iPad Pro Thunderbolt 3 cable to connect iPad Pro (11-inch) (3rd gen) to Mac Mini M1 2020

[dobratzp]

I'm trying to get a 40 Gb/s connection to my iPad Pro from my Mac Mini, but all I can get is 10 Gb/s.

I've got a 2020 M1 Mac Mini, see tech specs:

• Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports with support for:
  • DisplayPort
  • Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40 Gb/s)
  • USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s)
  • USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gb/s)
  • Thunderbolt 2, HDMI, DVI, and VGA supported using adapters (sold separately)

I also have a iPad Pro (11-inch) (3rd gen), see tech specs:

• Thunderbolt / USB 4 port with support for:
  • Charging
  • DisplayPort
  • Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40Gb/s)
  • USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s)
  • USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)

So I've got a Mac Mini computer with a Thunderbolt 3 port and an iPad Pro with a Thunderbolt 3 port. This should be capable of making a Thunderbolt 3 connection at 40 Gb/s. I bought an Anker Thunderbolt 3 cable thinking this is exactly what I would need.

However, I open System Information.app and look under Hardware:
Thunderbolt/USB4:

• Thunderbolt/USB4 Bus 0
  • No Device Connected
  • Speed: Up to 40 Gb/s x1
• Thunderbolt/USB4 Bus 1
  • No Device Connected
  • Speed: Up to 40 Gb/s x1

USB:

• USB 3.1 Bus
  • iPad
    • Speed: Up to 10 Gb/s

I imagine that the write speeds of the iPad Pro and Mac Mini are not 40 Gb/s so maybe this doesn't matter, but it seems that I should be able to establish a Thunderbolt 3 connection between the 2 devices with a theoretical maximum of 40 Gb/s. Am I just using the wrong cable?

 

[chrfr]

The USB 10Gb connection is all that’ll work in this usage.
The Thunderbolt port in the iPad is useful to connect Thunderbolt devices like docks, disks, and network adapters, but isn’t for syncing the Mac and the iPad– at least not with current versions of operating systems on each device.

 

[Slartibart]

The USB 10Gb connection is all that’ll work in this usage.
The Thunderbolt port in the iPad is useful to connect Thunderbolt devices like docks, disks, and network adapters, but isn’t for syncing the Mac and the iPad– at least not with current versions of operating systems on each device.

Well, you can use IP over thunderbolt between e.g. 2 Macs to get higher speeds.
I do not know wether this works and I am not near any Mac to check this, but I think it is worth a try 😎:

• first off the OP should make sure that they have a Thunderbolt 3 data transfer capable cable.
• Then setup a Thunderbold bridge as a network service on the Mac, connect both devices with a thunderbolt 3-cable and access transfer via IP. You probably have to run e.g. a WebDAV-server via FileBrowser Pro (other apps providing this functionality are available 🤓) on the iPad; to access the Mac you can use Apple’s Files on the iPad after setting up file sharing on the Mac.

 

[chrfr]

Well, you can use IP over thunderbolt between e.g. 2 Macs to get higher speeds.
I do not know wether this works and I am not near any Mac to check this, but I think it is worth a try 😎:

This doesn’t work to sync an iPad to a Mac because there’s no way to configure a Thunderbolt network on the iPad.

 

[dobratzp]

It looks like I'm not doing anything incorrectly, but the connection to the iPad Pro from the Mac Mini is not Thunderbolt3 (40 Gb/s), but USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gb/s). I couldn't find anything documented from Apple to confirm why this is, but it's somehow a limitation of the hardware or software. For syncing files between the Mac Mini and iPad Pro, 10 Gbps is probably fine. I was able to get a 5 Gb/s connection from my 2012 Mac Mini to this iPad Pro, so twice as fast as that is good.

As far as achieving 40 Gb/s from the port on either the Mac Mini or iPad Pro, it looks like various Thunderbolt 3 docks have the 40 Gb/s connection to the dock, but then spread out to various peripherals potentially at lower speeds. I did find these OWC SSD raid enclosures that might actually utilize the 40 Gb/s link. It looks like they even offer Thunderbolt2 hardware it I wanted to hook something up to my 2012 Mac Mini.

Regarding using the Thunderbolt3 port to connect two Macs, I tried to connect my Mac Mini M1 to my MacBook Air M1, and I am able to establish a connection using the Thunderbolt bridge. The Mac shows up in System Information as a Thunderbolt device at 40 Gb/s, but as far as I can tell using the Thunderbolt bridge is limited to 10 Gb/s. Note that when opening a connection to a file share, the File Sharing service must be enabled on the target Mac and when you type the IP address using Go => Connect to Server in Finder, you must prefix it with:

smb://

I also remember using Target Disk Mode in the past, but that no longer applies to Apple Silicon Macs. I found an official document about booting in recovery mode and sharing the disk, but I couldn't get this to work. When I attempted to browse to the files, I just got "Loading" and never saw the files. I could envision some scenarios where this would be useful (main OS corrupted, etc), but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

For my use case, I'll probably just keep connecting both Macs to my home LAN via 802.11ax WiFi or Gigabit Ethernet to transfer files since it doesn't require any special setup and transfers files fast enough.