Home / Blog

Hello, 2012: Here Comes Thunderbolt

By Studio Daily   /   Jan 6, 2012
2011 saw the introduction of the next great thing in high-speed-data port connections with Apple’s Thunderbolt. It really is a cool technology that could very well make the multi-cable peripheral-connection spaghetti-mess a thing of the past. The kind of speed that Thunderbolt is capable of delivering would be most at home on the digital professional’s desktop, so it’s video and photography folks who will most likely be adopting this technology first. Here we are at the beginning of 2012 with Thunderbolt existing on all of Apple’s machines except for the Mac Pro. Thunderbolt’s promise has also been hampered by the lack of more Thunderbolt products. So will the technology be a hit in 2012 or likely fizzle out into an expensive and specialty connection? It depends on whom you ask. The latest edition of MacBreak Weekly begins with a good discussion on Thunderbolt that’s worth listening to if this technology is on your radar. Host Leo Laporte is close to declaring Thunderbolt DOA, as opposed to the other guests on the show, who seem to be a bit more optimistic that it might gain some traction. I think they, like most of us who could really benefit from Thunderbolt, are taking more of a wait-and-see approach. Final Cut Pro guru Larry Jordan has written the best current article about what many of us are wondering: Where is Thunderbolt? The short answer seems to be Thunderbolt came along too early and it’s too darn expensive. Just a Thunderbolt cable alone costs $50! Thunderbolt is also a victim of the old chicken or the egg dilemma. PC makers won’t put Thunderbolt into their computers (thereby helping more widespread adoption) until there are more Thunderbolt products available. But those product makers won’t make more Thunderbolt products until there are more devices to connect them to. Like most new technologies costs will eventually come down and, if there are no additional road blocks, it will become more widespread. PC makers may finally be coming onboard in 2012 and indeed Lenovo has announced PCs with the Thunderbolt connection. That is unless it really is DOA. Apple has more plans for Thunderbolt, too, which could definitely push it fully into the ring: the USPTO just published three new Apple patent applications that could bring the technology to iOS devices. That alone would jumpstart Thunderbolt’s widespread use, since the technology will boost not just data transfer rates but recharge rates as well. 2012 may indeed be the make-or-break year for the technology, though it is too early to tell. You can be certain of one thing, however: if Thunderbolt does take over, we’ll all have to spend some extra money adapting to it. In the meantime, Sonnet Technologies looks to be right at the forefront of Thunderbolt support (for video folks both Blackmagic Design, AJA and Matrox have some shipping products, too) and this video, below, looks at several of their products. Others have announced some cool Thunderbolt products as well. Looks like it could be pretty cool at some point in the very near future. But that’s still quite a lot of spaghetti next to the laptop!

8 Comments

Categories: Blog
Tags: ,

  • Chimpunk

    The best and only thing you can do with it right now is attach a Promise RAID to a Mac. Which, is the case of the Mac Mini Server, is actually a really good idea. Very fast, very small, very good.

  • Larry Towers

    The problems with Thunderbolt, are NOT the usual chicken and egg story. The problems with Thunderbolt are:
    1- Apple’s implementation of it. Thunderbolt was supposed to be optical. Why are the cables expensive? Because going the electrical conductor route requires that the cables be active. Why is this a problem? As anyone who has worked with Firewire knows, electrically active communication ports are destined for flakiness or failure. Apple could have ended this by spending a few extra bucks for optical connectivity. and saved us all the headaches and the cash!
    2-Thunderport is a proprietary standard only supported on Intel motherboards

  • Thompson

    All that rigging to play half-res to a quarter-res monitor; what’s the point?

  • Pingback: What works with Thunderbolt? | Jonny Elwyn - Film Editor

  • Richard Brown

    “1- Apple’s implementation of it. Thunderbolt was supposed to be optical.”

    **Intel’s code name for Thunderbolt was “Light Peak” which does not imply intent to be optical.

    “Why are the cables expensive? Because going the electrical conductor route requires that the cables be active. Why is this a problem? As anyone who has worked with Firewire knows, electrically active communication ports are destined for flakiness or failure.”

    **Sounds like you are a PC user. I have never had fewer than half a dozen Firewire drives and other devices attached to my Macs since Firewire was implemented.

    Apart from external drive cases sometimes failing due to PC oriented lower build quality for price reduction (pushing you to get a better built, permanent one, like those from Wiebetech) I have seen no flakiness with Sony’s 1394a or 1394b. All my Firewire is up 24/7, a decade at a time.

    If you use certain lower grade hard drives, turning them on an off all the time equals flakiness and failure. Certain better (enterprise) hard drives give you on-demand 24/7 facility. In short, Firewire is not flaky, and does not fail when implemented seriously.

    Finally, I understand the flakiness concept in PCs. My Dell actually went from functional to not functional merely by shutting it down, unplugging it from the wall, leaving it sit a year (unplugged) and then plugging it back in to find it simply could not boot, no matter what. I downloaded the PC’s drive on my Mac, and chucked the useless thing.

    “Apple could have ended this by spending a few extra bucks for optical connectivity. and saved us all the headaches and the cash!”

    **With the current Thunderbolt spec being data, video, audio, network data, and power going through the “expensive” cable, I’d like to see an optical cable delivering power. Taking away capability in a narrow minded fashion would have killed the new products from Black Magic Design.

    “2-Thunderport is a proprietary standard only supported on Intel motherboards”

    **Intel co-invented Thunderbolt with Apple. Why shouldn’t each company take some advantage? When Intel issues PC motherboard with Thunderbolt, just cobble your next PC with an Intel board.

    I’m sure many will want to call me an Apple fan boy. The put down of Apple has been in full force since the first Mac. Today, smaller to tiny companies, like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, Disney, Bank of America, Citibank, and so forth (think “ALL” save Exxon/Mobil) learned to look up to Apple for getting it right on every level. I tried, a long time ago, to make everyone I knew rich, telling them to buy Apple at $7 a share. A 2,500 share investment then ($17,500) would have made them a millionaire today.

  • Don Ford

    Richard…why all the sensitivity about perceived slights toward Apple? I don’t know anybody who “really” cares one way or the other re PC vs Apple. We just demand that the product work and work well. Yes it seems that Apple stuff works pretty darn well but please…it’s just another computer…”Thou dost protest too much” or something like that…

  • Ernie Nathaniel

    Yes, perhaps Thunderbolt is a poor man’s fibre channel. But it is offered virtually free on the MacBook Pro’s and so what if the cable is $50. 2 x 10Gb channels for that kind of price is incredible. I’ve only seen it with the Promise Raid R6 and a MacBook Pro, but it performed incredibly well, far better than eSATA RAID, at over 500 MB/sec in RAID 5 mode. I look forward to checking out the AJA ioXT and others. It takes Apple to push the envelope.

  • Pingback: Thunderbolt: Ahead of its time or wave of the future? | Premiumbeat.com