TB is nothing but bad for towers, because it requires hardware modifications to the GPU. That means that a Mac Pro with Thunderbolt ports would carry a proprietary GPU not unlike the extra ADC edge connector on the old AGP graphics cards shipped in various PowerPC Mac towers back in the day.
No. The Mac Mini and iMac require no such thing. The Mac Pro doesn't either. The hugely dubious premise is that TB has to be on or coupled to a detachable/modular PCI-e card. It doesn't. Proof? The entire rest of the Mac line up.
Neither does one embedded GPU preclude having two GPUs in a Mac Pro; one of which is a detachable PCI-e card. There is again zero requirement that two GPUs be hooked to the TB controller (i.e., that the GPU output of the modular card be routed though the TB controller ). When two GPU cards were present in current and previous Mac Pro class boxes the outputs were per card dependent. There is no reason to change.
There is nothing particularly wrong with a nominal Mac Pro configuration with two GPUs. The MBP 15" have been shipping that way for years.
A Mac Pro that supports Thunderbolt will automatically preclude the ability to do that. So you're stuck with the GPUs that Apple produces, full stop.
Only with this invented constraint of TB on discrete card....... well Intel hasn't promoted at all since the beginning of Lightpeak/Thunderbolt.
IMHO I think this preoccupation with putting TB on decoupled cards is in part the reason why it is has slow widespread adoption. Lots of efforts being poured into deeply flawed mindset and artificial constraints.
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external hard drives,
external hard drive arrays,
currently capable by current and previous Mac Pro. Besides 'lock in' to specific SATA cards embedded into external TB connected drives there is no new and in some cases
slower drive access here from the current PCI-e card solutions.
and if they nuke firewire, we will want TB HBAs for that as well.
Get rid of Firewire by adding a GPU (embedded or more expensive proprietary card ) to the system design? Not really. Besides they didn't dump from the 2012 Mac Mini.
Eventually, probably yes. Top tier priority removal? Probably not. An ODD is likely much higher on the list.
TB hard drives are a quite dubious key market focus for Thunderbolt. Running a single protocol ( SATA pci-e traffic) over a wire really doesn't leverage much of an advantage for TB over just using eSATA/SAS natively. There is absolutely
zero speed increase. None. It is purely about placement of the of the SATA controller chip; inside or outside the Mac Pro. Given 2-4 PCI-e slots in a Mac Pro there is a very huge question mark about significant added utility there. Especially in the context where the Mac Pro's PCI-e card slots are v3.0 speed and wider lane bundles available and TB is capped at v2. and capped at 4 lanes.
The sole secondary upside to TB is a "buy once use many" effect when the SATA controller is placed outside the box. That controller could be added to a variety of Mac just by plugging in a cable. However, that convenience comes at a increased cost. Unless avoiding buying muliple cards the bang for the buck is there. Especially for those who have already adopted significant eSATA/SAS investments.
Oh yeah, and doesn't Apple sell TB monitors?
tail wagging the dog. The TB "monitor" is a docking station. Why does a Mac Pro need a docking station? It doesn't.
