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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."
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)
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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?
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.
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.
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.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Here you go.
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.
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".
#DeleteChrome
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
Normal people worry me!
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/apple/2010/07/01/mac-ssd-performance-trim-in-osx/7
Maybe it does not need it?
"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.
blah blah blah
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 ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
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.
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?
"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.