Apple shouldn't stop with a GPU. They should bring back the DuoDock concept, with GPU and CPU. Give me a very thin and light (yet reasonably powerful) notebook (yes, with options that include even a 17" screen), and then allow me to bring it home and dock it to transform it into a workstation with 27" or 30" display. Let me use the CPU and GPU inside the notebook in combination with the CPU and GPU in the dock to give me even better performance. Add icing to the already delicious cake by allowing me to add multiple GPUs and CPUs as I please. Not very Apple-like by today's standards, but who would have thought Apple would ever enter the car business. It's time to change by expanding our options while still keeping it as simplistic as possible with an amazing design. Nothing is impossible when you set your mind to it!
Yeah, you can buy a PCI-Express expansion box to fill with cards to add back the ports Apple removed from your computer. I'm not really criticizing Apple on this, some of the legacy stuff just had to go, but the promise of TB as a USB and Firewire replacement didn't seem to pan out. While, I love it for my external drives, if they didn't also have a USB3 interface on them, they would be useless to me to move from machine to machine in my current workflow. Thunderbolt for all it's potential and despite a few third parties embracing it, has just become Apple's proprietary display adapter.
This is because TB was never promised to be a replacement for USB and FireWire. Rather it was intended to be a replacement for internal slots. I'm not sure how this myth got started but the reality is that USB is already much faster than it needs to be for the majority of the uses it is put to.
TB has wide usage as a port for connecting professional devices. The problem is consumers aren't exposed to these devices just like they aren't exposed to PCI-Express cards. When is the last time a consumer bought a special purpose PCI-Express card? For the most part it just doesn't happen unless they have advanced "hobby" interest.
You can whine all you want about TB but you end up highlighting your misunderstanding of the technology.
I understand that Thunderbolt was to be an external PCI-E bus, but the problem is it came to the mac before USB 3 and right about the same time that Firewire and optical media where eliminated from most macs. Apple doubling the Thunderbolt port for a display port and subsequently driving their displays off of Thunderbolt didn't help and only added to the confusion as to the capabilities of the technology. When you go online and the majority of Thunderbolt peripherals are storage devices that are also available with USB ports, it doesn't help promote TB as anything else other than another serial port. Since the number 1 thing people use PCI card slots for are GPUs and those are yet to be support on TB for the mac, my only choice it to use it for storage devices, displays and the oddball dongle for ports such as ethernet that have been eliminated from my mac. I don't misunderstand the technology. I have just been given very few opportunities to use it as it was originally intended because Apple has forced me to use it as a catch all for technologies they are eliminating from their computers.
Apple shouldn't stop with a GPU. They should bring back the DuoDock concept, with GPU and CPU. Give me a very thin and light (yet reasonably powerful) notebook (yes, with options that include even a 17" screen), and then allow me to bring it home and dock it to transform it into a workstation with 27" or 30" display. Let me use the CPU and GPU inside the notebook in combination with the CPU and GPU in the dock to give me even better performance. Add icing to the already delicious cake by allowing me to add multiple GPUs and CPUs as I please. Not very Apple-like by today's standards, but who would have thought Apple would ever enter the car business. It's time to change by expanding our options while still keeping it as simplistic as possible with an amazing design. Nothing is impossible when you set your mind to it!
Maybe Apple should get back into custom chipsets and stop relying on Intel to make display port ready for serious displays. 30+ years of humongous pixels and jagged/blurry lines, while our print media has been 300+ dpi for decades. Unifying print and design to one metric would make things so much easier. Apple started the task and has dropped the ball by leaving it off their only computer that's still supposedly aimed at content creators.
i was sick of hearing pros complain about Apple ignoring pro tech, but now I feel it myself. My patience is gone.
Apple shouldn't stop with a GPU. They should bring back the DuoDock concept, with GPU and CPU. Give me a very thin and light (yet reasonably powerful) notebook (yes, with options that include even a 17" screen), and then allow me to bring it home and dock it to transform it into a workstation with 27" or 30" display. Let me use the CPU and GPU inside the notebook in combination with the CPU and GPU in the dock to give me even better performance. Add icing to the already delicious cake by allowing me to add multiple GPUs and CPUs as I please. Not very Apple-like by today's standards, but who would have thought Apple would ever enter the car business. It's time to change by expanding our options while still keeping it as simplistic as possible with an amazing design. Nothing is impossible when you set your mind to it!
durandal_1707 said: You can even buy an external PCI-Express expansion box, which would let you do pretty much anything.
But such a box costs more than an entire Windows PC with the same ports! Meanwhile OS X has deteriorated horribly. It is no longer any easier to use or more reliable than Windows. Apple has either forgotten that the Finder exists or seems to want to eliminate it. They are actively fighting against usability. (Try reading a USB memory stick on iOS.) It's like those old Mac Bashers are running the company now.
Sorry, but I disagree. As someone who is actively using Windows 10 right now at work and OS X at home, I can say with 100% conviction that the Mac is definitely more user-friendly and usable.
There are niggling issues on the Mac, but none that would make me consider switching to Windows at home.
No, it was not. It is all Intel. It was originally called Light Peak in 2009 using fibre optic technology. Once they determined that copper could handle the same bandwidth, and copper was far cheaper than fibre optics, Intel re-worked it to use copper wiring and renamed it Thunderbolt. Apple only modified the connector to their own version of mini DisplayPort without locking tabs. Since Apple was now using Intel for the Macs, they made the decision to drop the slower FireWire connector in favor of Thunderbolt.
Oh well, in that case both this site and wikipedia are wrong:
Though Apple originally filed for
ownership of the "Thunderbolt" trademark associated with its new
high-speed data port, the rights will be transferred to Intel, the
company with which it cooperatively developed the new standard.
Apple contributed to the development by including the mini
DisplayPort standard and an "electrical solution" that changed the
original optical cables to copper to provide power.
No, it was not. It is all Intel. It was originally called Light Peak in 2009 using fibre optic technology. Once they determined that copper could handle the same bandwidth, and copper was far cheaper than fibre optics, Intel re-worked it to use copper wiring and renamed it Thunderbolt. Apple only modified the connector to their own version of mini DisplayPort without locking tabs. Since Apple was now using Intel for the Macs, they made the decision to drop the slower FireWire connector in favor of Thunderbolt.
Oh well, in that case both this site and wikipedia are wrong:
Seems like this always happens...Day 1, rumors says this, Day 2, new rumor denies rumor from Day 1. Day 5, new rumor comes back out with something slightly different on the same topic.
Right and whomever spews last is considered gospel.
PED implies the news of no new display came from an "in-the-know Apple employee".
Maybe Apple should get back into custom chipsets and stop relying on Intel to make display port ready for serious displays. 30+ years of humongous pixels and jagged/blurry lines, while our print media has been 300+ dpi for decades. Unifying print and design to one metric would make things so much easier. Apple started the task and has dropped the ball by leaving it off their only computer that's still supposedly aimed at content creators.
i was sick of hearing pros complain about Apple ignoring pro tech, but now I feel it myself. My patience is gone.
with your posting history, this comes as no surprise.
30+ years of humongous pixels and jagged/blurry lines, while our print media has been 300+ dpi for decades. Unifying print and design to one metric would make things so much easier.
A 5k monitor at a reasonable price. *Looks at the out of date and over priced Apple Display currently not worthy.
A mid-tower at a reasonable price. eg. i7 and a 1080 Nvidia GPU UNDER £2000! Never happen, though. It doesn't HAVE to be dual gpu AND Xeons.
Too much to ask for?
Comments
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
i was sick of hearing pros complain about Apple ignoring pro tech, but now I feel it myself. My patience is gone.
http://gizmodo.com/339918/apple-docking-patent-works-perfectly-with-ultra-slim-macbook
Sorry, but I disagree. As someone who is actively using Windows 10 right now at work and OS X at home, I can say with 100% conviction that the Mac is definitely more user-friendly and usable.
There are niggling issues on the Mac, but none that would make me consider switching to Windows at home.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/20/thunderbolt_trademark_rights_will_be_transferred_from_apple_to_intel/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTJg4chGKNQ&t=11m41s
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