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.
