New MacBook Pros To Sport Light Peak Technology

An anonymous reader writes "Over the past few years, Apple has systematically upgraded the base level MacBook to a level where the difference between the Pro and consumer models were arguably becoming negligible. That's about to change. Apple will reportedly introduce a completely re-designed MacBook Pro this April that will borrow features from the recently released MacBook Air. The new Pros will reportedly come with an SSD and Light Peak technology, a transfer protocol capable of 10 Gbps both up and down. Light Peak, jointly developed by Intel and Apple, will reportedly be an Apple exclusive at first."

Comments

Fantastic

[binarylarry]

Apple customers will subsidize the adoption of this technology, so I can buy a similar laptop in 6 mos for much cheaper.

Thank you Steven Q Jobs! :)

Re:Fantastic

[Samalie]

Light Peak is a design that is intended to replace the myriad of bus technologies present in the average computer.

For example...in my current rig, I have IDE, SATA (both 1.5 and 3gb versions, no SATA/6Gb),eSATA, USB & Firewire.

Light Peak is an optical technology eventually destined to replace all these different specifications into one 10GB/s-capable-today bus, with speeds expected to reach 100GB/s+ by 2020.

(All this info, and more, from TFA)

Re:Fantastic

[bennomatic]

Hm. I like apple products, and some here have accused me of being a fanatic. But looking at my history, it's more like this:

Year 1: buy $1100 laptop. Give old laptop to wife.
Year 2: remain happy with laptop.
Year 3: remain happy with laptop.
Year 4: remain happy with laptop.
Year 5: Wife spills coffee on her laptop. Give "new" laptop to wife, buy $1100 laptop.
All years: Consider phone, put it off for a year because work pays for crappy blackberry.
This past year: Consider iPad, put it off for the time being.

I guess I'm just not enough of a zealot.

Re:Fantastic

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Being optical, and Mac exclusive, it should manage to be even more expensive than Firewire! Progress!

Re:Fantastic

[Macrat]

So what is it? A connectivity alternative? Network replacement? 10 Gbps? Really? And I should be impressed why?

If LightPeak had USB in the name, you would probably be posting how great it will be.

Re:Fantastic

[bonch]

So what is it? A connectivity alternative? Network replacement? 10 Gbps? Really? And I should be impressed why?

Here you go.

Yawn twice.

Don't worry. Like USB in the 90s, this technology will eventually become standard on PCs thanks to Apple forcing device manufacturers to support it for the Mac. And, like before, PC users won't acknowledge yet another one of Apple's contributions to computing standards. Instead, like always, there will be more outdated one-button mouse jokes.

Re:Fantastic

[93 Escort Wagon]

Apple customers will subsidize the adoption of this technology, so I can buy a similar* laptop in 6 mos for much cheaper.

* For sufficiently loose definitions of "similar".

Re:Fantastic

[hobo sapiens]

"all the Mac users I know have little understanding about hardware, nor do they care to know about the hardware."

Not having to care is liberating.

I recently happened upon an old Popular Mechanics magazine from the 1950s. It dealt extensively with automotive topics. It struck me how much people had to know about their car's inner workings to properly maintain it. Today, you really don't have to know what kind of spark system your car has, or what kind of plugs it uses, or what kind of fuel delivery system it has. You don't have to clean varnish out of the carbuerator every year, or have the piston rings done at 60k miles. You don't have to replace the plugs and points every 10k miles. Just keep gas in it, make sure you change the oil, and take it somewhere for minor maintenance every year or two. It should go >100k without much in the way of repairs, and get mileage that cars in the 1950's couldn't even get close to.

I am a software developer. I use a macbook pro. It's great. I need something that works. I do not want to fuss with the OS, because I gain nothing from doing this and I honestly don't really care about it much. I want a powerful (i.e. *nix) CLI. I'd like to be able to play some music on it while I work. The mac does this and more better than any other computer I have used, regardless of OS. I can use it to accomplish work and not have to always figure out why it's acting weird now like I have had to do with every windows computer I have ever used since the dawn of time. I also don't have to spend time tweaking it out to make it behave like I have had to do with every linux desktop I have had for the last five or so years of using linux.

I don't know what the hardware internals are. All I know is that the display looks great, the aluminum case feels really solid (not some glued together plastic crap), it has crashed only once in a year (and this was due to the square turd known as java), every time I go to open it up it just works, and the trackpad is so awesome I don't even miss a mouse. By comparison, every other trackpad I have used to date has been so far inferior that it might as well have been an old broken NES controller hacked into the USB port, or even a couple of sticks tied together and plugged into the headphone jack. Apple got it right.

I dislike the Apple "cool factor" because it causes people to overlook the fact that Apple is making awesome computers with an OS waaaay superior to Windows because it has a *nix CLI under it and way better than linux distro X because it has the polish you'd expect from commercial software. Most people who dislike Apple, I find, have never actually gotten their hands on any of their products and dislike Apple based on principle. Apple has their flaws (iPhone 4 comes to mind + Jobs denial of said flaws), but let's not pretend that some dell laptop running windows 7 is even on the same level as a macbook pro.

Re:Fantastic

[pherthyl]

Well said. Similar situation for me. I used Linux for years, and eventually just got tired of fixing shit. The first time fixing every single problem is a challenge, and as a student I enjoyed picking the system apart and troubleshooting. It was a good experience. But when the wireless breaks again and again. When the video is crappy again and again, eventually it wears you down.

Up until last year I didn't own any mac products and didn't see a need to. Now I have an iMac at home and my faster Windows machine gets turned on maybe once a month. I have a Windows desktop machine at work, but use the Macbook whenever I can. Now I have an iPhone 4 for work, and it is fantastic. The thought that went into every detail is quite extraordinary. We tested the latest Android phones, and while they do most of the same things, they aren't anywhere close to the iPhone. I see it the same as for MP3 players and the iPod. When the iPod was released all the other mp3 players were arguably better from a features perspective. And yet the iPod dominated very quickly. Ease of use and thoughtful design beats raw features every time.

Re:Fantastic

[CAIMLAS]

What pisses me off about this is that it's "Apple exclusive" at this point. Why the hell?

In doing so, they are pissing off many other vendors - HP, Lenovo/IBM, and Dell, to name a few, but certainly LSI would like the ability to license the technology.

I have been anxiously waiting for over a year for Intel to release this technology. It appears to be the one, great hope for a truly fast, inexpensive, and universal device interconnect.

Right now, we've got a handful of transport interconnects in the 8-12Gb/s range, all of which suck for one reason or another:

* 10Gb Ethernet - not such a bad option, as it can utilize older infrastructure fabric and can be used for networking topology, as well. Your storage can be easily transported over it using traditional network software.
* Fiberchannel - Expensive and very single-purpose, but still a better option than
* Infiniband - cheapest, but horrible support.
* Firewire - hitting a bandwidth limitation and hasn't really improved much in a while.
* USB 3.0 - bound by the host/guest model and host-oriented. Horribly CPU bound, still. Decent 'general purpose' when you don't need a decent inter-host transport.
* SAS - holds too much legacy crap in it from SCSI. Relatively cost, but you're still (usually) requiring one or more of the other device interconnects for a storage system.

The fact that Apple is holding onto the reigns of a single bus design which could change

The supreme irony is that Apple doesn't actually make anything which will be well suited to utilize Light Peak. Internetworking? Fast server storage? SAN? Nada: none of their platforms are suited for it, and pretty much anything you could do with Apple platforms can already be done using existing buses. (If anyone wonders why it might be said that Apple doesn't innovate, this is one good example: take something awesome and wrap it in pretty white plastic, doing nothing new with it.)

Talk about a disappointing "gimmick". Hopefully it'll reach mainstream within the next year or two, or it'll likely see an unfortunate demise similar to Firewire (low adoption rates, fringe technology), making Infiniband look all the more attractive.

Re:Fantastic

[BitHive]

Intel gets to work out the kinks on relatively uniform hardware configurations and Apple users are guaranteed to jump all over the first generation of something if it's marketed as "exclusive". It's win-win.

Re:Fantastic

[shelterpaw]

Not if intel has anything to say about it and remember that Apple was the first to adopt USB and Intel is partnering with Apple on this one, so I doubt it'll go the way of firewire. FireWire would have been much better than HDMI in the home audio word. Now we all live in HDMI hell.

Re:Fantastic

[citylivin]

Yes, heaven forbid people know anything about their cars. Less knowledge! Thats what drives society forward!

"Just keep gas in it, make sure you change the oil, and take it somewhere for minor maintenance every year or two. It should go >100k without much in the way of repairs, and get mileage that cars in the 1950's couldn't even get close to."

Well thats the 'new car buyers' attitude all right, and you are paying a premium for that "luxury". Most people in the world however, drive cars with hundreds of thousands of kilometres on them and like to know what tire pressure is or what an alternator does. You don't have to be an electrical engineer to fix a car, and you dont have to be a hardware engineer to troubleshoot a computer. You make it seem like its so dificult and so much fuss to learn these things. If you cant do it on your own, take a course. Just like driving, or basic car repair for women that a co worker took recently - there are courses out there which will make you feel better about yourself. *Fun fact that I didnt even know that she learned in that course, if you turn the air conditioning on in the winter for a minute or so, it will suck all the moisture off of your windows and defog them much better than the fans do. Thats the kind of thing that really makes peoples lives a bit easier. Thats the kind of thing that a little knowledge brings.

Dumbing down and locking down systems has ALWAYS been what macs are about. This is why people hated them in the 90s, this is why people hate them today. You evidently want to buy into a world where you don't know how anything works and always have to rely on others to fix your problems for you. Sure its "liberating", but so is "finding god". What you call liberation, I call enslavement. Perception is everything I guess.

Re:Fantastic

[jo_ham]

No, they shipped a computer that had no other low-speed interface ports on it for peripherals other than USB. You may remember it: the iMac.

This created a market for USB devices: mice, keyboard, scanners, printers, card readers etc that just was not taking off before that, since while some PC motherboards shipped with this "new fangled" USB port, it was poorly supported by Win95 (barely at all until late in the release cycle) and they still shipped (and continue to ship) with things like ps/2 ports, other din sockets, RS-232, 25 pin ports etc so people had no reason to specifically seek out USB devices on a bus that barely worked on Windows.

However, if you used an iMac, and many people did - it sold like hot cakes, and then soon after the iBook and other new Mac products you needed USB devices because it was the only peripheral port you had.

Also, I don;t recall Apple themselves actually claiming credit for anything - they just did what they did. I haven't seen any evidence they ever claimed they were taking credit for USB.

Also, if by "piggybacked on the efforts of Intel and the PC industry" you mean "adopted a standard that was designed to be used by hardware manufacturers to create a standard port and protocol for peripherals, ie DID EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS DESIGNED FOR" then I suppose you are correct. Apple adopting USB early in the game could only have been a positive thing for Intel, who developed the thing. What do you think they wanted Apple to do? Not use it? When you Apple haters get going, you just throw logic right out of the window, don't you?

Re:Fantastic

[Billly Gates]

Windows 7 is a great improvement over Vista and is catching up to MacOSX.

For the same price you can get a PC as good and about as reliable. People just want cheap.

I cringed upgrading my computer. After looking into things and buying parts my wife convinced just to go all new and blow up to $1499. Ouch.

I was very close to getting a mac. My wife is a teacher and she brought her ibook from work home one weekend so I could play with it. The fact that I didn't have a second mouse button and no right button click with menus as well as the lack of a bottom task bar drove me nuts. I downloaded a demo of dreamweaver and it drove me crazy to have to keep selecting menu after menu with the mouse. The keyboard shortcuts are not that well support or way different. I admit this was because I got used to Windows and Gnome.

I went with a Windows 7 desktop with a nice monitor. It is as good as a mac and just about as reliable and it is a really fast and nice system. Macs have less problems but they miss .NET decent Java support and lack of Linux support. Linux does not support EFI and you could damage your mac running it. I have only had one weird glitch with my lan card in the past month playing with settings.

My cheap systems have always had problems. You get what you pay for regardless of OS.

Re:Fantastic

[node 3]

The supreme irony is that Apple doesn't actually make anything which will be well suited to utilize Light Peak.

External storage. Hard drives are now a bit faster in practice than FW800, and a *lot* faster than USB2. Now, throw in multiple drives for a music or video setup. Which brings me to...

Music and video. FireWire is wildly successful here. As hard drives get faster (and SSDs begin to take hold), Light Peak can potentially replace FireWire, allowing for even *more* simultaneous HD video streams, etc.

(If anyone wonders why it might be said that Apple doesn't innovate, this is one good example: take something awesome and wrap it in pretty white plastic, doing nothing new with it.)

WiFi, USB, FireWire, magsafe, unibody cases, Face Time, iPhone, glass trackpads, iPod, the batteries in the current MacBooks, Bonjour, AirPrint, multitouch... The list of things Apple directly invented, co-invented, or were early adopters of is extensive. The notion that Apple doesn't innovate is way out there. It's extremely difficult to think of a company that innovates more than Apple!

Talk about a disappointing "gimmick". Hopefully it'll reach mainstream within the next year or two, or it'll likely see an unfortunate demise similar to Firewire (low adoption rates, fringe technology), making Infiniband look all the more attractive.

FireWire has been subject to demise? When exactly did this happen? It's not the dominant external bus, but it's very much alive and well. Apple had nothing to do with it's status of not being the dominant bus, the fact that it's so expensive is why (and that's also why it's such a great bus and is far from dead).

Re:Fantastic

[pushing-robot]

And AV devices, including practically every digital camcorder.

Re:Fantastic

[dilvish_the_damned]

Not having to care is different from not being able to care.
Price a high end MBP with anything of the same specs from Dell and look at the price difference. If you get the same resolution, same CPU, ram, bus speed, HD, battery runtime, your looking at maybe a $100-$200 price difference, and the MBP comes in an aluminum case, higher MTBF, no exposed fan ports.

Purchasing higher quality hardware for a marginally higher price does not, in itself, indicate ignorance. Sometimes it indicates the belief that the value of a machine is not restricted to the quantitative factors but also the qualitative.

Also, Dell dresses your laptop funny.

Re:Fantastic

[toddestan]

FireWire has been subject to demise? When exactly did this happen? It's not the dominant external bus, but it's very much alive and well. Apple had nothing to do with it's status of not being the dominant bus, the fact that it's so expensive is why (and that's also why it's such a great bus and is far from dead).

Apple has had a lot to do with the current state of Firewire. They've removed it from their iPods and dropping it on their lower-end machines. They are also part of the reason it's so expensive, by charging licensing fees that pushed people to USB2 as it was cheaper. Firewire is not dead, but it's pretty much turned into a niche market at this point.

Re:Fantastic

[binary paladin]

You know what's cool? Having spent enough time caring about computers, hardware and software to get a job that pays well enough that I really don't need to give a shit about buying some cheap ass Dell or HP laptop instead of a MacBook.

Barring that I know precisely what hardware is in my MacBook Pro. I know that Apple hardware is more expensive. I also know that my time is even more precious and expensive. So, having a computer that pretty much never fails and requires basically no tinkering is awesome. I'm at a point in my life where things like processor MHz mean far less to me than say a trackpad (something I use ALL THE TIME) that is very functional or extended battery life. These kinds of details are where Apple reigns supreme.

My MacBook still has a Core 2 Duo and on forums full of the nitwits who measure their penis by their i7, there is much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. In fact, they tell me they could get a Dell with an i7 for $300 or something. Whatever. I don't care. That laptop would be a plastic piece of shit with a terrible track pad that's twice as thick with half the battery life of the machine I'm running.

This computer is a tool that meets my need and does it better and more enjoyably than any other machines I've used. I fucking hate Windows (7 included) and Linux was always more work than I wanted to put into it (and ran it exclusively for 3 years before switching to a Mac).

(Incidentally, I don't know shit about cars. However, since I'm not a moron finding an honest mechanic in a day and age where shopping around and internet reviews are easy to come by is not exactly rocket science.)

Re:Fantastic

[darthdavid]

My macbook runs OSX. Which means that beneath the covers it runs a variant of BSD linux.

it runs a variant of BSD linux.

BSD linux.

Get out. Turn in your geek card at the door, hang your head in shame and leave.

Re:Fantastic

[hobo sapiens]

Pat yourself on the back for catching me forgetting to delete some text from my post before hitting submit. I typed both and googled which is under OSX so I could delete the incorrect one. Why did I have to google it? Why do I not just know that? Because practically speaking THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO ARE MINUSCULE. So you gotta rmdir instead of rm -rF. BFD.

Re:Fantastic

[binary paladin]

"Yes, Heaven forbid people know anything about their cars. Less knowledge! Thats what drives society forward!"

I hate to break this to every obnoxiously arrogant jackass on this site that thinks because they know how to fix their car or their radio or whatever else that they are somehow some elevated and enlightened individual that can look down their noses at others but here's a fucking news flash: there are tons of interesting and important subjects, disciplines and things that most people—even intelligent and well educated people—don't give two shits about and never want to have to deal with. Not ever.

For instance, I'll bet there are plenty of trauma surgeons out there that didn't know your fun fact. I bet people who have won Nobel prizes didn't know that. I bet if they found out they wouldn't be even slightly inclined to take a course on fucking auto repair.

I use a Mac and the computer isn't any more dumbed down than Windows or even some variants of Linux (which is what I used three years prior to switching to a Mac). It's certainly easier to use and more trouble free. However, it doesn't limit me in any way I care about. (Besides, it's like saying a manual transmission is "dumbed down" rather than "easier to use with less control, but since I use my car for commuting and not for racing the ease of use is more important than the performance.")

Mac discussions always bring out the most retarded this site has to offer (except for maybe global warming and/or anything about Republicans).

"Sure its 'liberating', but so is 'finding god'. What you call liberation, I call enslavement."

Seriously? This is what I'm talking about. Somehow someone being pleased with the ease of use of a computer has become akin to "enslavement." It was also, apparently, a fine opportunity to tie in your own religious spite at the same time, which of course is totally necessary in a discussion about a rumor about Apple incorporating a new I/O bus. That always makes me wax religious.

Some people want their stuff to just work. It doesn't make them stupid or ignorant or inferior or less enlightened. It doesn't even mean their somehow universally opposed to learning. I mean, come the fuck on, people have their disciplines and their interests. You sound like you'd be some asshole who'd get on a guy's case because he always ate out because he didn't care about learning to cook. There's nothing wrong with that. Do you get one people's cases for seeing doctors because they aren't experts on health? Do you hate power tools because people should learn how to properly use hand tools?

What the fuck is wrong with you people? Easier to use != dumbed down. Dumbed down != bad.

Re:Fantastic

[TheUser0x58]

Less knowledge! Thats what drives society forward!

What a fucking joke. Having a nation of amateur auto-mechanics accomplishes nothing for society. Specialization has always been the vanguard of civilization. 10,000 odd years ago some enterprising folks learned all about how to grow edible plants as a reliable food source, and then idiots like you probably laughed at them because they were too busy creating civilization as we know it to hunt for themselves. The fact that I can pay some bloke to fix my car means instead of spending a weekend fixing it myself I can learn things that won't be obsolete in 5 years.

Classic Slashtard mentality. You know a lot about computers so you think yourself some intellectual fucking superstar, and belittle those who are doing more important things than swapping out motherboards.

Re:Fantastic

[itsdapead]

This created a market for USB devices: mice, keyboard, scanners, printers, card readers etc that just was not taking off before that, since while some PC motherboards shipped with this "new fangled" USB port, it was poorly supported

Exactly - this is what Apple is very, very good at, and why the industry needs them. They didn't invent the personal computer***, the graphical user interface, the laser printer, local area networking*, laptops** RISC-based PCs* USB, the small-form-factor computer, the floppy-free computer, the MP3 player, online music sales, the smartphone... What they did do is turn them into mainstream commercial successes and put a very large rocket up the conservative asses of the competition. Oh, you'd better add UNIX to that list, as well as standards-based rich internet apps.

(* Actually, Acorn- who had a good college try at being the UK equivalent of Apple - got to those two first, but the only thing that had much impact outside of Blighty was the CPU they designed for their RISC-based PC, the ARM).

(** Apple "invented" - maybe in partnership with Sony - the modern laptop layout, with the set-back keyboard and trackball/trackpad in front).

(*** Joint honours with Commodore and Tandy, and maybe others, on the first "appliance" PC, but they were on the front line - previous PCs were "some assembly required" and/or needed a terminal or teletype).

Re:Fantastic

[paimin]

Dude, you're just digging yourself deeper. Hand in the card.

There's still hope

[Yvan256]

Let's drop VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 3 and only use two types of ports: USB 2.0 for the low-cost/low-bandwidth stuff and LightPeak for everything else.

Wait, what about my old EZ135 SCSI drive? Those carts have 135 MEGABYTES each! That's a lot of data! Oh, my USB flash drive can store 118 of those carts, never mind.

Re:There's still hope

[Yvan256]

Cables are a bit annoying for something you're supposed to be holding in your arms and walking around with.

Re:There's still hope

[vux984]

and LightPeak for everything else.

Will lightpeak be able to power my external hard drive? Will it charge my HD video camera while I pull video off it? Is it easily adaptable to HDMI? My new TV doesn't have a lightpeak port, and I'm not interested in buying another tv to get one.

I can hdmi cables for under $10. How long before lightpeak cables are that cheap?

DisplayPort is fine and all, but the adaptor to connect my macbook to my tv cost a small fortune, and it uses the headphone jack for optical audio, the displayport for video, and the usb port to power the adapter that converts it all to hdmi. A good PC laptop comes with an HDMI port... which just works with external equipment.

Hey apple, I'm onboard with modernizing connectors and letting the legacy fall away. Your switch to USB was welcome (although your awfully stingy with ports.)

But every generation of your laptop doesn't need a whole new video connection. PCs are going from VGA to HDMI. That makes sense. Macs... started with some apple proprietary garbage, to mini dvi, to mini displayport, and now on to light peak... 4 separate connectors in the same period of time, while managing to bypass anything that anyone actually uses for anything else.

Re:There's still hope

[PhunkySchtuff]

But every generation of your laptop doesn't need a whole new video connection. PCs are going from VGA to HDMI. That makes sense. Macs... started with some apple proprietary garbage, to mini dvi, to mini displayport, and now on to light peak... 4 separate connectors in the same period of time, while managing to bypass anything that anyone actually uses for anything else.

Umm, Apple have used VGA and then DVI and then Mini DisplayPort for video interfaces in the past 10 years. They had mini versions of these connectors, for which you were also given the necessary dongle to upsize it to the standard version of the interface.

There was also the short-lived ADC which was a superset of DVI and all machines that had an ADC connector on them also had a standard VGA or DVI port on them too.

On the PC front, you also seem to have forgotten DVI, which I'd warrant is a lot more common than HDMI.

Re:There's still hope

[Paradise Pete]

Why do you want to plug your kid into a cable? And just which type do you use?

An umbilical serial bus cord, obviously.

Re:FireWire?

[obarthelemy]

you mean, via lightpeak ?

Re:Light Peak?

[obarthelemy]

I think lightpeak is both much faster and much more versatile, and aims to replace usb, firewire, dvi, hdmi, even ethernet. this may be a good thing, because my experience with USB ( and , no yet) has been quite bad, from compatibility issues, to slow transfers, to high cpu usage. I lamented the fact that firewire was not cheaper and more widespread... maybe i'll get my wish with lighpeak.

are we in for $30+ adapters to use usb e-net dvi v

[Joe The Dragon]

are we in for $30+ adapters to use usb e-net / dvi / vga / hdmi / display port / firewire?

Does ATI and NVIDIA video work over light-peak? Or will you need some kind of voodoo 1 daisy-chained cable setup?

also what about mouses and key boards light peak is extreme overkill in them?

What will light peak hubs and cables cost?

how much power can a cable pass?

Will you need a powered hub / powered adapters for DVI / VGA / Display port out?

they need to keep the Ethernet port.

What about sound?

Re:Usefulness of Light Peak?

[Microlith]

Chicken and Egg.

If laptops have the ports people will develop devices for it. That Macs are -known- to be coming with them then it's highly likely that peripheral manufacturers are creating devices that use it to be ready for the release.

Re:"jointly developed by Intel and Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody got a source for that? Other than an Apple-fanboy-page.

The LightPeak page at Intel Research doesn't even mention Apple at all, but do mention partners like Sony and several others.

Some tech sites, blogs and fanboy pages have been posting claims/rumours of Apple involvement, but with Intel not acknowledging this, and even promoting Sony and others as partners, it doesn't seem very likely.

Re:isn't exclusivity counterproductive?

[Microlith]

Isn't exclusive just another way of saying proprietary?

No, it just means they're the first to roll it out. I expect it'll start appearing on expansion cards and other motherboards not long after. But Apple will get to tout having the first systems with the interface.

SSDs - when will TRIM come to OSX

[speculatrix]

linux and windows have TRIM, so when will OSX have it?

Re:SSDs - when will TRIM come to OSX

[leenks]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/apple/2010/07/01/mac-ssd-performance-trim-in-osx/7

Maybe it does not need it?

Re:FireWire?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Carefully suited only to the nonstandard power-delivery of the macbook air's single USB port, for your Universal serial bus convenience...

Re:Light Peak?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I assume he refers to the unfortunate mixture of optimism, on the part of peripheral manufacturers, and strict adherence, on the part of some computer makes and models, to the USB spec's sections on power delivery. USB2 is quite clear about 5VDC, 500ma; but devices that work poorly, partially, or not at all without at least a few hundred ma more are downright ubiquitous. How exactly a fiber optic interface is going to solve that particular market problem is utterly beyond me; but it is a pain in the ass in some USB situations(mind you, firewire was even worse, since the spec explicitly allowed ports to deliver almost whatever they wanted...)

The only other compatibility issue is with drivers; but USB's "classes" are probably the closest thing to a solution we've yet seen. The world is still replete with non-class-conformant widgets; but it isn't clear how a new bus is going to solve that...

Re:Usefulness of Light Peak?

[Soft Cosmic Rusk]

I think Lenovo beat them to it with the x300. Also, the first eee pc's all came with ssd's.

Re:"jointly developed by Intel and Apple"

[bonch]

Engadget: Apple Dictated Light Peak Creation To Intel

Re:are we in for $30+ adapters to use usb e-net dv

[Sycraft-fu]

Well who knows how it will work in Apple land. They are known for forcing changes because they think they are cool, whether it is time or not. For other manufacturers, Light Peak is just going to be another port at first. It isn't going to replace anything. Capabilities aside, you need to wait as peripherals get support. The first things I expect to see are external HDDs, and things like pro audio/video capture equipment. Video is going to be some time. No monitor today supports Light Peak (and relatively few even support DP) so it'll be some time. If it is to gain any traction, it'll have to have an interface to work with the high end discrete cards.

Even then it may need to develop a generation or so before it is useful 10gbps is not fast when you talk video. It is acceptable, but not fast. DP has 17gbits of bandwidth with its current standard, HDMI has 10gbits. So it is around as fast as current video standards, but offers no real speed advantage, which is really what it would take to force a change at this point. HDMI is heavily entrenched because it is what home theater gear uses. The reason to move to somethign else would be higher resolution, colour depth, and frame rate displays will need more. Say we want 2560x1600@30bpp@120Hz. That would need about 15gbits so DP could barely handle it, but nothing else. Now suppose we go with a 4k display, and 96bpp (32-bit floating point per colour to allow for HDR) again at 120Hz. Now we need 108gbps. So if a connector can offer much higher bandwidths, there'll be interest as we eventually want that for video, but at 10gbps Light Peak offers nothign the current ones don't. If Intel let's nVidia and AMD support it they probably will, but otherwise people will give it a miss.

For networking, no fucking way. Networking is stuck on Ethernet because networking uses Ethernet. It sounds like a tautology and that is really how it works. All local area nets are Ethernet. As such you have to support Ethernet to use them. As such all devices ship with Ethernet, as such all future stuff has to support it and so on. Nobody is going to redo their network to Light Peak. This is particularly true because 10gbE is already here, and really with networks even 1gig is really fast. Your network is local disk speed at that point. So you aren't going to convince people to dump their existing infrastructure for it.

In the long run Light Peak may become a popular somewhat universal computer interconnect but it is not happening any time soon. If Apple thinks they can force it they are wrong (for that matter they didn't force USB adoption, Mac users had to deal with it and then the industry moved that way at its own pace). However networking it will probably never replace, just because of the massive installed base of Ethernet.

Re:FireWire?

[spyfrog]

Some of us watch DVDs using these optical drives you know...
It is especially nice if you is on a business trip and want to see a movie - you only need to go down to the gas station and rent it and it will fit right into your laptop. So until we have another way of renting movies (and preferable not over Internet since that would be slow when you connect from hotels or with a 3g modem) I would like to keep the DVD drive.

Re:Light Peak?

[sirsnork]

It doesn't have to _replace_ ethernet.

Imagine a dock or port bar on your desk, you bring your laptop in plug in a single connector (although you may need power too, depends how Apple implement it) and everything on your deks now works, screen, keyboard, mouse, printer, ethernet... everything.

Thats something a LOT of laptop users have wanted for a very long time, and this is the potential in a standardized cable format not some propriety thing with 200 seperate wires so the slightest bend of the cable and you lose your display and have to buy a new dock/portbar

Re:"jointly developed by Intel and Apple"

[Overly Critical Guy]

Wikipedia says: "Apple brought the concept of Light Peak, an interoperable standard which could handle large amounts of data and replace the multitudinous connector types with a single universal connector, to Intel in 2007 with the intention of Intel producing and developing the technology."

However, I know that Slashdot is packed to the bring with suspiciously anonymous Apple-bashers these days and that they won't believe anything positive about Apple whatsoever. The only good company is Google.

Nostradamus strikes again

[jamrock]

Sounds like a very good idea - making an interface exclusive for a manufacture which makes less than 10% of the computers. That will off course make the third party appliance makers go wild and support this interface instead of USB3 which can be used with the other 90% of the computers... really a great idea.

You're absolutely correct. Like when Apple stupidly introduced the iMac back in 1998 with no floppy drive and those bizarre little USB ports. Not to mention the colors and attention to design, which flew in the face of the beige-box standard. Considering that Macintosh only had market share of around 3%, peripheral manufacturers refused to waste time and resources supporting USB, and consumers ignored the iMac because floppy drives to this day remain a must-have for personal computers. The iMac failed dramatically as predicted by tech pundits, and it will be remembered as just another inane idea by Steve Jobs. So typical of Apple, to arrogantly believe that they can influence the tech industry with their pie-in-the-sky toys.

Wait...

Re:Nostradamus strikes again

[Sycraft-fu]

They didn't influence the industry with their force to USB. Sorry, I know that Mac users would like to think so but when you look at the history it is clear it made little to no difference. USB peripherals started launching almost right away because it was a good bus and Intel mandated it on all new motherboards. However support for older standards remained for a long time. USB keyboards and mice were the exception, not the rule, even after it had been around for awhile. Printers took a long time to stop having parallel, and so on. USB grew to dominance because it was a good connector, and with USB 2 is became fast enough for just about everything. It did not grow because Apple decided to force all Mac users to buy USB to ADB adapters with their new line of Macs.

I've got no problems with offering a new connector. Offering Light Peak seems sensible. I think it'll be common on PCs too, Intel is going to be pushing it hard with their 6 series chipsets for Sandy Bridge. What is stupid is getting rid of the old connectors, when the new connectors are used by almost nothing. Sure, if in 5-10 years everythign is Light Peak, then ditch everything else. However right now? Who knows how little or much will support it?

Re:Nostradamus strikes again

[rolfwind]

They didn't influence the industry with their force to USB. Sorry, I know that Mac users would like to think so but when you look at the history it is clear it made little to no difference. USB peripherals started launching almost right away because it was a good bus and Intel mandated it on all new motherboards.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-spec7.html

The adoption problem

USB, even after support for it was available in Windows, faced an adoption problem. Standard adoption is largely driven by network effects; the utility of a standard-compatible device comes from its ability to interoperate with other things compatible with the same standard. A standard is only useful to you if there are compatible devices and if there are a lot of them.

This creates a Catch-22 situation for adoption. If users lack USB ports or drivers, those users cannot buy a USB device. For vendors, that limits the market for USB devices and makes it more reasonable to develop peripherals for other ports (such as the once-ubiquitous serial and parallel ports, or the SCSI port if you also wanted to tap the Mac market).

Even if users would prefer a USB device, they would still be more willing to accept a non-USB device since it can be connected to their computer. Even if USB is a better, more desirable piece of technology, it may not be more marketable than the alternatives! The number of people who would buy a USB Webcam might be smaller than the number who would buy a serial Webcam -- and almost all of them could be persuaded to buy a serial one instead.

Enter the iMac.

The original "bondi blue" iMac was the first computer to offer USB ports without offering "legacy" ports. That's right -- no serial ports, no ADB. This changes the network effects. Before the iMac showed up, there were many millions of PC users who had no USB ports and perhaps a couple of million who had a USB port and also legacy ports. The biggest market in 1998 was in serial and parallel ports (or joystick ports, PS/2 ports, and so on) -- there was no reason to target the USB market. That would just restrict your audience.

The iMac presented a ready-made market of users who chose the Mac line for its graphics capability. In turn, the iMac offered a captive audience of users who would buy a USB peripheral but would not buy any other kind of peripheral. These users provided a market for USB peripherals that wasn't facing competition from other port choices. The result was a flood of USB devices in white-and-blue plastic. This was a crucial turning point that created a reason (tied to a proven system choice) to prefer USB to non-USB ports.

Once adoption was foist onto this substantial segment of users, the technical merits of the technology won out easily. USB's technical superiority (for most peripherals) to the conglomeration of a half-dozen different port types was unambiguous.

Standard appears to have power...

[SuperKendall]

Will lightpeak be able to power my external hard drive? Will it charge my HD video camera while I pull video off it?

Any description I've seen of it includes the ability to transmit power along with data. Yes.

Would you be interested in pulling video data off a camera in 5 realtime?

Is it easily adaptable to HDMI?

Probably, just as you can transmit HDCP encrypted video over a DVI connection just as easily as DisplayPort.

DisplayPort is fine and all, but the adaptor to connect my macbook to my tv cost a small fortune

If $5.13 is a small fortune for you, I think you might be living with the laptop you have for some time. Just as HDMI cables are outrageous in cost when not purchased online, you have to shop around for things like DisplayPort cables too (though at the time you bought it choices were probably more limited).

But every generation of your laptop doesn't need a whole new video connection.

I agree, but LightPeak is such a huge jump in bandwidth that I think it will be a welcome addition to abilities - I don't think Apple will make it the only display adaptor for a while, out of necessity I'm sure a future Mac will also include Display Port, USB, and possibly even ExpressCard/34 (though that I could see dropping since uptake has been low and LightPeak is perfect for external storage).

Agreed

[Midnight Ryder]

I'll agree with you - most of my development these days is web development and iPhone / iPad development, but I still dabble back into industrial automation from time to time. I like my Mac Mini, for instance - it's solid, it's managed to survive three major OS upgrades since 2006, and it's still solid after four years of constant use. I like the "it just works" philosophy - I can focus on software development, not hardware troubleshooting. Apple isn't perfect, but the OS and Hardware combination is pretty damned good. (I will say, though, that after four years I'm finally going to upgrade the little box. This one will sit on the shelf and be a media box.)

The 'cool factor' is problematic - you're dead on right about that. But I've not been one to care too much about what everyone else thinks is cool anway ;-)

Re:FireWire?

[pankkake]

Uh? It means Apple's "Super"Drives can't work on stantard USB 2.0 ports, they could use USB 3.0 and advertise it as a USB 3.0 device, it would be much more clear for the consumer. But I guess Apple wants its "Super"Drive to work only with Macs.

The iMac drove the adoption of USB

[jamrock]

They didn't influence the industry with their force to USB. Sorry, I know that Mac users would like to think so but when you look at the history it is clear it made little to no difference.

To say that Apple's move to USB made little or no difference is simply not true. The original iMac did in fact influence multiple industries in terms of industrial design, and in the tech industry by popularizing the new technology in the minds of consumers. Intel mandated it on all new motherboards, but they did not prohibit the use of legacy ports. PC manufacturers took the wait-and-see attitude, and even today most PC's still include legacy ports side-by-side with USB ports. Apple jumped in with both feet, and the iMac was the first personal computer to be completely free of legacy ports. While USB peripherals had existed before, it was only after the iMac became a hit that the wave of translucent, candy-colored printers, scanners, USB floppy drives, external hard drives etc., began to appear. Not to mention pencil sharpeners, staplers, electric grills etc. Remember that phase? I don't recall seeing any plain vanilla USB peripherals in the late 90's, and consumers wanting a new printer or scanner were confronted by the plethora of brightly-colored USB peripherals. Joe Sixpack's first encounter with USB was typically with a device that had been inspired by the iMac's design.

Obnoxious generalization

[Brannon]

People buy Macs because they think they are worth the money, not because they aren't aware that you can buy other computers cheaper. Kinda like the same reason that people buy nice cars or any other product on the planet.

Lots of very technical people buy Macs. People who value good design.