in all your machines; both desktops and laptops.

everything else is more or less speed bump type of stuff coming from outside sources (faster gpu/cpu/ram/ssd/etc).. if they put the latest&greatest xr4Tinvidia in there.. so what.. that's not a technological leap..

That's something that has been going on for a few years. You also see it in the differences between notebooks and desktops in terms of performance. Thunderbolt is one of the very few new technologies that is actually a big change. Everything else is just "updated specs". I think the Raspberry Pi is the biggest change we've had in at least a decade in IT. The first time that they are getting children (boys and girls) hyped up for anything IT related. All of a sudden it is cool and fun to work with computers, to program, etc. It also get lots of hobbyists back to where it all was in the 90s. Tinkering with modern computers is long gone (and quite a lot of other electronics; that's the downside of making things "better"). If you want to tinker go get something like the Beagleboard or the Raspberry Pi.

 

[ABCDEF-Hex]

Another person who gets it:

Let's face it: the Mac Pro was never ever really upgradable. PCIe never was the problem, we could fit whatever PCIe card we could find in it. Unfortunately things are not as easy as installing something physically. It needs to function in the software we use. Just go through the many topics about USB3 and SATA3 in the Mac Pro that we have here on the forums. Getting it to work seems to be nearly impossible; requires a lot of tinkering and most of all...luck.

PCIe never was the problem, getting it to work in OS X is the problem. With Apple and Intel hammering on Thunderb.

Fits right in with this from the OP:

3. Computers are systems and rarely does unlocking one bottleneck not reveal another immediately whereby the ultimate solution is an upgrade of several key components to really unlock new computing potential. At this point it's usually warranted to upgrade the whole system anyway (including CPU, I/O, and GPU).

 

[-hh]

EDIT: Oh, and if you're concerned about the cost of TB peripherals, check out the sale prices on Amazon for Western Digitals TB Duo products. Their 8TB can be had on Amazon.ca for $649 which includes a cable. Their 2TB Velociraptor TB Duo can be had on Amazon.com new for $590 (MSRP of $959) ...

Yes, we can sometimes find great deals on sales...and these may infer a direction for future regular prices. But it is still a sale price which is only a momentary pertibation: not particularly reliable proof of a trend. Refurbs/used are even less reliable.

In any case, I find that can do 2x1TB VR RAID in USB3 right now for ~$575 (retail), new in box. While that's not much better, it's the 30 second check with no effort made whatsoever to look/wait for sales or other optimization.

Maybe that was Apple's super-sneaky plan the whole time: make a crappy product for years so when a somewhat decent one is created, it blows everyone's mind.

Unfortunately, the signs point to the Mac Pro team being chronically resource constrained (management neglect), probably because it has been a "treading water" placeholder rather than a growing profit center, so even if we agree that the business case didn't justify undertaking the expense of a new motherboard (particularly when out of cycle with Intel), the MP's design nevertheless lends itself to other solutions, such as an Apple-blessed (and supported) simple/cheap PCIe based USB3 card sold as a BTO.

And granted, Apple would probably have wanted to charge $100 for what would have been a $20 PC card, but that's also a different discussion: given how far out they've drawn the lifespan on the legacy Mac Pro (which sweetens profit margins), they probably should have thrown it in for free on the 2012 'revision'.


-hh

 

[goMac]

Lack of thunderbolt on Macs? Wait a minute, don't ALL macs apart from the Mac Pro have thunderbolt? Don't those account for >90% of macs sold?? 95%??

You really think the remaining 5% is enough to move the market?

Are you saying college students with Macbook Airs are big Thunderbolt users?

I'm saying that Thunderbolt devices are targeted at the pro market. If the Mac Pro doesn't have Thunderbolt, Mac Pro peripherals had to be PCI-E. You had this awkward split where devices targeted at MBP users are Thunderbolt and devices targeted at Mac Pro users are PCI-E. Now you don't have to dual produce and you can increase production scale.

 

[deconstruct60]

Are you saying college students with Macbook Airs are big Thunderbolt users?

I'm saying that Thunderbolt devices are targeted at the pro market.

There are two submarkets. One isn't necessarily going to drive broad TB adoption to legacy markets with high inertia, but it is around. The MBA owners who need a Ethernet or Firewire port would very much likely would be TB users. I wouldn't put that into the "pro" sub-market. This market is limited in that it will have higher overlaps with the USB 3.0/3.1 markets.

Likewise a MBA users isn't really a "pro" user if they simply connect their MBA to a TB docking/station display. They just need bigger display and a larger number of ports some of which have defacto permanent connections (printer , iPod dock , etc. stays plugged in ).

In terms of deployed numbers, TB dongles is probably higher than any of the other offerings. That can't be a primary growth driver though.

If the Mac Pro doesn't have Thunderbolt, Mac Pro peripherals had to be PCI-E.

There is probably a significant Mac Pro user submarket out there with Firewire and USB do-dads that would probably disagree.

You had this awkward split where devices targeted at MBP users are Thunderbolt and devices targeted at Mac Pro users are PCI-E. Now you don't have to dual produce and you can increase production scale.

 

[goMac]

There is probably a significant Mac Pro user submarket out there with Firewire and USB do-dads that would probably disagree.

What I meant more was that if there was a device that required higher bandwidth the FW800, it was typically a PCI-E card because Thunderbolt wasn't an option.

Thunderbolt has been available to a large chunk of the general market, but a subset of the pro market, which was what Thunderbolt was targeted at. And that was my point. The number of Macbook Airs out there hasn't exactly helped Thunderbolt, because how many Macbook Air owners need Thunderbolt devices?

Sure, there are displays, but that's a different class of device that isn't really whats being talked about.

 

[slughead]

You've also cherry picked the requirements to suit your point of view. I could cherry pick the requirement of installing 6 SATA drives inside the case and pronounce that the new Mac Pro has less capability than the current one. I could say that when USB 3.1 comes along I'll be able to add a $20 PCIe card with it, but you'll have to wait a year before someone bothers to do it on Thunderbolt, it will cost three digits, add to your clutter, and you'll have to run a separate power cable too. I could say that there are already 802.11ac cards coming out for $25-$60. When the new MP is 4 years old will wireless users be able to change out its card for the next wireless standard? Are they going to have yet another external box with yet another external power supply? Live with an unnecessarily slow connection? Buy a whole new computer?

Didn't you know? We're all using disposable computers now. Apple will let us know when it's time to upgrade by charging $2500 for a new Tube.

Excellent post by the way.

 

[Tesselator]

Didn't you know? We're all using disposable computers now.

I'm gonna recycle mine! Maybe melt it down into a giant bling hood ornament for my new Juke.

 

[zephonic]

Many large business companies use tele-conferencing to reduce travel expenses. Using an iMac or any decent all- in- one pc is ideal for that.

---edited for brevity---

A lot of companies follow the bottom-line approach. Even though a mobile pc/mac is nice and works well if you do not need one that is even cheaper for the company.

This is the viewpoint of a lot of large companies. Also remember a laptop/tablet is a huge security risk

I don't know about that. My wife works for a medium-sized (3,000+) Fortune 500 company, and they are phasing out the obligatory thinkpad/blackberry combis in favor of iPhone/iPad combis.

Developers have figured out how to do enterprise right on iOS and I wager we will see much wider corporate adoption before long.

I think the restrictive nature of iOS could be considered desirable for business: it reduces IT overhead and now that secure enterprise-class applications are available, Apple products have never been more suitable for corpo-world.

I am inclined to think the trend towards mobile will extend into enterprise as well.

 

[-hh]

I don't know about that. My wife works for a medium-sized (3,000+) Fortune 500 company, and they are phasing out the obligatory thinkpad/blackberry combis in favor of iPhone/iPad combis.

Developers have figured out how to do enterprise right on iOS and I wager we will see much wider corporate adoption before long.

I think the restrictive nature of iOS could be considered desirable for business: it reduces IT overhead and now that secure enterprise-class applications are available, Apple products have never been more suitable for corpo-world.

I am inclined to think the trend towards mobile will extend into enterprise as well.

I think you're spot on. I've just heard that a relative has just taken a new job (Municipal Government administrator -type) and they were issued an iPhone & iPad ...


FYI, the other trend that may break out and blossom - particularly in larger Enterprise - is the "BYOD" (Bring Your Own Device).

The general history of this stemmed from the iPhone becoming the go-to hardware at the high executive level who actually reminded their IT Departments that they're a support organization and to figure out how to make it work ... and from that icebreaker, there's been migration downwards through management, but also a bottom-up bounce from 'selling' the capability as a fringe benefit to low paid creative young types.

However, the catch is that the BYOD isn't necessary a good deal in the way that they're offering it (such as in privacy, cost sharing), plus the newest emerging trend is Enterprise now viewing BYOD as a potential means to dramatically cut their IT costs: the basic idea is to abolish Enterprise IT and rqeuire an employee to BYOD his own hardware at his own expense, which also includes the employee picking up the tab for its maintenance/repair...



-hh

 

[ABCDEF-Hex]

What does hh stand for?

"to low paid creative young types."
-hh

Must be high horse.
or highly paid and haughty.

 

[flat five]

I don't know about that. My wife works for a medium-sized (3,000+) Fortune 500 company, and they are phasing out the obligatory thinkpad/blackberry combis in favor of iPhone/iPad combis.

same exact thing with my girlfriend (pharmaceutical industry).. thinkpad/blackberry -> ipad/iphone

----------

Must be high horse.
or highly paid and haughty.

Henry Hudson.. duh..
he has a whole river named after him

[fwiw- i, personally, don't get a 'high horse' vibe from hh]

 

[hudson1]

Just starting with your first sentence or premise that mobile computing is rising and pc's are dying are you over or under 40 years old? Here is why I ask. USA has aging population that is tapped ,broke , whatever. So going mobile may slow down and a rock solid pc with great skype like power may be the new future. To back my counterpoint lust look at the Executive Real Estate relocation companies and realize that moving is a dying business not growing. While computer companies may want you to be mobile for their bottom line therealty may be it ain't coming true for a while..

I work for a Fortune 500 company and, from my experience, the cause and effect are reversed from the way you've stated. The growing and now essentially ubiquitous mobile capabilities have decreased the need for relocation. I don't see the need for mobile equipment declining at all. If anything, increasing.

 

[zephonic]

We're veering off-topic, but one more thing:

Isn't it ironic, SJ famously said he hated the enterprise market, but his most successful products (iPhone/iPad) might actually spearhead Apple's entry into that realm, not to mention it may give them an important advantage over Android, which seems not nearly as ready.

A headstart in enterprise sales may secure a substantial portion of that market before Android has a chance to catch up.

Anyway, back on-topic:

Thunderbolt vs. PCIe