Apple has just update their official website with an overview of Thunderbolt, which they all-but-confirm is Light Peak and designed in collaboration with Intel Labs (who has their own press conference scheduled for later this morning).
Thunderbolt is up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0 and twice as fast as USB 3.0. It’s a single cable that consolidates almost all existing ports, from FireWire to USB to miniDisplay to eSATA. This is one cable to rule them all.
And even though the new MacBook Pros come with only one Thunderbolt port, it shouldn’t matter for end users: two 10Gbps channels on the same connector mean you can daisy chain multiple high-speed, data-intensive devices and multiple displays to the same port without using a hub… and without reducing performance.
Forget everything else about the new MacBook Pros: this is the most important Apple announcement of the week. Apple and Intel’s reticence to adopt USB 3 now makes sense: they were out to kill it and every other connector out there once and for all.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
12 responses to “Apple Introduces Thunderbolt… One Connector To Rule Them All”
Looks like Thunderbolt will be what many (including business) have been waiting for from Apple – a one step dock connector. Seems that a Thunderbolt hub would allow you to easily go from desk to portable by attaching power & Thunderbolt connectors to a Macbook Pro.
Love that little server the MacBook is attached to. Does anybody knows what product it is?
According to the Apple website it’s a “Promise Pegasus RAID”
this is seriously a milestone for apple just to say were the first to EVER have light peak
this is seriously a milestone for apple just to say were the first to EVER have light peak
Interesting and useful post
Its expensive, but its the same price as comprable Dell and HP monitors with the same resolution. I’d love to have one, but I’d have to win the lottery to get one.