The MBPs has 2 TB ports on them. That means you can have one port for your external drive and the other for your monitor. But all that is beside the point because if you want to daisy chain then you buy peripherals that are designed to be daisy chained.
(BTW, can you even figure out how many ports it has from looking at that website? I couldn't find it without downloading the PDF manual, which is the other problem with TB — you have to do research just to find out if you can use something and still have a monitor.)
There's a fan site for Thunderbolt at https://thunderbolttechnology.net/ . It lists Thunderbolt products, and has the handy feature of listing how many ports they have. Almost half of them have only one port.
I think there is a disconnect somewhere.
For the HOME AUDIO COMPUTER USER.
There's tons of DACs on the market and the most popular connection is USB, they also use Toslink, SPDIF, Balanced, etc. but our computers we are USUALLY going to be using USB since we may not want Toslink, we usually don't not have RCA SPDIF or balanced. I wish Apple would give us ST Fiber, but that's too expensive, but that's amongst the best for 2 channel DACs. That's another topic of discussion.
When you use USB for 2 channel DAC the DAC companies tell you, even WARN you to NOT have USB Storage on the same USB bus as the DAC as it will cause drop outs, and other bad things, so for us users that have a computer and an external USB DACs, we have to either only use internal storage OR external storage that's not on the same USB bus, so Thunderbolt makes a LOT more sense. Apple abandoned Firewire FINALLY, but if we still have a Firewire device we can certainly use an adapter that costs $30. On my system, I only have 4 USB ports on the back and the USB DAC is using one, another is using a Mobee mice charger, another for my battery back up and my external RAID box it using Thunderbolt and it's NOT a low end "I don't have any money" $20 USB enclosure that doesn't do RAID. For storage, USB SUCKS. I've already done the speed tests and on my RAID, Thunderbolt is twice as fast, so I would be an IDIOT to use USB, when Thunderbolt is so much faster.
For the HIGH END PROFESSIONAL.
USB really has almost no need unless you are just doing a quick data transfer that's relatively small amount of data, but nothing that I would consider production work.
(BTW, can you even figure out how many ports it has from looking at that website? I couldn't find it without downloading the PDF manual, which is the other problem with TB — you have to do research just to find out if you can use something and still have a monitor.)
There's a fan site for Thunderbolt at https://thunderbolttechnology.net/ . It lists Thunderbolt products, and has the handy feature of listing how many ports they have. Almost half of them have only one port.
Which part of "caldigit (and other) TB docks support HDMI 1.4 out" confuses you? You dock your MBP into the dock. You plug your monitor into the dock via HDMI. You plug your TB SSD/Firewire adapter/Avid box into the dock via TB.
The thunderbolt single drive enclosure examples are just silly. You can use USB3 SSDs and still hit 400 MB/s read speeds for $100-$200 less.
For $309 I can get the 480GB USB 3 version vs $329 for the 256GB TB version.
The only Macs with just one TB port are the MBA, MBP 13" Non Retina and Mini. The Mini has HDMI out natively as well as Firewire and Ethernet. The MBP 13" has Firewire and Ethernet.
So your whole rant is about the MBA which never had FW in the first place because EVERY OTHER MODEL COMES WITH EITHER FW OR 2 TB PORTS.
And Apple solution was the 27" Thunderbolt Display which isn't horribly overpriced. $999 for a monitor and dock is on par with buying a Dell Ultrasharp 27" for $639 + $35 sound bar + $225 E-port replicator.
I think you are stuck into thinking that USB Is still worthwhile for high end Pro applications, where it's clearly isn't.
...
FOR THE HIGH-END PROFESSIONAL.
...
etc.
High-end professionals are a tiny niche. A niche that is not sufficient to keep a technology alive. When Thunderbolt is phased out, something else will pop-up to cater to the high-end pro market, and with any luck, it will be more practical than Thunderbolt is, and get greater exposure than what happened to TB (and, to a lesser extent, FireWire), which is to become a practically Apple-only product.
ExpressCard was phased out on the MBP line a few years ago, in favor of nothing. (And no, Thunderbolt was not available at that time.) Either Steve Jobs or Phil Schiller, I can't remember, went on stage and said that only (some tiny percent) of MBP users were using it. So they replaced it with an SD card slot. Yes, an SD card slot. Which you can easily get for USB for pennies. Heck, many SD cards come with a USB reader for free. Apple's built-in SD reader is on the USB bus, so it's not like it'll perform any better than a USB one. But they replaced ExpressCard with it. On their Pro line of laptops.
This is what happens to technologies that don't have a consumer application.
Which part of "caldigit (and other) TB docks support HDMI 1.4 out" confuses you? You dock your MBP into the dock. You plug your monitor into the dock via HDMI. You plug your TB SSD/Firewire adapter/Avid box into the dock via TB.
What part of "I'm talking about TB in general, not just one particular dock device" confuses you?
The thunderbolt single drive enclosure examples are just silly. You can use USB3 SSDs and still hit 400 MB/s read speeds for $100-$200 less.
Tell that to the people I'm arguing against. I'm being told that USB is completely worthless for storage, that no one should ever use it for storage, and that Thunderbolt is likely to take over the storage market.
For $309 I can get the 480GB USB 3 version vs $329 for the 256GB TB version.
Wow, it's like there's an echo in here.
The only Macs with just one TB port are the MBA, MBP 13" Non Retina and Mini. The Mini has HDMI out natively as well as Firewire and Ethernet. The MBP 13" has Firewire and Ethernet.
Can I hook up a display via FireWire or Ethernet?
Hell, is it a good idea to spend money on FW gear at all anymore given that it's effectively dead?
So your whole rant is about the MBA which never had FW in the first place because EVERY OTHER MODEL COMES WITH EITHER FW OR 2 TB PORTS.
Trivia time: What's the best selling Mac model right now?
And Apple solution was the 27" Thunderbolt Display which isn't horribly overpriced. $999 for a monitor and dock is on par with buying a Dell Ultrasharp 27" for $639 + $35 sound bar + $225 E-port replicator.
A grand is an awful lot of money for most people, and on top of that, it's outdated. The USB ports aren't even 3.0. Additionally, if you're talking about pros for whom a grand supposedly isn't that much money, many of them hate the glossiness, and there's no non-glossy option on that display. Besides that, some people want 4K monitors, or a size other than 27", or have some other specific need. You can't expect one monitor to satisfy the entire market.
Which part of "caldigit (and other) TB docks support HDMI 1.4 out" confuses you? You dock your MBP into the dock. You plug your monitor into the dock via HDMI. You plug your TB SSD/Firewire adapter/Avid box into the dock via TB.
The thunderbolt single drive enclosure examples are just silly. You can use USB3 SSDs and still hit 400 MB/s read speeds for $100-$200 less.
For $309 I can get the 480GB USB 3 version vs $329 for the 256GB TB version.
The only Macs with just one TB port are the MBA, MBP 13" Non Retina and Mini. The Mini has HDMI out natively as well as Firewire and Ethernet. The MBP 13" has Firewire and Ethernet.
So your whole rant is about the MBA which never had FW in the first place because EVERY OTHER MODEL COMES WITH EITHER FW OR 2 TB PORTS.
And Apple solution was the 27" Thunderbolt Display which isn't horribly overpriced. $999 for a monitor and dock is on par with buying a Dell Ultrasharp 27" for $639 + $35 sound bar + $225 E-port replicator.
Here's the problem with these USB external drives that are bus powered. I have two currently, but have owned others a long time ago. But the biggest problems that I had with those things is that they draw power from the bus and sometimes I may have other devices on the USB bus and it may not have enough power and then the USB bus powered HDD/SSD does what? It disconnects by itself. I dealt with that and there was NOTHING I could do except get away from USB bus powered devices. Now, I know there are a LOT of different products on the market, you don't have to give me a run down of everything that you are looking at. That's a waste of my time. But, when I've seen one of those portable drives with Thunderbolt, it was more expensive than USB 3, but it also had USB 3 as well, so it just gives you one more option because sometimes you don't have an open USB port. I have two Thunderbolt ports and 4 USB, but my USB are all filled up and I have to have an external storage and that's THUNDERBOLT.
I just think it's ridiculous to not have Thunderbolt capabilities because USB isn't that great for many things. For some things, it's fine or meant for, but for some things, it's awful. Please don't respond to this, I'm not going to listen to someone trying to say that Thunderbolt is not as good as USB. It's more expensive because its' better in so many ways, it's not even a contest...
Apple doesn't ship any products with Firewire anymore, those products have been discontinued when the new MacPro started shipping. But if you have an older Firewire device, then you just get an adapter. The reason why Apple ditched Firewire is because they wanted something MORE than what they were working on with Firewire and they went to Intel to develop Thunderbolt. They were working on Firewire 1600, which would have NOT been as fast as Thunderbolt 1, and certainly nowhere near as fast as Thunderbolt 2. Firewire really wasn't that good for being daisy chainable or be able to combine both PCI and Displayport on one line. They would have had a VERY difficult time doing what Thunderbolt 1 and 2 do with Firewire. It just wasn't something they could do well. That's why Firewire was taken over with TB 1 and 2. Firewire is pretty much dead moving forward, so it might be a good idea to think about how you are going to replace an obsolete technology moving forward, because eventually you'll have to.
What part of "I'm talking about TB in general, not just one particular dock device" confuses you?
Because your statement that you can't have a display when you use these devices is clearly false. You can. The display does not have to be the last item in the chain nor do you need to have the Apple 27" Thunderbolt display do so. So your bitching and whining is simply wrong.
You want to use a single port TB device with your MBA and a monitor buy a $199 dock with HDMI out. End of a non-problem.
Quote:
A grand is an awful lot of money for most people, and on top of that, it's outdated. The USB ports aren't even 3.0. Additionally, if you're talking about pros for whom a grand supposedly isn't that much money, many of them hate the glossiness, and there's no non-glossy option on that display. Besides that, some people want 4K monitors, or a size other than 27", or have some other specific need. You can't expect one monitor to satisfy the entire market.
So buy a different monitor. This is not hard. The CalDigit may not currently do 4K @ 30 Hz on it's HDMI port but you can via the native HDMI port on macs so it's just an issue with this particular hub. Anything less (2560x1600) should be fine. If you don't like that one try the Elgato one. It has HDMI out as well and supports up to 2560x1600 and is $229. There should be a 4K compatible HDMI dock out now that the docks have finally started appearing in number.
Because your statement that you can't have a display when you use these devices is clearly false. You can. The display does not have to be the last item in the chain nor do you need to have the Apple 27" Thunderbolt display do so. So your bitching and whining is simply wrong.
You want to use a single port TB device with your MBA and a monitor buy a $199 dock with HDMI out. End of a non-problem.
So buy a different monitor. This is not hard. The CalDigit may not currently do 4K @ 30 Hz on it's HDMI port but you can via the native HDMI port on macs so it's just an issue with this particular hub. Anything less (2560x1600) should be fine. If you don't like that one try the Elgato one. It has HDMI out as well and supports up to 2560x1600 and is $229. There should be a 4K compatible HDMI dock out now that the docks have finally started appearing in number.
What if your monitor doesn't support HDMI?
What if you don't want to use HDMI because it sucks, especially at 4K?
What if you need to use two Thunderbolt devices, and they both only have one port?
What if you don't want to spend $200 on a dock you don't want or need just to kludge your way around an idiotic design flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place?
What if you don't want to use HDMI because it sucks, especially at 4K?
What if you need to use two Thunderbolt devices, and they both only have one port?
What if you don't want to spend $200 on a dock you don't want or need just to kludge your way around an idiotic design flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place?
What if every time someone addresses one of your whines that you didn't just move the goal post?
Are you that "Tallest Skil" guy posting under a new username? If you can't understand why having to waste $200 on a device that does a bunch of stuff you don't need in order to use one of its ancillary functions to kludge your away around a problem, all the while reducing the video quality of your graphical output by downgrading to an inferior interconnect standard which might not even work with your monitor isn't a good solution, then there's certainly no point in trying to explain it to you.
(Hint: if $300 vs. $20 is already a crazy price differential vs. USB 3, does boosting that price to $500 make that better, or worse?)
This is almost as good as that guy who was going "Oh, just buy this $500 PCI enclosure and then stick this $50 PCI card in it!"
High-end professionals are a tiny niche. A niche that is not sufficient to keep a technology alive. When Thunderbolt is phased out, something else will pop-up to cater to the high-end pro market, and with any luck, it will be more practical than Thunderbolt is, and get greater exposure than what happened to TB (and, to a lesser extent, FireWire), which is to become a practically Apple-only product.
ExpressCard was phased out on the MBP line a few years ago, in favor of nothing. (And no, Thunderbolt was not available at that time.) Either Steve Jobs or Phil Schiller, I can't remember, went on stage and said that only (some tiny percent) of MBP users were using it. So they replaced it with an SD card slot. Yes, an SD card slot. Which you can easily get for USB for pennies. Heck, many SD cards come with a USB reader for free. Apple's built-in SD reader is on the USB bus, so it's not like it'll perform any better than a USB one. But they replaced ExpressCard with it. On their Pro line of laptops.
This is what happens to technologies that don't have a consumer application.
What part of "I'm talking about TB in general, not just one particular dock device" confuses you?
Tell that to the people I'm arguing against. I'm being told that USB is completely worthless for storage, that no one should ever use it for storage, and that Thunderbolt is likely to take over the storage market.
Wow, it's like there's an echo in here.
Can I hook up a display via FireWire or Ethernet?
Hell, is it a good idea to spend money on FW gear at all anymore given that it's effectively dead?
Trivia time: What's the best selling Mac model right now?
A grand is an awful lot of money for most people, and on top of that, it's outdated. The USB ports aren't even 3.0. Additionally, if you're talking about pros for whom a grand supposedly isn't that much money, many of them hate the glossiness, and there's no non-glossy option on that display. Besides that, some people want 4K monitors, or a size other than 27", or have some other specific need. You can't expect one monitor to satisfy the entire market.
I don't think you really FULLY grasp everything.
What Thunderbolt will EFFECTIVELY do is replace FIREWIRE, MADI, FIBRE CHANNEL and give people a NEW way to connect a larger variety of different TYPES of products that simply weren't available BEFORE Thunderbolt. So, it has a LOT more potential traction than all of the other I/O ports that it can EFFECTIVELY replace. If you look at USB 3.0, most people don't have much in the way of USB 3.0 products. Most products people use are USB 2.0, NOT USB 3.0. I agree the Thunderbolt monitor SHOULD be replaced and I'm sure most of us thought it would have been replaced as early as a year or so ago, so that is of concern to many of us. They might be working on a Thunderbolt model that has Thunderbolt 2 ports and USB 3.0 ports, but I'm sure they are looking at what the NEEDS are. It is typically the last on the chain when connecting to a Thunderbotl daisy chain, so I don't necessarily think it needs Thunderbolt 2, but it could use USB 3.0, MAYBE. Most people don't even use USB 3.0. The majority of users use USB for keyboards, mice, trackballs/trackpads, USB DACs, printers, etc. and most of the USB products on the market are USB 2.0. For the HIGH END market of storage that's connected directly to the computer, Thunderbolt will replace Firewire, Fibre Channel as far as I can tell. What has Fibre Channel done lately? A lot of Fibre Channel is connected to Servers, but the fastest implementation is slower than Thunderbolt 2 and I don't know what it's going to do in the future, especially with this announcement of 40GB Thunderbolt 3.
Now, SD Slots, I'm sure people use it. I tried it, but those cards are really small, VERY easy to lose and it doesn't really make any difference to me, but I know some people use them.
I never said USB was worthless for storage. I said for small data transfers, sure, but if you have a USB DAC, it's not useful, for larger data transfers I wouldn't use it. For larger data transfers I wouldn't use it. I think you simply take words out of what was said, twist things around to suit your argument. I think if you are going to buy an external drive to make sure it has at LEAST both if it's one of those pocket drives. At least it gives you access to both ports, especially for the newer Macs. Some people buy computers, but don't grasp the simple concept of THINGS COST MONEY and more advanced technology usually costs MORE.
For the H
There's a rule that applies here.
1. FAST
2. INEXPENSIVE
3. HIGH QUALITY (Reliable)
Pick two because you can't have all three. but just because YOU can't afford it doesn't mean it's what everyone else SHOULD do, or what is the better more reliable and higher performance way of doing things. MOST professionals spend money on newer technology because they understand this and know they have to budget for this. Joe Blow consumers don't necessarily always have the money, but don't go telling people USB Is just as good as Thunderbolt, when the specs show differently. Thunderbolt is FAST, RELIABLE and HIGH QUALITY, but it's not inexpensive compared to USB. But USB isn't as fast, reliable or as robust of a I/O compared to Thunderbolt 1 or 2. STOP COMPARING.
What Mac is the biggest seller doesn't mean anything other than what is the most popular Mac. Pros don't buy inexpensive Macs, they buy higher end Macs.
I personally don't think for Mac users that USB 3.0 is going to be as widely used as Thunderbolt when it comes to storage. That's my gut feeling.
Are you that "Tallest Skil" guy posting under a new username? If you can't understand why having to waste $200 on a device that does a bunch of stuff you don't need in order to use one of its ancillary functions to kludge your away around a problem, all the while reducing the video quality of your graphical output by downgrading to an inferior interconnect standard which might not even work with your monitor isn't a good solution, then there's certainly no point in trying to explain it to you.
(Hint: if $300 vs. $20 is already a crazy price differential vs. USB 3, does boosting that price to $500 make that better, or worse?)
This is almost as good as that guy who was going "Oh, just buy this $500 PCI enclosure and then stick this $50 PCI card in it!"
First, I'm not the genius that proclaimed that no firewire device ever had one port only to have to make some shit up about "well, okay you found one so that PROVES my point". And then having to backtrack when it is shown that you can, in fact, run a display even with a single port TB device at the end of the chain.
Second, the MBA never had high speed connectivity before it got thunderbolt so whining about Apple improving the MBA is plain stupid.
Third, you don't have to buy a $200 dock unless you want to do something asinine like you do. Which is run a display AND have a bunch of single TB port devices on a MBA. 90% of which are drive enclosures for which there are ample alternatives.
Finally there's nothing wrong with HDMI as an interconnect. It's not like mDP is mechanically more secure.
TS and I don't like each other but you're still a whining troll. At least pick an issue that is relevant to whine about and not how TB sucks when most Apple computers have two ports and docks have finally appeared on the market as opposed to vaporware.
I personally don't think for Mac users that USB 3.0 is going to be as widely used as Thunderbolt when it comes to storage. That's my gut feeling.
Given that I see USB 3.0 external drives everywhere at work where there are a lot of macs and not once seen a TB external drive I'd say your gut feeling is wrong. For one thing a USB external drive will work on a PC as well and that's very handy.
And I've never had any issue with high quality USB external drives or drive enclosures. We've got stacks of externals and bare drives used in USB 3.0 toasters for exchanging and working with large data sets.
Are you that "Tallest Skil" guy posting under a new username? If you can't understand why having to waste $200 on a device that does a bunch of stuff you don't need in order to use one of its ancillary functions to kludge your away around a problem, all the while reducing the video quality of your graphical output by downgrading to an inferior interconnect standard which might not even work with your monitor isn't a good solution, then there's certainly no point in trying to explain it to you.
(Hint: if $300 vs. $20 is already a crazy price differential vs. USB 3, does boosting that price to $500 make that better, or worse?)
This is almost as good as that guy who was going "Oh, just buy this $500 PCI enclosure and then stick this $50 PCI card in it!"
I bought a Drobo mini, it does RAID and the enclosure does both USB 2 and 3 and Thunderbolt (two ports) and it cost about $350. You can NOT buy ANYTHING for $20 that will do what the Drobo mini does. IMPOSSIBLE. PERIOD. NO Fing WAY. It may not be the most insane RAID box on the market, but it works great and with RAID 5 and 4 decent $248GB SSD's inside, it came out to about $1,000. Show me something that's as good with USB anything that doesn't have Thunderbolt. Go ahead, TRY. Oh, BTW, I can't use USB because of my DAC. Oops.
People that buy a $500 PCI enclosure aren't sticking in $50 PCI cards, they are sticking a lot of Pro Tools cards that costs THOUSANDS of dollars and have a portable Pro Tools HD rig. Seriously. The way you make up numbers to prove your point is pretty hysterical. A lot of what you are TRYING to do is make things up as you go along to TRY to prove your argument, and unfortunately, it's not working. Good try though.
I haven't met ANYONE that puts a $50 card in a Thunderbolt PCI enclosure. they put Red Rocket cards, ProTools HD cards, MADI, RAID cards, all kinds of stuff. What $50 card are you referring to anyway? Most of the cards I see these Thunderbolt PCI chassis used for are a little more expensive than a $50 card. It's not like they are sticking a parallel port to connect to a dot matrix printer they still have around from the 80's.
If I was a MacBook owner, i'd probably have the Belkin (or similar) Thunderbolt docking station as an automatic purchase. They are great way to add connectivity without having to plug and unplug a bunch of crap when you get home or in your office. It's a great device.
Given that I see USB 3.0 external drives everywhere at work where there are a lot of macs and not once seen a TB external drive I'd say your gut feeling is wrong. For one thing a USB external drive will work on a PC as well and that's very handy.
And I've never had any issue with high quality USB external drives or drive enclosures. We've got stacks of externals and bare drives used in USB 3.0 toasters for exchanging and working with large data sets.
There are PCs nowadays that do have Thunderbolt, but maybe it works for you. but I can't freaking use USB for storage. I have a USB DAC and that takes precedence over my USB bus for storage, plus my RAID box is 2x faster running over TB 1 vs USB 3.0. My storage is a RAID and it's on Thunderbolt and it hasn't hiccuped at all. When I had my USB drives, they would mount and unmount all of the time during backups and I got fed up with that crap and then I got this set up and it works GREAT.
What do you mean high quality? Are they $20 enclosures? I just think USB for storage is a sucker's bet. Just my personal feelings, especially for the Pro and people that don't want to worry as much.
What Thunderbolt will EFFECTIVELY do is replace FIREWIRE, MADI, FIBRE CHANNEL and give people a NEW way to connect a larger variety of different TYPES of products that simply weren't available BEFORE Thunderbolt. So, it has a LOT more potential traction than all of the other I/O ports that it can EFFECTIVELY replace.
Then why doesn't it have the same level of usage that FireWire had three years in?
If you look at USB 3.0, most people don't have much in the way of USB 3.0 products. Most products people use are USB 2.0, NOT USB 3.0. I agree the Thunderbolt monitor SHOULD be replaced and I'm sure most of us thought it would have been replaced as early as a year or so ago, so that is of concern to many of us. They might be working on a Thunderbolt model that has Thunderbolt 2 ports and USB 3.0 ports, but I'm sure they are looking at what the NEEDS are. It is typically the last on the chain when connecting to a Thunderbotl daisy chain, so I don't necessarily think it needs Thunderbolt 2, but it could use USB 3.0, MAYBE. Most people don't even use USB 3.0.[/quote]
Plenty of people use USB 3.0, and those who don't yet, will. This is simple enough to see, because for the types of devices that need the extra speed, USB 2.0 is slowly, but surely, being phased out in terms of USB 3.0. If you go on Newegg right now, you will see that there are more USB 3.0 disk enclosures being sold than USB 2.0 ones.
People are going to buy what works for them, and is cheap. When the box on the shelf changes from a USB 2.0 drive to a USB 3.0 drive, it's not going to change their habits.
The majority of users use USB for keyboards, mice, trackballs/trackpads, USB DACs, printers, etc. and most of the USB products on the market are USB 2.0. For the HIGH END market of storage that's connected directly to the computer, Thunderbolt will replace Firewire, Fibre Channel as far as I can tell. What has Fibre Channel done lately? A lot of Fibre Channel is connected to Servers, but the fastest implementation is slower than Thunderbolt 2 and I don't know what it's going to do in the future, especially with this announcement of 40GB Thunderbolt 3.
The best thing Thunderbolt 3 can do with that connector change is to make the cables no longer active. The active cables are a complete kludge, caused by the fact that Intel wanted the cables to be optical but couldn't make it work. As things stand, I don't think the standard has much of a future.
I never said USB was worthless for storage. I said for small data transfers, sure, but if you have a USB DAC, it's not useful, for larger data transfers I wouldn't use it. For larger data transfers I wouldn't use it. I think you simply take words out of what was said, twist things around to suit your argument. I think if you are going to buy an external drive to make sure it has at LEAST both if it's one of those pocket drives. At least it gives you access to both ports, especially for the newer Macs. Some people buy computers, but don't grasp the simple concept of THINGS COST MONEY and more advanced technology usually costs MORE.
There's a rule that applies here.
1. FAST
2. INEXPENSIVE
3. HIGH QUALITY (Reliable)
Pick two because you can't have all three. but just because YOU can't afford it doesn't mean it's what everyone else SHOULD do, or what is the better more reliable and higher performance way of doing things. MOST professionals spend money on newer technology because they understand this and know they have to budget for this. Joe Blow consumers don't necessarily always have the money, but don't go telling people USB Is just as good as Thunderbolt, when the specs show differently. Thunderbolt is FAST, RELIABLE and HIGH QUALITY, but it's not inexpensive compared to USB. But USB isn't as fast, reliable or as robust of a I/O compared to Thunderbolt 1 or 2. STOP COMPARING.
That was true with older versions of USB, but USB 3.0 (with UASP) is more than good enough for the vast majority of use cases needing an external storage device.
I personally don't think for Mac users that USB 3.0 is going to be as widely used as Thunderbolt when it comes to storage. That's my gut feeling.
For the vast majority of users, USB is what you use to connect external storage. Most don't even know what Thunderbolt is. I'd be shocked if Thunderbolt even managed to get within an order of magnitude of USB 3.0.
There are 333 USB 3.0 enclosures on Newegg. How many Thunderbolt enclosures are even available anywhere?
First, I'm not the genius that proclaimed that no firewire device ever had one port only to have to make some shit up about "well, okay you found one so that PROVES my point".
The fact is that there is only one on the entire market, and it's clearly an outlier, with every single other one of the 64 FW enclosures on Newegg having two ports. Whereas with Thunderbolt about half of all devices overall, and 100% of single-bay storage enclosures, have only one port. If you can't grasp that distinction, well, that's not my problem.
And then having to backtrack when it is shown that you can, in fact, run a display even with a single port TB device at the end of the chain.
Using a $200 kludge that sucks and won't work with all monitors, when the drive was already $200 more than the USB 3.0 one to begin with. I'll stick with the USB drive, thanks.
Second, the MBA never had high speed connectivity before it got thunderbolt so whining about Apple improving the MBA is plain stupid.
The machine that the MBA replaced was the white/black MacBook, which certainly did have high speed connectivity, in FireWire, which was a whole lot cheaper and a hell of a lot more useful, due to devices actually existing for it.
Third, you don't have to buy a $200 dock unless you want to do something asinine like you do. Which is run a display AND have a bunch of single TB port devices on a MBA. 90% of which are drive enclosures for which there are ample alternatives.
Show me one. Every last Thunderbolt single-bay enclosure I've been able to find has had only one port. The only alternative is to use a UASP enclosure instead.
Finally there's nothing wrong with HDMI as an interconnect. It's not like mDP is mechanically more secure.
It may not be mechanically more secure, but it's much more modern and has far greater bandwidth. HDMI is limited in the resolutions it can support. HDMI 1.4 can't even do more than 30 FPS on a 4K display. A lot of monitors don't take HDMI for input. The standard was developed for connecting TVs, which generally support only a few standard resolutions, not computer monitors which support a huge array of them.
Bottom line: this is a kludge, not a universal solution.
TS and I don't like each other but you're still a whining troll.
Your writing style is very similar to TS, as well as your content-to-mudslinging ratio, and you're going to join him on my ignore list.
At least pick an issue that is relevant to whine about and not how TB sucks when most Apple computers have two ports
There are a lot more MacBook Airs and pre-Retina MBPs out there than rMBPs. Way more.
Then why doesn't it have the same level of usage that FireWire had three years in?
If you look at USB 3.0, most people don't have much in the way of USB 3.0 products. Most products people use are USB 2.0, NOT USB 3.0. I agree the Thunderbolt monitor SHOULD be replaced and I'm sure most of us thought it would have been replaced as early as a year or so ago, so that is of concern to many of us. They might be working on a Thunderbolt model that has Thunderbolt 2 ports and USB 3.0 ports, but I'm sure they are looking at what the NEEDS are. It is typically the last on the chain when connecting to a Thunderbotl daisy chain, so I don't necessarily think it needs Thunderbolt 2, but it could use USB 3.0, MAYBE. Most people don't even use USB 3.0.[/quote]
Plenty of people use USB 3.0, and those who don't yet, will. This is simple enough to see, because for the types of devices that need the extra speed, USB 2.0 is slowly, but surely, being phased out in terms of USB 3.0. If you go on Newegg right now, you will see that there are more USB 3.0 disk enclosures being sold than USB 2.0 ones.
People are going to buy what works for them, and is cheap. When the box on the shelf changes from a USB 2.0 drive to a USB 3.0 drive, it's not going to change their habits.
The best thing Thunderbolt 3 can do with that connector change is to make the cables no longer active. The active cables are a complete kludge, caused by the fact that Intel wanted the cables to be optical but couldn't make it work. As things stand, I don't think the standard has much of a future.
That was true with older versions of USB, but USB 3.0 (with UASP) is more than good enough for the vast majority of use cases needing an external storage device.
For the vast majority of users, USB is what you use to connect external storage. Most don't even know what Thunderbolt is. I'd be shocked if Thunderbolt even managed to get within an order of magnitude of USB 3.0.
There are 333 USB 3.0 enclosures on Newegg. How many Thunderbolt enclosures are even available anywhere?
Firewire JUST came out for the MacPro, which is for the Pro market. Give it a little time, Thunderbolt will outdo Firewire, that's a given.
For the Pro Market, Thunderbolt (2 mostly) will outdo USB 3.0. That will be EASY. I don't know of ANYONE using USB 3.0 enclosures to put Pro Tools HD cards in, but there are plenty of people doing as we speak. Give the MacPro community some time to get their new machines and deploy them. They are still a month backlogged.
I don't know where you got the information between Firewire adoption and Thunderbolt adoption from. Please site your reference.
The number of enclosures doesn't mean anything. It's what the enclosures DO. Look at what TYPES of enclosures are for Thunderbolt. They are mostly RAID boxes and some SERIOUS one at that and some have PCI slots in addition to the hot swappable RAID.
Just some stupid site listing a bunch of cheap USB 3 enclosures can mean that no one's buying them and the Chinese are just dumping them on the market because they overbuilt for the actual demand. I have a lot of use for USB for simple devices but NO use for USB 3.0 for storage. My next storage unit will again be Thunderbolt, NOT USB 3.0. If it has both, then it has both, but I won't be USING USB 3.0 for storage. How's that? So if I buy an enclosure that has both, does that mean i use both? NOPE. It means I use ONE of the two, but i can use both. But which one do I use? Thunderbolt.
One person will probably go through a bunch of cheap USB enclosures because they don't last long. I already have two USB drives that I don't even use anymore. You want one? I'll sell it to you cheap. One's a Seagate and one's a LaCie, but the LaCie SUCKS, the Seagate is OK, it's more reliable than the LaCie. :-) Neither has been dropped.
There are PCs nowadays that do have Thunderbolt, but maybe it works for you. but I can't freaking use USB for storage. I have a USB DAC and that takes precedence over my USB bus for storage, plus my RAID box is 2x faster running over TB 1 vs USB 3.0. My storage is a RAID and it's on Thunderbolt and it hasn't hiccuped at all. When I had my USB drives, they would mount and unmount all of the time during backups and I got fed up with that crap and then I got this set up and it works GREAT.
What do you mean high quality? Are they $20 enclosures? I just think USB for storage is a sucker's bet. Just my personal feelings, especially for the Pro and people that don't want to worry as much.
I bought a Drobo mini, it does RAID and the enclosure does both USB 2 and 3 and Thunderbolt (two ports) and it cost about $350. You can NOT buy ANYTHING for $20 that will do what the Drobo mini does. IMPOSSIBLE. PERIOD. NO Fing WAY. It may not be the most insane RAID box on the market, but it works great and with RAID 5 and 4 decent $248GB SSD's inside, it came out to about $1,000. Show me something that's as good with USB anything that doesn't have Thunderbolt. Go ahead, TRY.
You do realize that Drobo is not what most people are looking for when they get an external hard drive, right? Most people are looking to fill much, much simpler needs than that.
Regardless, I found some USB vs. Thunderbolt benchmarks for Drobo 5D.
In their tests, USB 3.0 was, of course, not as fast as Thunderbolt, but it got remarkably close given that the Drobo 5D doesn't support UASP. If it did, the result would likely be neck-and-neck.
FWIW, I just used the 'time' command to see how long it would take to cat a 1.03 GB file on my external UASP SSD. It took 2.669 seconds. That's 385.3 MB/s, which is faster than the manufacturer of the SSD (Crucial) even claims. The Blackmagic speed test app reports 348.6 MB/s read speeds. Pretty blazing fast.
Oh, BTW, I can't use USB because of my DAC. Oops.
It's funny how people earlier on were accusing me of making this about my personal needs, isn't it?
People that buy a $500 PCI enclosure aren't sticking in $50 PCI cards, they are sticking a lot of Pro Tools cards that costs THOUSANDS of dollars and have a portable Pro Tools HD rig. Seriously. The way you make up numbers to prove your point is pretty hysterical. A lot of what you are TRYING to do is make things up as you go along to TRY to prove your argument, and unfortunately, it's not working. Good try though.
There was a guy in this thread, GoodGrief, who literally suggested exactly that — putting a $50 PCI card in a $500 PCI enclosure. It's on page 2. Go back and look and you'll see it. Good try, indeed.
If I was a MacBook owner, i'd probably have the Belkin (or similar) Thunderbolt docking station as an automatic purchase. They are great way to add connectivity without having to plug and unplug a bunch of crap when you get home or in your office. It's a great device.
I thought that once, too. Then I found out that the USB ports run at half the speed they're supposed to, and according to Amazon reviews, they're non-bootable. Eh, it's too expensive a device to be that flaky.
BTW, I'm getting pretty sick of this, so I'm probably going to be leaving soon. Ciao.
The fact is that there is only one on the entire market, and it's clearly an outlier, with every single other one of the 64 FW enclosures on Newegg having two ports.
Actually, I'm looking at my old LaCie Porche designed FW drive and noticed there's only one port. And looking on Amazon there's this one with one of each FW 400, 800 and USB 2.0.
Using a $200 kludge that sucks and won't work with all monitors, when the drive was already $200 more than the USB 3.0 one to begin with. I'll stick with the USB drive, thanks.
So there's no problem now is there? Use USB 3.0. It's not like Macs don't come with USB.
It's not a kludge but a dock and nothing works with all monitors. The fact remains that your statement was false. Again.
Quote:
It may not be mechanically more secure, but it's much more modern and has far greater bandwidth. HDMI is limited in the resolutions it can support. HDMI 1.4 can't even do more than 30 FPS on a 4K display. A lot of monitors don't take HDMI for input. The standard was developed for connecting TVs, which generally support only a few standard resolutions, not computer monitors which support a huge array of them.
Bottom line: this is a kludge, not a universal solution.
Bottom line: it's a dock and lots of monitors take HDMI as input and you still have mDP if you want.
And the only resolution I want to run my monitor at is the native one. Which HDMI will do.
Quote:
Your writing style is very similar to TS, as well as your content-to-mudslinging ratio, and you're going to join him on my ignore list.
Comments
The MBPs has 2 TB ports on them. That means you can have one port for your external drive and the other for your monitor. But all that is beside the point because if you want to daisy chain then you buy peripherals that are designed to be daisy chained.
Aren't the new MBPRetinas TB 2?
That's nice. What if you're using this device?
http://oyendigital.com/minipro-thunderbolt-ssd.html#?
Or this one?
http://www.akitio.com/portable-storage/neutrino-thunderboltedition
Or this one?
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD464ZM/A/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapter?afid=p219|GOUS&cid=AOS-US-KWG-PLA
Or, since we were talking about high-end audio, this one?
http://www.avid.com/US/products/Pro-Tools-HD-native
(BTW, can you even figure out how many ports it has from looking at that website? I couldn't find it without downloading the PDF manual, which is the other problem with TB — you have to do research just to find out if you can use something and still have a monitor.)
There's a fan site for Thunderbolt at https://thunderbolttechnology.net/ . It lists Thunderbolt products, and has the handy feature of listing how many ports they have. Almost half of them have only one port.
I think there is a disconnect somewhere.
For the HOME AUDIO COMPUTER USER.
There's tons of DACs on the market and the most popular connection is USB, they also use Toslink, SPDIF, Balanced, etc. but our computers we are USUALLY going to be using USB since we may not want Toslink, we usually don't not have RCA SPDIF or balanced. I wish Apple would give us ST Fiber, but that's too expensive, but that's amongst the best for 2 channel DACs. That's another topic of discussion.
When you use USB for 2 channel DAC the DAC companies tell you, even WARN you to NOT have USB Storage on the same USB bus as the DAC as it will cause drop outs, and other bad things, so for us users that have a computer and an external USB DACs, we have to either only use internal storage OR external storage that's not on the same USB bus, so Thunderbolt makes a LOT more sense. Apple abandoned Firewire FINALLY, but if we still have a Firewire device we can certainly use an adapter that costs $30. On my system, I only have 4 USB ports on the back and the USB DAC is using one, another is using a Mobee mice charger, another for my battery back up and my external RAID box it using Thunderbolt and it's NOT a low end "I don't have any money" $20 USB enclosure that doesn't do RAID. For storage, USB SUCKS. I've already done the speed tests and on my RAID, Thunderbolt is twice as fast, so I would be an IDIOT to use USB, when Thunderbolt is so much faster.
For the HIGH END PROFESSIONAL.
USB really has almost no need unless you are just doing a quick data transfer that's relatively small amount of data, but nothing that I would consider production work.
That's nice. What if you're using this device?
http://oyendigital.com/minipro-thunderbolt-ssd.html#?
Or this one?
http://www.akitio.com/portable-storage/neutrino-thunderboltedition
Or this one?
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD464ZM/A/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapter?afid=p219|GOUS&cid=AOS-US-KWG-PLA
Or, since we were talking about high-end audio, this one?
http://www.avid.com/US/products/Pro-Tools-HD-native
(BTW, can you even figure out how many ports it has from looking at that website? I couldn't find it without downloading the PDF manual, which is the other problem with TB — you have to do research just to find out if you can use something and still have a monitor.)
There's a fan site for Thunderbolt at https://thunderbolttechnology.net/ . It lists Thunderbolt products, and has the handy feature of listing how many ports they have. Almost half of them have only one port.
Which part of "caldigit (and other) TB docks support HDMI 1.4 out" confuses you? You dock your MBP into the dock. You plug your monitor into the dock via HDMI. You plug your TB SSD/Firewire adapter/Avid box into the dock via TB.
The thunderbolt single drive enclosure examples are just silly. You can use USB3 SSDs and still hit 400 MB/s read speeds for $100-$200 less.
http://oyendigital.com/USB-3.0-solid-state-drive.html
For $309 I can get the 480GB USB 3 version vs $329 for the 256GB TB version.
The only Macs with just one TB port are the MBA, MBP 13" Non Retina and Mini. The Mini has HDMI out natively as well as Firewire and Ethernet. The MBP 13" has Firewire and Ethernet.
So your whole rant is about the MBA which never had FW in the first place because EVERY OTHER MODEL COMES WITH EITHER FW OR 2 TB PORTS.
And Apple solution was the 27" Thunderbolt Display which isn't horribly overpriced. $999 for a monitor and dock is on par with buying a Dell Ultrasharp 27" for $639 + $35 sound bar + $225 E-port replicator.
http://accessories.ap.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=au&cs=audhs1&l=en&redirect=1&s=dhs&sku=210-40773
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=313-6412
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=331-3181
ExpressCard was phased out on the MBP line a few years ago, in favor of nothing. (And no, Thunderbolt was not available at that time.) Either Steve Jobs or Phil Schiller, I can't remember, went on stage and said that only (some tiny percent) of MBP users were using it. So they replaced it with an SD card slot. Yes, an SD card slot. Which you can easily get for USB for pennies. Heck, many SD cards come with a USB reader for free. Apple's built-in SD reader is on the USB bus, so it's not like it'll perform any better than a USB one. But they replaced ExpressCard with it. On their Pro line of laptops.
This is what happens to technologies that don't have a consumer application. What part of "I'm talking about TB in general, not just one particular dock device" confuses you?
Tell that to the people I'm arguing against. I'm being told that USB is completely worthless for storage, that no one should ever use it for storage, and that Thunderbolt is likely to take over the storage market.
Wow, it's like there's an echo in here.
Can I hook up a display via FireWire or Ethernet?
Hell, is it a good idea to spend money on FW gear at all anymore given that it's effectively dead? Trivia time: What's the best selling Mac model right now?
A grand is an awful lot of money for most people, and on top of that, it's outdated. The USB ports aren't even 3.0. Additionally, if you're talking about pros for whom a grand supposedly isn't that much money, many of them hate the glossiness, and there's no non-glossy option on that display. Besides that, some people want 4K monitors, or a size other than 27", or have some other specific need. You can't expect one monitor to satisfy the entire market.
Which part of "caldigit (and other) TB docks support HDMI 1.4 out" confuses you? You dock your MBP into the dock. You plug your monitor into the dock via HDMI. You plug your TB SSD/Firewire adapter/Avid box into the dock via TB.
The thunderbolt single drive enclosure examples are just silly. You can use USB3 SSDs and still hit 400 MB/s read speeds for $100-$200 less.
http://oyendigital.com/USB-3.0-solid-state-drive.html
For $309 I can get the 480GB USB 3 version vs $329 for the 256GB TB version.
The only Macs with just one TB port are the MBA, MBP 13" Non Retina and Mini. The Mini has HDMI out natively as well as Firewire and Ethernet. The MBP 13" has Firewire and Ethernet.
So your whole rant is about the MBA which never had FW in the first place because EVERY OTHER MODEL COMES WITH EITHER FW OR 2 TB PORTS.
And Apple solution was the 27" Thunderbolt Display which isn't horribly overpriced. $999 for a monitor and dock is on par with buying a Dell Ultrasharp 27" for $639 + $35 sound bar + $225 E-port replicator.
http://accessories.ap.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=au&cs=audhs1&l=en&redirect=1&s=dhs&sku=210-40773
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=313-6412
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=331-3181
Here's the problem with these USB external drives that are bus powered. I have two currently, but have owned others a long time ago. But the biggest problems that I had with those things is that they draw power from the bus and sometimes I may have other devices on the USB bus and it may not have enough power and then the USB bus powered HDD/SSD does what? It disconnects by itself. I dealt with that and there was NOTHING I could do except get away from USB bus powered devices. Now, I know there are a LOT of different products on the market, you don't have to give me a run down of everything that you are looking at. That's a waste of my time. But, when I've seen one of those portable drives with Thunderbolt, it was more expensive than USB 3, but it also had USB 3 as well, so it just gives you one more option because sometimes you don't have an open USB port. I have two Thunderbolt ports and 4 USB, but my USB are all filled up and I have to have an external storage and that's THUNDERBOLT.
I just think it's ridiculous to not have Thunderbolt capabilities because USB isn't that great for many things. For some things, it's fine or meant for, but for some things, it's awful. Please don't respond to this, I'm not going to listen to someone trying to say that Thunderbolt is not as good as USB. It's more expensive because its' better in so many ways, it's not even a contest...
Apple doesn't ship any products with Firewire anymore, those products have been discontinued when the new MacPro started shipping. But if you have an older Firewire device, then you just get an adapter. The reason why Apple ditched Firewire is because they wanted something MORE than what they were working on with Firewire and they went to Intel to develop Thunderbolt. They were working on Firewire 1600, which would have NOT been as fast as Thunderbolt 1, and certainly nowhere near as fast as Thunderbolt 2. Firewire really wasn't that good for being daisy chainable or be able to combine both PCI and Displayport on one line. They would have had a VERY difficult time doing what Thunderbolt 1 and 2 do with Firewire. It just wasn't something they could do well. That's why Firewire was taken over with TB 1 and 2. Firewire is pretty much dead moving forward, so it might be a good idea to think about how you are going to replace an obsolete technology moving forward, because eventually you'll have to.
What part of "I'm talking about TB in general, not just one particular dock device" confuses you?
Because your statement that you can't have a display when you use these devices is clearly false. You can. The display does not have to be the last item in the chain nor do you need to have the Apple 27" Thunderbolt display do so. So your bitching and whining is simply wrong.
You want to use a single port TB device with your MBA and a monitor buy a $199 dock with HDMI out. End of a non-problem.
So buy a different monitor. This is not hard. The CalDigit may not currently do 4K @ 30 Hz on it's HDMI port but you can via the native HDMI port on macs so it's just an issue with this particular hub. Anything less (2560x1600) should be fine. If you don't like that one try the Elgato one. It has HDMI out as well and supports up to 2560x1600 and is $229. There should be a 4K compatible HDMI dock out now that the docks have finally started appearing in number.
What if you don't want to use HDMI because it sucks, especially at 4K?
What if you need to use two Thunderbolt devices, and they both only have one port?
What if you don't want to spend $200 on a dock you don't want or need just to kludge your way around an idiotic design flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place?
What if your monitor doesn't support HDMI?
What if you don't want to use HDMI because it sucks, especially at 4K?
What if you need to use two Thunderbolt devices, and they both only have one port?
What if you don't want to spend $200 on a dock you don't want or need just to kludge your way around an idiotic design flaw that shouldn't be there in the first place?
What if every time someone addresses one of your whines that you didn't just move the goal post?
(Hint: if $300 vs. $20 is already a crazy price differential vs. USB 3, does boosting that price to $500 make that better, or worse?)
This is almost as good as that guy who was going "Oh, just buy this $500 PCI enclosure and then stick this $50 PCI card in it!"
High-end professionals are a tiny niche. A niche that is not sufficient to keep a technology alive. When Thunderbolt is phased out, something else will pop-up to cater to the high-end pro market, and with any luck, it will be more practical than Thunderbolt is, and get greater exposure than what happened to TB (and, to a lesser extent, FireWire), which is to become a practically Apple-only product.
ExpressCard was phased out on the MBP line a few years ago, in favor of nothing. (And no, Thunderbolt was not available at that time.) Either Steve Jobs or Phil Schiller, I can't remember, went on stage and said that only (some tiny percent) of MBP users were using it. So they replaced it with an SD card slot. Yes, an SD card slot. Which you can easily get for USB for pennies. Heck, many SD cards come with a USB reader for free. Apple's built-in SD reader is on the USB bus, so it's not like it'll perform any better than a USB one. But they replaced ExpressCard with it. On their Pro line of laptops.
This is what happens to technologies that don't have a consumer application.
What part of "I'm talking about TB in general, not just one particular dock device" confuses you?
Tell that to the people I'm arguing against. I'm being told that USB is completely worthless for storage, that no one should ever use it for storage, and that Thunderbolt is likely to take over the storage market.
Wow, it's like there's an echo in here.
Can I hook up a display via FireWire or Ethernet?
Hell, is it a good idea to spend money on FW gear at all anymore given that it's effectively dead?
Trivia time: What's the best selling Mac model right now?
A grand is an awful lot of money for most people, and on top of that, it's outdated. The USB ports aren't even 3.0. Additionally, if you're talking about pros for whom a grand supposedly isn't that much money, many of them hate the glossiness, and there's no non-glossy option on that display. Besides that, some people want 4K monitors, or a size other than 27", or have some other specific need. You can't expect one monitor to satisfy the entire market.
I don't think you really FULLY grasp everything.
What Thunderbolt will EFFECTIVELY do is replace FIREWIRE, MADI, FIBRE CHANNEL and give people a NEW way to connect a larger variety of different TYPES of products that simply weren't available BEFORE Thunderbolt. So, it has a LOT more potential traction than all of the other I/O ports that it can EFFECTIVELY replace. If you look at USB 3.0, most people don't have much in the way of USB 3.0 products. Most products people use are USB 2.0, NOT USB 3.0. I agree the Thunderbolt monitor SHOULD be replaced and I'm sure most of us thought it would have been replaced as early as a year or so ago, so that is of concern to many of us. They might be working on a Thunderbolt model that has Thunderbolt 2 ports and USB 3.0 ports, but I'm sure they are looking at what the NEEDS are. It is typically the last on the chain when connecting to a Thunderbotl daisy chain, so I don't necessarily think it needs Thunderbolt 2, but it could use USB 3.0, MAYBE. Most people don't even use USB 3.0. The majority of users use USB for keyboards, mice, trackballs/trackpads, USB DACs, printers, etc. and most of the USB products on the market are USB 2.0. For the HIGH END market of storage that's connected directly to the computer, Thunderbolt will replace Firewire, Fibre Channel as far as I can tell. What has Fibre Channel done lately? A lot of Fibre Channel is connected to Servers, but the fastest implementation is slower than Thunderbolt 2 and I don't know what it's going to do in the future, especially with this announcement of 40GB Thunderbolt 3.
Now, SD Slots, I'm sure people use it. I tried it, but those cards are really small, VERY easy to lose and it doesn't really make any difference to me, but I know some people use them.
I never said USB was worthless for storage. I said for small data transfers, sure, but if you have a USB DAC, it's not useful, for larger data transfers I wouldn't use it. For larger data transfers I wouldn't use it. I think you simply take words out of what was said, twist things around to suit your argument. I think if you are going to buy an external drive to make sure it has at LEAST both if it's one of those pocket drives. At least it gives you access to both ports, especially for the newer Macs. Some people buy computers, but don't grasp the simple concept of THINGS COST MONEY and more advanced technology usually costs MORE.
For the H
There's a rule that applies here.
1. FAST
2. INEXPENSIVE
3. HIGH QUALITY (Reliable)
Pick two because you can't have all three. but just because YOU can't afford it doesn't mean it's what everyone else SHOULD do, or what is the better more reliable and higher performance way of doing things. MOST professionals spend money on newer technology because they understand this and know they have to budget for this. Joe Blow consumers don't necessarily always have the money, but don't go telling people USB Is just as good as Thunderbolt, when the specs show differently. Thunderbolt is FAST, RELIABLE and HIGH QUALITY, but it's not inexpensive compared to USB. But USB isn't as fast, reliable or as robust of a I/O compared to Thunderbolt 1 or 2. STOP COMPARING.
What Mac is the biggest seller doesn't mean anything other than what is the most popular Mac. Pros don't buy inexpensive Macs, they buy higher end Macs.
I personally don't think for Mac users that USB 3.0 is going to be as widely used as Thunderbolt when it comes to storage. That's my gut feeling.
Are you that "Tallest Skil" guy posting under a new username? If you can't understand why having to waste $200 on a device that does a bunch of stuff you don't need in order to use one of its ancillary functions to kludge your away around a problem, all the while reducing the video quality of your graphical output by downgrading to an inferior interconnect standard which might not even work with your monitor isn't a good solution, then there's certainly no point in trying to explain it to you.
(Hint: if $300 vs. $20 is already a crazy price differential vs. USB 3, does boosting that price to $500 make that better, or worse?)
This is almost as good as that guy who was going "Oh, just buy this $500 PCI enclosure and then stick this $50 PCI card in it!"
First, I'm not the genius that proclaimed that no firewire device ever had one port only to have to make some shit up about "well, okay you found one so that PROVES my point". And then having to backtrack when it is shown that you can, in fact, run a display even with a single port TB device at the end of the chain.
Second, the MBA never had high speed connectivity before it got thunderbolt so whining about Apple improving the MBA is plain stupid.
Third, you don't have to buy a $200 dock unless you want to do something asinine like you do. Which is run a display AND have a bunch of single TB port devices on a MBA. 90% of which are drive enclosures for which there are ample alternatives.
Finally there's nothing wrong with HDMI as an interconnect. It's not like mDP is mechanically more secure.
TS and I don't like each other but you're still a whining troll. At least pick an issue that is relevant to whine about and not how TB sucks when most Apple computers have two ports and docks have finally appeared on the market as opposed to vaporware.
I personally don't think for Mac users that USB 3.0 is going to be as widely used as Thunderbolt when it comes to storage. That's my gut feeling.
Given that I see USB 3.0 external drives everywhere at work where there are a lot of macs and not once seen a TB external drive I'd say your gut feeling is wrong. For one thing a USB external drive will work on a PC as well and that's very handy.
And I've never had any issue with high quality USB external drives or drive enclosures. We've got stacks of externals and bare drives used in USB 3.0 toasters for exchanging and working with large data sets.
Are you that "Tallest Skil" guy posting under a new username? If you can't understand why having to waste $200 on a device that does a bunch of stuff you don't need in order to use one of its ancillary functions to kludge your away around a problem, all the while reducing the video quality of your graphical output by downgrading to an inferior interconnect standard which might not even work with your monitor isn't a good solution, then there's certainly no point in trying to explain it to you.
(Hint: if $300 vs. $20 is already a crazy price differential vs. USB 3, does boosting that price to $500 make that better, or worse?)
This is almost as good as that guy who was going "Oh, just buy this $500 PCI enclosure and then stick this $50 PCI card in it!"
I bought a Drobo mini, it does RAID and the enclosure does both USB 2 and 3 and Thunderbolt (two ports) and it cost about $350. You can NOT buy ANYTHING for $20 that will do what the Drobo mini does. IMPOSSIBLE. PERIOD. NO Fing WAY. It may not be the most insane RAID box on the market, but it works great and with RAID 5 and 4 decent $248GB SSD's inside, it came out to about $1,000. Show me something that's as good with USB anything that doesn't have Thunderbolt. Go ahead, TRY. Oh, BTW, I can't use USB because of my DAC. Oops.
People that buy a $500 PCI enclosure aren't sticking in $50 PCI cards, they are sticking a lot of Pro Tools cards that costs THOUSANDS of dollars and have a portable Pro Tools HD rig. Seriously. The way you make up numbers to prove your point is pretty hysterical. A lot of what you are TRYING to do is make things up as you go along to TRY to prove your argument, and unfortunately, it's not working. Good try though.
I haven't met ANYONE that puts a $50 card in a Thunderbolt PCI enclosure. they put Red Rocket cards, ProTools HD cards, MADI, RAID cards, all kinds of stuff. What $50 card are you referring to anyway? Most of the cards I see these Thunderbolt PCI chassis used for are a little more expensive than a $50 card. It's not like they are sticking a parallel port to connect to a dot matrix printer they still have around from the 80's.
If I was a MacBook owner, i'd probably have the Belkin (or similar) Thunderbolt docking station as an automatic purchase. They are great way to add connectivity without having to plug and unplug a bunch of crap when you get home or in your office. It's a great device.
Given that I see USB 3.0 external drives everywhere at work where there are a lot of macs and not once seen a TB external drive I'd say your gut feeling is wrong. For one thing a USB external drive will work on a PC as well and that's very handy.
And I've never had any issue with high quality USB external drives or drive enclosures. We've got stacks of externals and bare drives used in USB 3.0 toasters for exchanging and working with large data sets.
There are PCs nowadays that do have Thunderbolt, but maybe it works for you. but I can't freaking use USB for storage. I have a USB DAC and that takes precedence over my USB bus for storage, plus my RAID box is 2x faster running over TB 1 vs USB 3.0. My storage is a RAID and it's on Thunderbolt and it hasn't hiccuped at all. When I had my USB drives, they would mount and unmount all of the time during backups and I got fed up with that crap and then I got this set up and it works GREAT.
What do you mean high quality? Are they $20 enclosures? I just think USB for storage is a sucker's bet. Just my personal feelings, especially for the Pro and people that don't want to worry as much.
If you look at USB 3.0, most people don't have much in the way of USB 3.0 products. Most products people use are USB 2.0, NOT USB 3.0. I agree the Thunderbolt monitor SHOULD be replaced and I'm sure most of us thought it would have been replaced as early as a year or so ago, so that is of concern to many of us. They might be working on a Thunderbolt model that has Thunderbolt 2 ports and USB 3.0 ports, but I'm sure they are looking at what the NEEDS are. It is typically the last on the chain when connecting to a Thunderbotl daisy chain, so I don't necessarily think it needs Thunderbolt 2, but it could use USB 3.0, MAYBE. Most people don't even use USB 3.0.[/quote]
Plenty of people use USB 3.0, and those who don't yet, will. This is simple enough to see, because for the types of devices that need the extra speed, USB 2.0 is slowly, but surely, being phased out in terms of USB 3.0. If you go on Newegg right now, you will see that there are more USB 3.0 disk enclosures being sold than USB 2.0 ones.
People are going to buy what works for them, and is cheap. When the box on the shelf changes from a USB 2.0 drive to a USB 3.0 drive, it's not going to change their habits.
The best thing Thunderbolt 3 can do with that connector change is to make the cables no longer active. The active cables are a complete kludge, caused by the fact that Intel wanted the cables to be optical but couldn't make it work. As things stand, I don't think the standard has much of a future.
That was true with older versions of USB, but USB 3.0 (with UASP) is more than good enough for the vast majority of use cases needing an external storage device.
For the vast majority of users, USB is what you use to connect external storage. Most don't even know what Thunderbolt is. I'd be shocked if Thunderbolt even managed to get within an order of magnitude of USB 3.0.
There are 333 USB 3.0 enclosures on Newegg. How many Thunderbolt enclosures are even available anywhere?
Using a $200 kludge that sucks and won't work with all monitors, when the drive was already $200 more than the USB 3.0 one to begin with. I'll stick with the USB drive, thanks.
The machine that the MBA replaced was the white/black MacBook, which certainly did have high speed connectivity, in FireWire, which was a whole lot cheaper and a hell of a lot more useful, due to devices actually existing for it.
Show me one. Every last Thunderbolt single-bay enclosure I've been able to find has had only one port. The only alternative is to use a UASP enclosure instead.
It may not be mechanically more secure, but it's much more modern and has far greater bandwidth. HDMI is limited in the resolutions it can support. HDMI 1.4 can't even do more than 30 FPS on a 4K display. A lot of monitors don't take HDMI for input. The standard was developed for connecting TVs, which generally support only a few standard resolutions, not computer monitors which support a huge array of them.
Bottom line: this is a kludge, not a universal solution.
Your writing style is very similar to TS, as well as your content-to-mudslinging ratio, and you're going to join him on my ignore list.
There are a lot more MacBook Airs and pre-Retina MBPs out there than rMBPs. Way more.
Then why doesn't it have the same level of usage that FireWire had three years in?
If you look at USB 3.0, most people don't have much in the way of USB 3.0 products. Most products people use are USB 2.0, NOT USB 3.0. I agree the Thunderbolt monitor SHOULD be replaced and I'm sure most of us thought it would have been replaced as early as a year or so ago, so that is of concern to many of us. They might be working on a Thunderbolt model that has Thunderbolt 2 ports and USB 3.0 ports, but I'm sure they are looking at what the NEEDS are. It is typically the last on the chain when connecting to a Thunderbotl daisy chain, so I don't necessarily think it needs Thunderbolt 2, but it could use USB 3.0, MAYBE. Most people don't even use USB 3.0.[/quote]
Plenty of people use USB 3.0, and those who don't yet, will. This is simple enough to see, because for the types of devices that need the extra speed, USB 2.0 is slowly, but surely, being phased out in terms of USB 3.0. If you go on Newegg right now, you will see that there are more USB 3.0 disk enclosures being sold than USB 2.0 ones.
People are going to buy what works for them, and is cheap. When the box on the shelf changes from a USB 2.0 drive to a USB 3.0 drive, it's not going to change their habits.
The best thing Thunderbolt 3 can do with that connector change is to make the cables no longer active. The active cables are a complete kludge, caused by the fact that Intel wanted the cables to be optical but couldn't make it work. As things stand, I don't think the standard has much of a future.
That was true with older versions of USB, but USB 3.0 (with UASP) is more than good enough for the vast majority of use cases needing an external storage device.
For the vast majority of users, USB is what you use to connect external storage. Most don't even know what Thunderbolt is. I'd be shocked if Thunderbolt even managed to get within an order of magnitude of USB 3.0.
There are 333 USB 3.0 enclosures on Newegg. How many Thunderbolt enclosures are even available anywhere?
Firewire JUST came out for the MacPro, which is for the Pro market. Give it a little time, Thunderbolt will outdo Firewire, that's a given.
For the Pro Market, Thunderbolt (2 mostly) will outdo USB 3.0. That will be EASY. I don't know of ANYONE using USB 3.0 enclosures to put Pro Tools HD cards in, but there are plenty of people doing as we speak. Give the MacPro community some time to get their new machines and deploy them. They are still a month backlogged.
I don't know where you got the information between Firewire adoption and Thunderbolt adoption from. Please site your reference.
The number of enclosures doesn't mean anything. It's what the enclosures DO. Look at what TYPES of enclosures are for Thunderbolt. They are mostly RAID boxes and some SERIOUS one at that and some have PCI slots in addition to the hot swappable RAID.
Just some stupid site listing a bunch of cheap USB 3 enclosures can mean that no one's buying them and the Chinese are just dumping them on the market because they overbuilt for the actual demand. I have a lot of use for USB for simple devices but NO use for USB 3.0 for storage. My next storage unit will again be Thunderbolt, NOT USB 3.0. If it has both, then it has both, but I won't be USING USB 3.0 for storage. How's that? So if I buy an enclosure that has both, does that mean i use both? NOPE. It means I use ONE of the two, but i can use both. But which one do I use? Thunderbolt.
One person will probably go through a bunch of cheap USB enclosures because they don't last long. I already have two USB drives that I don't even use anymore. You want one? I'll sell it to you cheap. One's a Seagate and one's a LaCie, but the LaCie SUCKS, the Seagate is OK, it's more reliable than the LaCie. :-) Neither has been dropped.
There are PCs nowadays that do have Thunderbolt, but maybe it works for you. but I can't freaking use USB for storage. I have a USB DAC and that takes precedence over my USB bus for storage, plus my RAID box is 2x faster running over TB 1 vs USB 3.0. My storage is a RAID and it's on Thunderbolt and it hasn't hiccuped at all. When I had my USB drives, they would mount and unmount all of the time during backups and I got fed up with that crap and then I got this set up and it works GREAT.
What do you mean high quality? Are they $20 enclosures? I just think USB for storage is a sucker's bet. Just my personal feelings, especially for the Pro and people that don't want to worry as much.
I use these:
http://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-2-5-Inch-Military-SP500GBPHDA80S3B/dp/B0053ORUS8/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
4.5 stars after 600+ reviews means they aren't flakey for most users.
Regardless, I found some USB vs. Thunderbolt benchmarks for Drobo 5D.
http://www.tuaw.com/2013/10/29/drobo-5d-speedy-expandable-thunderbolt-storage-for-professiona/
In their tests, USB 3.0 was, of course, not as fast as Thunderbolt, but it got remarkably close given that the Drobo 5D doesn't support UASP. If it did, the result would likely be neck-and-neck.
FWIW, I just used the 'time' command to see how long it would take to cat a 1.03 GB file on my external UASP SSD. It took 2.669 seconds. That's 385.3 MB/s, which is faster than the manufacturer of the SSD (Crucial) even claims. The Blackmagic speed test app reports 348.6 MB/s read speeds. Pretty blazing fast.
It's funny how people earlier on were accusing me of making this about my personal needs, isn't it?
There was a guy in this thread, GoodGrief, who literally suggested exactly that — putting a $50 PCI card in a $500 PCI enclosure. It's on page 2. Go back and look and you'll see it. Good try, indeed.
I thought that once, too. Then I found out that the USB ports run at half the speed they're supposed to, and according to Amazon reviews, they're non-bootable. Eh, it's too expensive a device to be that flaky.
BTW, I'm getting pretty sick of this, so I'm probably going to be leaving soon. Ciao.
The fact is that there is only one on the entire market, and it's clearly an outlier, with every single other one of the 64 FW enclosures on Newegg having two ports.
Actually, I'm looking at my old LaCie Porche designed FW drive and noticed there's only one port. And looking on Amazon there's this one with one of each FW 400, 800 and USB 2.0.
http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-All-Terrain-FireWire-Portable-301924/dp/B003SO4F38/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_2
So three or more.
So there's no problem now is there? Use USB 3.0. It's not like Macs don't come with USB.
It's not a kludge but a dock and nothing works with all monitors. The fact remains that your statement was false. Again.
Bottom line: this is a kludge, not a universal solution.
Bottom line: it's a dock and lots of monitors take HDMI as input and you still have mDP if you want.
And the only resolution I want to run my monitor at is the native one. Which HDMI will do.
Lol…good. Buh bye.