Back in October of last year, Steve Jobs wrote someone asking him why USB 3.0 wasn’t in Macs and said: “We don’t see USB 3 taking off at this time. No support from Intel, for example.”
It’s pretty clear that Steve Jobs was saying this in light of his work with the Thunderbolt standard, which leaves USB 3.0 in the dust. But now that Intel is planning on supporting USB 3.0 come 2012 as part of their Ivy Bridge CPU refresh, will USB 3.0 ports come to Macs to complement Thunderbolt?
That’s what VR-Zone says. Well, kind of. According to them, Apple’s investigating third party USB 3.0 host controllers because they don’t want to wait until next year to roll out USB 3.0 ports to their Macs.
Why not Thunderbolt? According to VR-Zone, Thunderbolt controllers are pricy at about $10 to $15 per chip, with corresponding chips on the Thunderbolt device itself also required. In contrast, USB 3.0 just costs a few bucks.
Still… we call bull. Steve Jobs made a point of saying that No Intel support was a big problem for Apple when it came to USB 3.0. With Intel planning USB 3.0 CPUs for early 2012, there’s just no way they’ll jump ship to a third-party manufacturer instead of just waiting it out.
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.
11 responses to “Apple Will Release Macs With USB 3.0 Ports This Year, Despite No Intel Support [Rumor]”
Considering USB will soon be powering up to 100 watt to devices (death to powerstrips), and that is impossible with a fiber optics cable (thunderbolt) and still reaching 5gbps (half thunderbolt), I would say USB will remain king kable.
But that’s power. What about data transfer? Isn’t Thunderbolt still faster than USB 3.0? Personally, I’d rather see Apple push Thunderbolt harder. Otherwise it’s going to be that “thing” they invented and it didn’t catch. And Apple’s inventions aren’t allowed to not catch.
I reference: http://www.product-reviews.net…
Why not a Tbolt-USB3 adapter? Wouldn’t that work pretty well, even with a monitor in the middle? Just asking’ :)
The USB 3.0 plug is MUCH smaller than the old one. As someone who remembers the old SCSI, I’m amazed at how much progress these interfaces continue to make!
Thunderbolt isn’t fiber optic…yet. Lightpeak (What intel called Thunderbolt, was meant to be fiber, but the current generation isn’t.
ahh the old Scuzzies!! loves and hated them…