Steve said that about iPhone and iOS too and making quite a point about it. Sadly I have seen little evidence that anything Apple patents preventing anything from being copied ad nauseam by Google, HP etc.
Personally, I am gonna miss the cosiness of spaghetti...
I have to assume some company will come out with a 'spaghetti to lightpeak' adapter box for the years it will take for complete migration. I'm thinking of external high speed storage systems mostly as that's my thing but all peripherals will be in the same boat from FW to USB. Obviously the speed would be limited to the weakest link but without such an adapter there are going be a ton of peripherals going to waste. Griffin and the usual suspects must already be hard at work if this is all true. Doesn't SCSI seem a long time ago now?
Sure I get it...one cable on the Mac. Now do all of the other vendors get it? Will there be hard drives, card readers, scanners, camera's etc on the other end.
You're thinking at the wrong level. There will likely be ONE Light Peak connector (much as there is one Ethernet connector). Monitor, USB, eSATA, whatever will be put in an external converter box. Light Peak is SUPER high bandwidth & fast. You'd never connect, say, a mouse directly to it. That'd be like connecting a mouse to Gigabit Ethernet or FW800.
I also don't know the topology of Light Peak. Is is daisy-chainable like FireWire or hub based like USB? Or either? If you have the MacBook->power brick with various ports. Could you add another brick with some eSATA ports or more monitor ports or SDI cameras or RockNet audio network or the like?
Also, regardless of bandwidth, I believe other appeals of Light Peak are simplicity of connectors, low power, and cost. My understanding is that the light pump to electrons circuitry is cheap.
I wonder if the power will be able to flow both ways? Could you have a power brick that self powers the various wire ports, but also have a brick powered by the laptop that powers the ports?
This article is out of sync with Intel?s announcement of Light Peak. Intel switched to lower cost copper wire citing speeds were comparable to that of fiber optics
Sheez, I remember when SCSI was considered absolutely essential for anybody wanting to real-time streaming to/from the HDD. IDE would simply not suffice.
It's sobering to see how often superior technology loses out to something more affordable and practical.
Also note that optical cabling will be the standard one day, but it also needs to supply power (the downfall of eSATA). For this to happen it needs to have copper.
For most uses, I don't think fiber will ever displace copper. Integrated power is pretty crucial for a lot of interconnects. However another issue is with structured wiring. In-wall network cables should last for 100 years. Optical? I'm not convinced that light transmission characteristics are as stable over time as electrical conductivity.
Not that I dislike optical. Electrically decoupling devices is nice when possible. For instance, home theater components. Ground loops are less of an issue when not using electrical interconnects.
Comments
They have filed many patents.
Steve said that about iPhone and iOS too and making quite a point about it. Sadly I have seen little evidence that anything Apple patents preventing anything from being copied ad nauseam by Google, HP etc.
and in lightpeak bind them.
Personally, I am gonna miss the cosiness of spaghetti...
I have to assume some company will come out with a 'spaghetti to lightpeak' adapter box for the years it will take for complete migration. I'm thinking of external high speed storage systems mostly as that's my thing but all peripherals will be in the same boat from FW to USB. Obviously the speed would be limited to the weakest link but without such an adapter there are going be a ton of peripherals going to waste. Griffin and the usual suspects must already be hard at work if this is all true. Doesn't SCSI seem a long time ago now?
Sure I get it...one cable on the Mac. Now do all of the other vendors get it? Will there be hard drives, card readers, scanners, camera's etc on the other end.
You're thinking at the wrong level. There will likely be ONE Light Peak connector (much as there is one Ethernet connector). Monitor, USB, eSATA, whatever will be put in an external converter box. Light Peak is SUPER high bandwidth & fast. You'd never connect, say, a mouse directly to it. That'd be like connecting a mouse to Gigabit Ethernet or FW800.
I also don't know the topology of Light Peak. Is is daisy-chainable like FireWire or hub based like USB? Or either? If you have the MacBook->power brick with various ports. Could you add another brick with some eSATA ports or more monitor ports or SDI cameras or RockNet audio network or the like?
Also, regardless of bandwidth, I believe other appeals of Light Peak are simplicity of connectors, low power, and cost. My understanding is that the light pump to electrons circuitry is cheap.
Light Peak is going to provide a ridiculous amount of bandwidth in & out of a machine. And possibly at a cost in power and materials on par or less than USB.
I wonder if the power will be able to flow both ways? Could you have a power brick that self powers the various wire ports, but also have a brick powered by the laptop that powers the ports?
- Jasen.
Cheers !
Doesn't SCSI seem a long time ago now?
Sheez, I remember when SCSI was considered absolutely essential for anybody wanting to real-time streaming to/from the HDD. IDE would simply not suffice.
It's sobering to see how often superior technology loses out to something more affordable and practical.
Sheez, what a crappy looking lab. Looked like the back room of a Radio Shack circa 1991! Or a Windows desktop computer setup!
Oh, well. Me personally, if it means less cables and pwr bricks, then good. I sure don't want my office looking like that geek lab!
Who cares what their lab looks like? They're at the cutting edge of peripheral bus technology.
They could have bean bag chairs in there for all I care!
Also note that optical cabling will be the standard one day, but it also needs to supply power (the downfall of eSATA). For this to happen it needs to have copper.
For most uses, I don't think fiber will ever displace copper. Integrated power is pretty crucial for a lot of interconnects. However another issue is with structured wiring. In-wall network cables should last for 100 years. Optical? I'm not convinced that light transmission characteristics are as stable over time as electrical conductivity.
Not that I dislike optical. Electrically decoupling devices is nice when possible. For instance, home theater components. Ground loops are less of an issue when not using electrical interconnects.