Slashdot Mirror
Apple To Unveil Light Peak, New MacBook Pros This Week?
An anonymous reader writes "Apple will reportedly soon make an announcement regarding a new high-speed connection technology. And as luck would have it, this comes hot on the heels of a report that Apple will release a slew of new MacBook Pros later this week. For some time now, reports have abounded detailing Apple and Intel's cooperation on a new transfer technology dubbed Light Peak capable of transferring data at 10GB/s both up and down. Could this find its way into Apple's new lineup of MacBook Pros as has been previously rumored?"
What's the use of this high speed link, especially on a laptop, when disk speed would be the limiting factor?
Like what else?
From what I've read it's not fast enough to replace HDMI/Displayport and not as cheap to integrate as USB 3.0 (will Apple retain a royalty on the connector ala Firewire?) I do understand the need to have a universal, optical interconnect but I'm not so sure i want Apple being the one pushing it...
Like USB. Remember when everyone laughed at them for being the first to put it on their computers? Ha, the fools.
The new connection tech is called Light Peak. The summary has it right; the title has it wrong.
LightPeak would be an Intel technology. Rather like that oh-so-proprietary USB. Apple would merely be the first major customer. Rather like that USB thing again. Yes I know others put USB ports on systems before the iMac, but it was irrelevant until someone with market muscle axed the legacy ports in favor of USB.
The article makes claims that Intel "Is delaying" USB 3.0 "until 2010" to help Light Peak get off the ground.
Problem 1: It's 2011. You can't be "delaying something until 2010" in 2011...
Problem 2: USB 3.0 is deployed already. So they clearly can't be delaying it.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Wasn't this same exact story (even including pending laptops) posted around a month ago?
You misspelled Firewire
just what we need $30+ adapters and maybe powered hubs. One cable for E-net, Video, sound, and mouse / keyboard? so you need a hub or
daisy chaining.
also HOW will light-peak tie in to ATI and NVIDIA video? On a desktop will we see a voodoo 2 like loop back cable?
apple better keep the E-NET ports as lightpeak to E-NET cables are point less and just have much higher costs.
keyboard and mouse will stay USB as they don't need high speed cables.
10G[B]/s or 10G[b]/s? Wikipedia says 10Gb/s.
Hey, I enjoy a good Apple troll now and then, but Light Peak (not Light Speed, Light Peak) appears to be the future and the successor to USB. USB 3 isn't exactly taking off, with even Intel eschewing it in its chipsets. Light Peak is billed as a replacement for many connection standards such as "SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire, PCI Express and HDMI" Light Peak is Intel's new baby, and as with many computing technology advancements Apple likes to be ahead of the pack (especially when it comes to bus connections). will be backward compatible (even appearing to use the same physical connector as USB) and adaptable in a way that will allow it to replace a number of different connection types. It will be adopted by the other motherboard producers because, well, it seems like there's no competition against it as the future bus technology. Now were you trolling just to troll, or are you really so ignorant about the emerging technology that you'd post a comment like that in seriousness? If your comment wasn't meant in jest, why not get yourself some free education on the subject.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Microsoft has announced Ludicrous Speed!
It can go right along side the PC Express card slot and other worthless port technologies pock marking notebooks.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
From what I understand (i.e. what i read the last time this technology was discussed on Slashdot), what makes Lightpeak so interesting is that you can run basically anything else over it. I'm running mad looking for an HDMI-to-RCA downscaler - my laptop has HDMI and DVI outputs, but my church's $12,000 switching/scaling system only does composite. Since replacing literally every piece of gear in the chain would be required to plug in an HDMI natively and the church isn't looking to spend around $100,000 for HDMI/SDI cameras, projectors, switchers, mixers, scalers, and cable runs at the moment, it makes more sense to scale down the laptop instead. From what I understand about Lightpeak, it'd be possible to use one of these $30 adapters to turn a Lightpeak connector into an RCA output instead of having to use a $700 downscaler. Yeah, i can def dig that.
While Apple may go lightpeak-or-bust, the PC side hasn't completely ditched everything else for USB - I still have firewire, HDMI, DVI, and Ethernet. Other laptops in my immediate vicinity have VGA and Expresscard available as well.
yeah, remember when they had that weird screwy SCSI disk while IBM PC Compatibles had MFM and RLL drives? man, those weirdos....
If it's a choice between:
- A £20 adaptor on your desk and the cheapest laptop we could find OR
- A £150 docking station and an expensive laptop that supports docking stations
Guess what you'll be getting.
No worries, once it arrives the wavefunction will collapse and you will end up with one copy of your item. It will just have traveled along both paths at once.
How is intel delaying 3.0 when it's already out on pretty much every new motherboard out there? Get your facts straight you friggin drama queen
The pro/cons aside, Light Peak is an Intel invention. Secondly, from what I read this is an interconnect on the board level. From the consumer's perspective they will still use their USB, SATA cables or whatever. The MB manufacturers are the ones affected.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I believe they are trying to say, "this cable connects to what you used to call your "docking station" or "port replicator". Instead of conveniently popping the notebook onto the port replicator / dock, you will connect this Light Peak cable and a power cable. Then the actual "port replicator" will be a "hub" that allows you to connect video, USB, etc. The only benefit would be that you wouldn't need proprietary port replicators (for example if you have a Lenovo X201 like I do, and you go to a desk that has a T410 port replicator you can't use it today). The downside would probably be two cables to plug in and disconnect instead of a simple undock lever.
is it going to support my Atari SIO bus gear?!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
To be fair, Apple wasn't the first to use USB. They were the first to drop their legacy ports like ADC, printer, etc. for only two kinds of ports. USB for low bandwidth like keyboard and mice and FireWire for high bandwidth like portable HDs and digital video cameras. To this day, some PC MBs still come with connectors that are rarely used.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The idea is to encapsulate a number of digital protocols (nothing unique to Light Peak, Displayport in theory supports ethernet and usb packets in addition to audio and video data, for example.
You will need something to convert it to analog, and that will remain a niche market with high prices as a result. You won't get a magical RCA out from this.
I also doubt you can't replace the display portion of your churches setup with something that would accept both displayport *and* RCA in (not requiring replacing cameras and other equipment). I also don't know why *your* current laptop must be the technology everything else revolves around in this configuration
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Intel is doing something I don't like... Let's all boycott Apple!!!!!
Are you going to boycott Intel chips too? That's a lot harder than you think...
Apple wasn't the first to put USB on computers.
Apple was the first to give users NO OTHER OPTION.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"To this day, some PC MBs still come with connectors that are rarely used."
by HOME USERS.
Professionally I use a rs232 port daily... some days I use it hourly. In most professional uses of a PC those "legacy" ports are highly used.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Apple won't be dropping ethernet just because light peak can also carry ethernet data. They didn't drop it when they introduced firewire (which also does IP networking if you want it to), did they?
This (and this is a rumour article, and in no way constitutes a press release from Apple, but assuming that light peak on MPBs is what will happen) is just the new high speed external I/O. USB keyboards will still be USB, Bluetooth keyboards will still be Bluetooth, ethernet cables will still be RJ-45.
It could make a great port replicator though - one cord attaches to the MBP, with all your other cables (usb, ethernet, FW, etc) hooked up to a port replicator already on your desk. Obviously optional.
So, I use Apple's at home and work. I do all sorts of photo and design work and some lightweight video. I am not even a regular Joe and I don't know what I would do differently with this port. I love the idea of how Firewire800 works and it works better transferring big files then USB 2, subjectively at least. We already have HDMI/DVI/DISPLAY ports, so where to implement this? I head about FireWire so long ago and they are just becoming available all over. Now we need a new highspeed port? This maybe putting the cart before the horse.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
...and the whole "everything must be USB" shenanigan that Apple fanboys like to brag about so much was a big "screw you" to every existing Mac user that dared to be legacy Apple customers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You answered your own question.
Bullshit from somebody who doesn't remember correctly.
The main push for USB adoption came with the release of Windows 98, released in May of 1998.
The iMac was released in August of 1998 and although it was one of the best selling Macs of all time, it is largely insignificant compared to the hundreds of millions of Windows machines sold at the same time.
I'm running mad looking for an HDMI-to-RCA downscaler - my laptop has HDMI and DVI outputs, but my church's $12,000 switching/scaling system only does composite.
If your laptop has DVI-I rather than DVI-D (and I've never seen one with only DVI-D), it's already capable of outputting analog component RGB, but not composite. If your input equipment only takes composite, converters go for about $100.
Did you stroke your greasy beard while typing that pointless screed?
What is your argument exactly? What the hell is "classic Apple users"? What does FinalCut have anything to do with this?
So many questions.
"but my church's $12,000 switching/scaling system only does composite."
No your church has a old outdated switching scaling system that at one time cost $12,000 but can now be bought for $650 on ebay used. It is not worth $12,000. they drop their value like a rock.
Honestly, Why do churches try to get into multimedia and then fail to budget for it? The system they paid $300,000 for in 2001 is garbage now. AV systems need to be replaced or upgraded every 5 years. Your fault for buying a laptop without VGA out.
Buy an extron USP507 scaler and call it done. It would have been far cheaper if you would have researched laptops before buying one that was incompatible with what you were going to do.
and what you understand about lightpeak is wrong. it cant magically transform digital video into analog video.
I'm an idiot - converters I linked work in the wrong direction. What you need is $150 from the same site or $50 from eBay (the two devices look identical, except for the price - whether they are or not it anybody's guess).
USB wasn't a standard option at the time of windows 98. Indeed it wasn't until winXP that you could use a USB keyboard easily, as the built in BIOS wouldn't use USB keyboards for setup.
Apple doesn't pioneer a lot of things. apple is usually the first to bring them to the mass market intelligently.
Also USB support in windows 98 sucked. you needed to install drivers for everything but mice and keyboards.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Theres a third choice-- USB 2.0 docking stations.
Have fun getting them to not flip out every 2 weeks and break your scanner, video, etc, though.
The HDFury 2, mentioned in a recent Slashdot story, may solve your problem (it outputs on component and can downscale, you would have to convert the component output to composite).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I'm running mad looking for an HDMI-to-RCA downscaler
http://www.svideo.com/hdmi2svideo.html
Engage Manual Override!
The vast majority of MBs are designed and sold to consumers so, yes, I would venture that they are hardly used. On a server, you may have to use legacy ports but most consumers don't need them. So if you're Gigabyte and you make MBs for consumers, why do you need to still offer a serial port? For a professional or server board, it would come in handy like Apple's XServe had a RS-232 port presumably for that reason.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Let's be fair though, you can get USB bridges for most of those legacy ports. It's not like the tech is abandoned entirely.
Other than RS232, who's using IEEE1284? Who's using PS/2 Mouse/keyboard connectors?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Remember in 2005 when Jobs got up and said that with the move to Intel, their users would never be ridiculed for a lag in performance again?
Fast forward to 2010, after waiting and waiting for over half a year after Dell and other manufacturers were coming out with QUAD-CORE i7 laptops, Apple finally rolls out DUAL-CORE i7s in their Macbook pros while they give their iMac line quad-cores, essentially making their PROFESSIONAL LAPTOP line lower powered compared to their commodity consumer line.
This has been the state of affairs FOR ALMOST A YEAR!!!
When will we get our fucking QUAD-CORE i7s in Macbook pros you smug, lying, turtle-neck wearing piece of shit????
Frankly, I'm about to move to Dell Studio 17 and go the Hackintosh route.
Why would I want a connection between 2 PCs that is faster than the connection between my buss and hard drive. This is just stupid. I've got multiple quad-core PCs with Solid state drives on SATA... while moving files across my network I can barely break 10mb per second... much less hit 100mb... 1Gig connections are still laughable... and 10gig? That's just plain stupid. Connections between switches and routers maybe but it has no real use to your average PC user.
Case in point- I also know quite a few video editors loyal to Final Cut that are now looking to move to Adobe Premiere
Its pretty clear that Apple are gradually shifting from the Pro Video/Graphics market and positioning Mac as a "pro-sumer" brand. What's not so clear is whether that is causing graphics pros to abandon the platform, or if the change was motivated by the fact that pros were already abandoning the platform.
Apple got established in the pro graphics/DTP/video market partly because, back in the day, their hardware/software platform ran rings around MS-DOS/Intel systems. Today they don't have such a clear-cut advantage - the hardware is basically the same and, without getting into OS advocacy, Windows is no longer just a pretty shell sitting on top of DOS. Most of the killer pro applications are available on PC, or even PC only, or with Mac versions lagging behind PC releases and sometimes just plain shoddy. Its really going to be a war of attrition from now on, so Apple is right to look for an exit strategy.
...and that exit strategy is based on their success with "boutique" ultra-thin laptop and small form-factor computers for the home and "prosumer" market plus iPod/Pad/Phone for consumers.
One thing that would play well there is a "one connector to rule them all" solution: look at the design of the current MacBook Pros and see how the size and position of the circuit board is constrained by the need to have 8 connectors. As more and more functionality becomes available on just a CPU, the need for optical drives decreases and hard drives are replaced by more compact SSDs, only having to worry about routing one connector to the outside world (maybe even embedded in the power connector/a) would make for even more slim and sexy MacBooks.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I remember it differently from you. Yes, Win98 had USB but I hardly remember a push from MS for everyone to use it. It was going to be adopted as the next standard but no one was in a rush to adopt it. From my perspective everyone had written Apple off as dead in 1998. When they released their iMac, then some opinions began to change. Since Apple dropped their legacy ports, the only way to connect was with USB or FireWire. If you were going to make peripherals for Mac or for Mac and PC, you had to start adopting USB. Of course some companies would not adopt it for years but to simplify the manufacturing and offer customers the most options, USB was the way to go.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Before the Sandy Bridge bug forced a recall, Intel SB boards shipped with USB 3 ports on them.
Now what they may be talking about is that USB 3 isn't part of the current Intel chipsets, you have to add a chip on the board to get it. Ok well that is a different issue, and has nothing to do with trying to hold it back and everything to do with design and implementation time.
Please remember USB is Intel's spec. If they wanted to "hold USB 3 back" or something they could just not release it. They just aren't integrating it in to their chipsets yet, it'll be integrated in future chipsets.
Same deal with Light Peak I imagine. It isn't in the current P67 chipsets so it'll have to be an addon chip. I'm sure it'll get integrated in to the chipsets later.
You want DisplayPort.
Can output component, drive LCD directly (internally in laptops) and output HDMI, DVI, VGA, etc.
what does intel delaying their release of USB have anything to do with video production?
because it[Premiere] costs a third to operate over FC at this point - this includes the video department company where I work).
That's another alienated group of classic Apple users who are moving away from the platform.
really?
i believe the cost of video production that a post-house would be worried about is the actual production time, i.e. rendering of the final video and time that an artist/production personnel aren't billing, not the cost of the software that functions as the A-B decks. let's also not forget the cost of the SANs necessary to store the digital (HD) assets in both pre and post rendered form, which cost a butt-load. so saving a few dollars on software and hardware, while important, is trivial compared to other costs related to video production.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
Those of us who have/had Apple laptops would not have to do the cord dance all the time. The one thing I love about my work laptop (its a Dell) is that I have a dock for it. So when I need an external keyboard/mouse, large monitor, speakers, and whatnot, I just put the laptop on the dock. No messy cabling required because I did it once.
I really think Apple's lack of dock features is purely aesthetic, as in they don't want to sully their cases with a dock connector. For no other reason can I understand this lack of functionality, which btw is one one of most common reasons I keep getting told I could not have an Apple desktop at work. The second of course being cost structure involved as I would still need a license to run Windows for some business apps.
So what if there is one cable, now I will have a daisy chain of accessories? Will I have to hope all these makers put the connectors on the side I need them on, or provide them on both? Will I need a powered hub if I use too many connectors?
It does remind me of CAN-BUS setups now popular in the automotive world
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The quote about Intel delaying is in TFA but it didn't make sense as it also said the delay was in 2010.
I also accidentally submitted this both before I was done writing it and to the wrong thread so I deserve the troll rating.
Sorry!
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
it's probably going to be a fiber-connected SSD technology.
They could be cool and use the standard TOSlink/Optical Digital Audio cabling/connectors, but knowing apple it will be some stupid freaking double-latch gold-plated trendy-white cable that can only be used with this one rendition of the computer and changes every time a new computer is released so you have to buy all over again.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Apple gets Light Peak. Microsoft gets Widow's Peak.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Go to radio shack, purchase a 3.5mm jack to RCA converter, you have RCA sound. Analog video is going to require a laptop that outputs some sort of analog video, if your DVI is a DVI-A or DVI-I you should be able to purchase a simple converter that will allow you to run vga. If its still an issue, go to craigslist, and purchase a cheap used laptop that has the ports you need.
You seem to think there are no solutions for your problem, I think you havn't thought the problem through, and your looking for a magic bullet solution.
Like USB. Remember when everyone laughed at them for being the first to put it on their computers? Ha, the fools.
Apple wasn't the first by a long shot.
Apple was only the first to drop the legacy connectors. And in apple's case, the legacy connectors were proprietary apple crap anyway. ADB for keyboard/mouse, and thier goofy round serial, GeoPort, and other complete CRAP.
And it was still a DICK move, because it meant a pile of people had to purchase over priced adapters for their barcode scanners, printers, and so forth.
And to really top off the dickishness of it, they only gave you 2 usb ports, forcing a bunch of people to buy powered hubs too. (After plugging in your keyboard (and mouse into the keyboard) you had one port left on the computer, and one more on the keyboard that couldn't deliver full power.
I have no problem with apple adding new ports, and bundling peripherals that use them, but to FORCE me to buy expensive adapters and/or all new peripherals everytime Steve Job's gets a hard on for a new port. Fuck him.
Who said anything about a boycott?
I also stated above that I meant this to go on a different thread (a response in an older one) but i screwed it it up.
Sorry again. I'm embarrassed.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
You're not even a good troll.
Intel is delaying their new updates because they just lost a couple hundred million dollars in bad Sandy Bridge chipsets that they now have to retool and remanufacture. That was SATA Rev2 that caused that problem, but if I were Intel I'd avoid trying to rush anything out the doors following that fiasco.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
So Intel's idea (Light Peak is Intel's technology, not Apple's) is for Light Peak to become a universal connector replacement. USB, DVI/HDMI, even SATA. One connector that you can use for everything. Make things simpler and hopefully cheaper in the long run.
Now at the present time it isn't fast enough for all of that. It runs at 10gbps right now. Not suitable for a SATA replacement. However Intel believes they'll be able to scale it to 100gbps in time, which would work.
In terms of display it is enough in most situations currently. So at 1920x1200 @ 32bpp @ 60Hz requires about 4.1gbps. Thus current displays would be able to work over Light Peak. However it will not be sufficient if we want to have higher resolutions, higher colour depth and higher frame rates, you'd need DP or HDMI for that. For current HD displays though, it has sufficient bandwidth.
Now will this all catch on? Who knows? I can see Apple forcing it on their consumers since the "Only one connection," fits Apple's mentality nicely and they've never had any qualms about screwing people over by removing older technologies even when they were heavily in use. On the larger market, well we'll see. Probably depend on how well it performs (remember raw speed is only part of it, how hard it hits the CPU to do its transfers matters) and what the cost is.
As opposed to the legacy technology that's still in use by every other company?
Tell me, how is that Microsoft PlaysForSure?
Who's using PS/2 Mouse/keyboard connectors?
Model M for life, yo.
I'm pretty tired of Slashdot allowing any twat to plagiarise a story, (in this case from CNET at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20033940-64.html )and screw up a few facts (eg, they confuse Gigabits with Gigabytes; only out by a factor of 8), submit it "anonymously" and then drive traffic to their crummy site.
I mean its great that we will have something new and at those speeds but who really cares? Currently i can transfer a movie faster than it plays and thats all i care about. I barely get 25 mbps from my fios deal and mostly its around 17-22 and up around 12. Telcoms will cry and complain when the goverment will force them to make speeds that high available. When will i ever use 10GB/s? At my house with a $5,000 switch?
Um, isn't that the definition of innovation? Company A invents a product; prices are naturally higher because of the cost of innovation, branding, and because the company markets itself as a premium products. As soon as the ink is dry on the new idea, everyone else does it, just as you said, a year or two later.
I'm waiting on the PowerPC-version of the new MacBook Pros. I suggest everyone do this until [fill in your Apple gripe].
You're right.
When other people can imitate your innovation a year or two after you release it, clearly it's not an innovation at all!
Who's using PS/2 Mouse/keyboard connectors?
/me raises hand sheepishly. I'm still using the IBM Model M keyboard that I got with a cast-off 286 (the first computer I ever had that was mine, and not shared with someone else) in the mid-1990s. It's the only keyboard I've ever owned; I found it to be a little surreal when they became collectors' items in the past decade or so. I'm also still using a no-name $8 PS/2 mouse (one of the early optical mice) that I got about ten years ago. Maybe I should turn in my geek card for not bothering to upgrade my old junk, but it works fine for my purposes, and the last time I bought a motherboard (a couple of years ago, IIRC) it wasn't difficult to find one with PS/2 ports. When the ports are finally gone, I'll buy a cheap PS/2 to USB adapter.
Honestly, Why do churches try to get into multimedia and then fail to budget for it?
I think they're more used to the depreciation schedule of an altar rather than high end AV.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
They don't make anything that hundreds of companies can't imitate. You call that innovation? How is it innovation if everyone else is doing it, in most cases cheaper, within a year or two after they release it?
I honestly can't tell if you're joking or stupid.
really?
i believe the cost of video production that a post-house would be worried about is the actual production time, i.e. rendering of the final video and time that an artist/production personnel aren't billing, not the cost of the software that functions as the A-B decks. let's also not forget the cost of the SANs necessary to store the digital (HD) assets in both pre and post rendered form, which cost a butt-load. so saving a few dollars on software and hardware, while important, is trivial compared to other costs related to video production.
You're statement makes a lot of assumptions about the scale and process of a post-house. Video houses are not a borg and different kinds of productions have different needs. If you're a broadcast studio ingesting and rendering hours of HD footage every day the software and hardware costs could pail in comparison to your staffing and workflow management costs.
If you're a smaller business it makes a BIG FREAKING DEAL how much you're spending on software/hardware overhead. Saving 80K annually on hardware/software could be the difference between hiring another two freelancers to actually get the work done on time and therefore stay in business.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
I'm not a good troll because I'm an accidental troll. I posted this here by accident and am personally apologizing to each respondent. I meant to cite this post in response to another and accidentally did the opposite making me seem like a non-sequitur asshole. Sorry.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
I'm curious, what's the difference between this and this? I haven't had to convert HDMI or DVI to RCA before so I'm wondering why the first link is ~$13 and the second is ~$300
but to FORCE me to buy expensive adapters and/or all new peripherals everytime Steve Job's gets a hard on for a new port. Fuck him.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
If you don't like it, don't upgrade. When USB dropped, new port technology wasn't new. We went from what, Bus mice, to serial, to PS2 and not even in that order.
Necessity is the mother of pushing new products. No one cared about USB hubs back when USB devices first started shipping in what, 1994? 1995? Now every machine has a crapload of ports. it was a necessary sacrifice. It's not like ADB, PS2 and serial stopped working the day that the all-usb iMac dropped.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
How is intel delaying 3.0 when it's already out on pretty much every new motherboard out there?
Firstly, they're refusing to integrate it into their chipsets, so every motherboard with USB 3.0 has to have several expensive additional chips to support it (and since Intel's chipsets are so severely lacking in PCIe bandwidth, these often can't reach anywhere near full USB 3.0 speeds). Secondly, they've refused to finalize the xHCI interface standard for USB 3.0 controllers, so every single third-party manufacturer has had to come up with their own mutually-incompatible controller design that requires its own drivers and will probably be left behind once everyone switches to xHCI.
802.11n - the AirPort was one of the first to support that spec, even before it was finalized. Therefore, by the OP's logic, it must have been an Apple standard.
on a laptop.
ADB for keyboard/mouse
Do not crap on the daisy-chain desktop bus that was invented by Woz 10 years before USB. If you wanna complain, complain about the LC-PDS :)
and thier goofy round serial
You realize it was just an RS-232 in a DIN sleeve, right? The cables to go from MiniDIN to D-Sub were just wire and you didn't have to do any active adaptation (I mean a real geek would just order some parts off DigiKey and solder his own D-sub, but I digress). What made the port a pain was the lack of printing drivers -- any old modem would generally work as long as you knew Hayes and had a proper terminal app.
GeoPort, and other complete CRAP.
Geoport's actually an interesting case, because Apple actually got a bunch of vendors together and tried to standardize it through the Versit Consortium. The GeoPort was just an RS-232 with an extra pin to pass audio back to the host so it could do softmodem or signaling to different kinds of PBX switches using its DSP chip to make the tones. Alas switch vendors sorta resented other people's hardware talking to their switches...
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
How is it innovation if everyone else is doing it ... within a year or two after they release it?
Sounds like you've just answered your own question. A year or two early means billions in the bank.
"You are statement makes a lot of assumptions"? WTF does that mean?
As I recall, Win98 didn't have USB support, that came with a service pack or Win98se. Even then there were drivers that had to be installed for every USB device, including keyboards and mice.
Even then it was at the mercy of the motherboard manufacturers who didn't bother putting USB ports in many of the low-cost boards of the time.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
They don't make anything that hundreds of companies can't imitate. You call that innovation? How is it innovation if everyone else is doing it, in most cases cheaper, within a year or two after they release it?
Being imitated is generally a sign that you've done something original or worth imitation, IE: it's probably somewhat innovative. There is no requirement that it somehow stay unique to a certain platform, and in most cases it's impossible to force that anyway.
You will never see anybody imitating Dell's new Inspiron. There's a reason.
I still have an Apple Ergo keyboard hooked up to my Mac at home, via ADB->USB adapter. Am bummed that my original Wacom ADB tablet doesn't work, as Wacom refused to release drivers for OSX for it. Oh well, my Quadra still runs ok.
I drank what? -- Socrates
If you don't like it, don't upgrade.
And when the computer dies and needs to be replaced, we just sit there and mash the keyboard pretending to do work? Of course not.
With a PC you buy a new computer, it comes with the new ports, but it comes with last years ports too, so your existing peripherals work. If you have half a brain in your head, you replace your peripherals with versions that use the new ports when they need replacing. And there is no transitional pain.
With a Mac, you buy a new computer because your old one died. It comes with the new ports. So you rush out and either buy a bunch of adapters... or you buy all new peripherals. There is considerable transitional pain.
your understanding of 'innovation' is, based on my own personal understanding, quite innovative
You thought of an AV system, my receiver will downscale any input to composite out you could probably find one for $300.
Apple has always been really good at getting customers to move forward, by dropping legacy systems. You might not like it, but it generally turns out for the best. If Apple hadn't done the USB switch, we'd likely still be stuck with floppies, parallel printers and scanners, and miscellaneous serial devices.
But Apple's serial connectors were neither proprietary nor crap. They were RS-422, with a DIN standard connector. It was much easier to deal with serial connections on a Macintosh than on anything else at the time.
ADB was an Apple-developed standard, much better than PS/2 or AT keyboard connections, and much better than PS/2 mouse connections. One port, daisy chainable, and you could put a mouse, keyboard, graphics tablet, and trackball on the same port at the same time. They weren't supposed to be hot-pluggable, but unlike PS/2, hot plugging worked. And Apple wasn't the only manufacturer to use it.
GeoPort was just an extension to the RS-422 ports, and non-GeoPort devices worked just fine in those ports.
Why would you plug your mouse into the computer on an iMac? The keyboard had two USB ports, you plug your mouse in one, leaving you one free port on the computer and one on the keyboard.
Apple has made some dick moves, this wasn't one of them.
it always involves a large odd connector. They always have some sort of mechanical guide mechanism, but invariably the connector and guide get worn and eventually damaged.
A magport is soooo much cleaner. and you can have a single cord laying off to the side of the table or in the laptop bag. try taking your docking station with you in your bag. And with the magnetic attachment and redundant pins, it's more reliable, easier to use, and a lot harder to break.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Since the ADB->USB change, there hasn't been this transitional pain. This isn't a yearly affair. If it was, we'd be having a different discussion.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
With a Mac, you buy a new computer because your old one died.
As opposed to PCs where you engage in a blood ritual to resurrect it. :P Granted PCs have more things that you can fix to resurrect it but sometimes it isn't worth it. Like if my CPU dies in one of my current computers. It is an old Athlon. I could fix it by scouring ebay for an old chip (it was the CPU and not the MB), but it is easier to buy/build a new system.
It comes with the new ports. So you rush out and either buy a bunch of adapters... or you buy all new peripherals. There is considerable transitional pain.
1998 was the last time Apple replaced the peripheral ports. If you still have a computer from before then, I'd think you'd have more trouble than just replacing the peripherals. The only thing you could really gripe about is the constant change in the video connectors but that has more or less mirrored what the industry has done. First it was VGA. Then it was all about DVI. Now it's HDMI. At least with DisplayPort you could get an adapter for them.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
For your church? Just pray. Water to wine; hdmi to component. Jesus is the answer, isn't he? And if he isn't then why not just sleep in on Sunday?
If Apple hadn't done the USB switch, we'd likely still be stuck with floppies, parallel printers and scanners, and miscellaneous serial devices.
That's a fantasy. Its not like Mac drove the PC market. (especially at that particular point in time.) And the pc market switched to USB on its own time frame, and held onto the legacy ports until there was really no one using them.
But its absurd to say that "Apple drove people to stop using them." Most people didn't interact with macs and Apple's decisions didn't affect them. Most hardware vendors didn't make mac versions or drivers, and Apple's decisions didn't affect them.
They were RS-422, with a DIN standard connector. It was much easier to deal with serial connections on a Macintosh than on anything else at the time.
How was it easier? There was 9-pin d-sub, 25-pin d-sub, and the MUCH RARER 9-pin din. Getting cables/adapters for the d-sub versions was trivial. Their was no need or benefit to having a 2nd 9-pin variation that was rarely found anywhere else.
ADB was an Apple-developed standard, much better than PS/2 or AT keyboard connections, and much better than PS/2 mouse connections
I don't know about much better. It was differently awful.
ADB's hot plugabilty was not reliable, and when it froze when you plugged in a barcode scanner or graphics tablet or reconnected a device that came unplugged you lost everything on the chain including the keyboard and mouse.
PS/2 wasn't any better, hot plugging sucked about as bad, and the hard limit of 2 devices sucked, ... but at least when the hot plugging failed the other device still worked, and it was generally possible to shut the pc down and reboot with either the keyboard or the mouse working.
USB was a welcome replacement to ADB and PS/2, my complaint isn't that Apple embraced USB, but that it didn't leave the ADB electronics around for a couple extra years so that you could still use your trackball and graphics tablet and barcode scanner with your new mac without jumping through hoops.
Why would you plug your mouse into the computer on an iMac? The keyboard had two USB ports, you plug your mouse in one, leaving you one free port on the computer and one on the keyboard.
That's exactly what I said. The one on the keyboard didn't deliver full power. Leaving you one fully usable port, and one slightly gimped one.
You realize it was just an RS-232 in a DIN sleeve, right?
Yes I did. But it was pointless and annoying to have to have a set of adapters and cables for a 2ndary form factor. Virtually everything on the planet except apple and apple-editions of things used the 9 or 25 pin d-subs... a 9-pin din was redundant.
(And even much of the mac edition hardware was identical to the pc edition, except that it shipped with a cable with a 9 pin din on one end and a d-sub on the device itself. (my old us robotics modem for example)
ADB was cool in a number of ways, but not being reliably hot-pluggable and frequently having the whole bus freeze up when you attached something or something came loose was a royal PITA. It may have been innovative, but I don't miss it. PS/2 wasn't innovative, and its hotpluggability was just as lousy... but at least having the mouse come unplugged didn't freeze the keyboard and effectively lockup the entire computer.
"running mad"?
If you meant "running like mad" I'd have to ask why?
This is a solved problem. Google hdmi to rca.
Also, instead of spending $12,000 on replacing everything, or $700 on a downscaling unit, why not spend $500 or less and build a media pc with RCA / Svido out built onto the video card?
Either there is some issue you're not telling us about or you're making this way harder than it has to be.
1998 was the last time Apple replaced the peripheral ports. If you still have a computer from before then, I'd think you'd have more trouble than just replacing the peripherals.
Agreed. USB then USB2 being backwards compatible with usb 1 has been a good thing for the entire industry.
The only thing you could really gripe about is the constant change in the video connectors
Bingo.
First it was VGA. Then it was all about DVI. Now it's HDMI. At least with DisplayPort you could get an adapter for them.
The first difference being that even today you can get a laptop with a VGA port, which is valuable if you spend most of your time plugging into other people's projectors and stuff. Or you can get a laptop with HDMI if you want the latest standards and hi-def digital output with hdcp... its at least up to the consumer to purchase a unit that suits their needs.
The second difference is that while VGA, DVI, and HDMI have been the progression, even on PCs, is that they've used the standard connectors, so your standard and readily available cables worked.
Meanwhile Apple ran with Mini-VGA, Mni-DVI, and Mini-displayport. All of which are NEVER available anywhere you go unless you bring your bag of adapters with you.
I'm still giving PCs the edge here.
might I suggest you an hdfuryII adapter, it cost 180$ and it convert hdmi to component
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
This isn't a yearly affair. If it was, we'd be having a different discussion.
Except in video connectors, where not only are they changing them every 2 years or less, but they use versions that are non-standard.
mini-vga, mini-dvi, mini-displayport, ... light-peak...
everytime I buy a new laptop I need new adapters. At the very least they should COME with mini-vga to vga... mini-dvi to dvi, ... mini displayport to hdmi or dvi...
I use a model M on my Mac Pro. I have this nice, handy, $5 USB-PS/2 adapter that works flawlessly
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
You mean that standard that's been in use in almost all camcorders, external audio units, and other high-end devices for the last ten years?
When Apple does something, everyone else tends to follow, so I don't know what you're referring to.
Which forced device manufacturers to support the new standard and led to USB adoption throughout the rest of the industry.
What about this converter for GBP 46.95?. It probably won't do clever downscaling, but to be honest you'd be better off setting your laptop to a lower resolution (at least for the external monitor port) and doing the downconversion in software than through an external box. It claims to support up to 1080i HDMI, but my experience is that these cheap converters work better if your output is already at the correct number of lines for composite output.
Nobody "forced" you to buy anything. I can't believe you're actually still angry over Apple adopting USB almost 14 years ago.
No, there isn't, and you have zero evidence to back this claim. What connector transition has Apple made since USB? It's been USB since the late 1990s, with additional Firewire on the high-end machines.
If this is such a continuing ordeal in your life, don't buy anymore new laptops that require new adapters. I know, that would take away your ability to blame someone, but I think you'll be happier.
iMacs were a hit. Apple's adoption of USB spurred device manufacturers to support the standard, which led to USB support for PCs. OEMs may have continued to ship legacy ports for a ridiculously long time, but that doesn't change the fact that USB became a supported option. Windows 98 Second Edition specifically improved its USB support for PCs, and there were USB PCI cards for machines that had no native ports.
Seeing people bash Apple for adopting USB is one of the weirdest criticisms I've seen of Apple yet. USB was an agnostic standard, and adopting USB gave Apple access to all the same devices PC users would be using. Before then, Apple used its own proprietary standard. Apparently, Apple gets bashed if they use their own proprietary standard, and they get bashed if they use a platform-agnostic industry standard.
CNet appears to have snarfed this from AppleInsider.com, and augmented by reading the Intel web site on LightPeak. I'm normally inclined to agree with your complaint, but in this case it's not clear that you've traced the story back to it's origination.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I've had very mixed results with USB-PS/2 adapters and model Ms, unfortunately. My '93 vintage "Manufactured for IBM by Lexmark" works perfectly with the cheapest adapter the ebay-mongers of the pacific rim could dredge up.
The '92 "IBM" model, on the other hand, won't even illuminate any of its indicator LEDs on the same adapter. Apparently, the capacitive keyswitches, especially on the earlier models, use substantially more power on the +5v than many adapters deliver.
Unfortunately, getting one of the high-power adapters is a total crapshoot. I've seen some that claim(per lsusb) to draw only 50ma. Others assert the need full 500ma available. Some fall in between. There appears to be no correlation between price and power demand or power delivered to the downstream PS/2 device. The packaging, of course, doesn't mention such details at all. Even better, in the fine tradition of cheap USB devices, some of them are lying to the host system(see also, non-powered hubs that always report themselves to the host as being powered...) The lying ones lead to delightful situations where how well the system works depends on exactly how tolerant the motherboard or USB chipset designers were. Many desktop boards, and some laptops, have bowed to the inevitable, and cheerfully deliver 500ma or more if called upon, regardless of the lies told by the device. The ones that stick strictly to spec, on the other hand, you can get to pop up alarming warnings just by plugging some of the ghastlier liars in...
"Crazy kids, get off my lawn!"
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
LightPeak doesn't prohibit the use of a power conductor in the same cable. All you "two cable" people are cracked.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
...and the whole "everything must be USB" shenanigan that Apple fanboys like to brag about so much was a big "screw you" to every existing Mac user that dared to be legacy Apple customers.
It's because of fuckers like you that too many PCs still use ISA to hook up internal peripherals.
:) Whoosh?
The CB App. What's your 20?
I was just pre-empting the trolls. :)
The CB App. What's your 20?
It's a sad state of affairs, isn't it? When trolls are so stupid that there's even a possibility that a statement like that would have been made in any sort of seriousness...
The CB App. What's your 20?
Why is it that *almost* everyone who called me out on my pre-emptive troll posted as ACs?
The CB App. What's your 20?
try 4 or so. 2002 -> 2006 = Mini VGA, 2006-2010 = Mini DVI 2010 - ? = Mini displayport.
Seriously. thousand dollars on a laptop and you're bitching about 20 bucks worth of dongles.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The fact that the first one seems to be a simple cable and you need a nonstandard HDMI port that can output analog signals to use it.
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/component-to-hdmi-cable.htm
we have, on rare occasion, seen devices which provide a nonstandard wiring setup where it is possible to route analog component video through an HDMI socket. These devices are extremely rare, and if you have one, your user's manual will clearly state as much. Unfortunately, because there are a few such devices on the market, there are now "HDMI to Component" cables being marketed in various outlets (we've seen them on Amazon and eBay), and the sellers of these products often do not appear to realize that they will work with only a very small, limited class of devices. Don't buy one just to try out; unless your manual says it will work, it WILL NOT.
The second one actually converts the digital signal lo analog and should work with any device.
We both said a lot of things that you are going to regret.
I've been working with computers since the mid-'70's. I've never considered simplification of complex problems getting screwed over. That way of thinking is why the Year of the Linux Desktop never seems to materialize. No one but hobbyists really give a damn about having x+ number of ports with all the cables to go with it.
So I find it funny that you support the concept of simplification to start your post, then proceed to slam Apple for actually doing it!
When I bought my PowerBook (in 2004) it came with a dvi to vga adapter. The Mac Mini I just got this weekend came with an hdi to dvi adapter. So I can connect my new mac mini with my 1996 view sonic LCD screen (If for some reason I wanted to) with the adapters apple has given me. I guess I don't understand all of the griping about the video connections on Macs. Maybe if I had a studio display from 10 years ago there would be a problem? Or are the laptops not coming with an hdmi port?
Seriously. thousand dollars on a laptop and you're bitching about 20 bucks worth of dongles.
Closer to $2000 on the laptop, and at that price point, yeah I expect it to come with a dongle to turn its useless built in port to at least something that will connect to something instead of having to buy a $100 (not $20) worth of dongles to connect it to anything.
iMacs were a hit. Apple's adoption of USB spurred device manufacturers to support the standard, which led to USB support for PCs
USB support was added to Windows 95 "B".
USB would have taken over as the connector of choice with or without apple. Digital cameras, flash memory sticks (in whopping 8MB and 16MB sizes), game controllers, scanners were all shipping usb before the imac launched...
and there were USB PCI cards for machines that had no native ports.
Also available before the Imac was released.
The imac was notable because it abandoned all legacy connectors including the floppy drive. But I didn't "drive" change.
The first difference being that even today you can get a laptop with a VGA port,
that is used to hookup the digital LCD. Because of people like you.
I am not "angry".
And even then I wasn't upset about them adopting usb, i was annoyed they dropped everything else, when it was still widely in use.
and thier goofy round serial
You realize it was just an RS-232 in a DIN sleeve, right?
Actually, it was RS-422 - which was downward compatible to RS-232, but could use faster speeds over longer distances. Still exposes vuxiodts claims for what they are, esp. when he complains that Apple used an improved standard while having complete compatibility - whine, whine, whine, Apple is so mean.
Bullshit from somebody who doesn't remember correctly.
The main push for USB adoption came with the release of Windows 98, released in May of 1998.
Exactly, and all the translucent blue peripherals were made to match the BSODs you got when using USB on Windows 98. After you actually added USB ports to your PC, that your manufacturer omitted because nobody used USB - even so Intel of course included it on all chipsets and motherboards.
Ahh...sometimes the dry wit is a bit too dry for the interwebs...
What connector transition has Apple made since USB?
It's not strictly a data connector, but there was the switch from ADC to DVI in the early 2000's. Apple made a really nice (and expensive) 17" CRT that's now totally useless with anything other than an early 2000's Mac unless you want to spend a fortune in adapters/power supplies. It would have been a lot nicer if they'd simply used DVI with a standard DVI connector, along with a standard power connector. And of course, there's Apple's penchant for using proprietary power supplies with non-standard connectors in their desktop machines that are quite expensive to replace and change with each generation of hardware, when a standard off-the-shelf PC power supply would work just as well, and in my experience are more reliable.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
My MBP is the base $1100 model plus a couple of upgrades after the fact. The dongle to send video to a standard DVI port cost about eight dollars at Monoprice. Though I certainly share your gripe about the dongles if you need dual link DVI (typically 27+" displays), but (at least according to wikipedia) that's just the nature of dual-link dvi's signaling requirements. But after dropping $1300 on the screen, what's another $99*?
You also need to consider that the only external display Apple sells uses mini-displayport natively, so no dongles are required. Not that I use that particular display, although I'd probably prefer it over my Dell 30".
* Yes, that was a joke. But still, part of me says "serves me (or, rather, my employer) right for picking a display that only has DL-DVI in", especially in getting the display after the laptop. Bad luck, as I believe both one model newer and older had native displayport support in which case I could have used a $6 cable instead of a $120 rat's nest of adapters.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
A VGA->RCA converter is what we're presently using - we've got a rack-mounted switcher/scaler in the main sanctuary that does this, and a more portable, old-but-quite-usable Grand Ultraview that we use for out-of-building events. It's the present setup, but I've had laptops come through the doors that only had an HDMI output. While our tech crew has always been resilient in finding workarounds, the increasing number of cases like these are leading us to start pressuring for a proper, more modern system.
Honestly, Why do churches try to get into multimedia and then fail to budget for it?
Behold, the sentiments of everyone on the tech crew, and the people who have to deal with us. The problem is that all the bean counters in the accounting office see is that a $12,000 investment only lasted them 5 years, leading them to believe that such funds are better spent elsewhere. It didn't help that our major investments in this regard happened RIGHT before HD video had hit critical mass.
I was looking at it for that reason; I intend on doing further research into its potential. Thanks for the reminder.
I do, in fact, want DisplayPort. It simply wasn't an option on my Origin Eon 17 laptop. I also wasn't going to make it a dealbreaking criterion, either. Besides, standardizing on HDMI is a much better idea than DisplayPort - HDMI is more widely used, adapters are more diverse, and hundred-foot cable runs are 1.) possible and 2.) aren't impossible to find.
The thing is that plenty of things need to be replaced ANYWAY...
-The projectors have always had a slightly bluish-purple hue to it. No one raised a stink except for us tech people, so we've toughed it out for the past five years with them.
-the video mixer we have has half its channels working in black-and-white mode only. It needs to be replaced.
-None of our cameras are capable of genlocking or outputting to anything above component. Our broadcast-grade camera only outputs composite.
Mix it all together and my laptop is merely the straw that broke the camel's back to get the conversation going once we realized that we were stuck using a two-year-old laptop instead of my brand new Core i7 machine to run our media presentation software which greatly benefits from higher end hardware, simply because mine didn't have the correct output.
With regards to the sanctuary computer, it's only two years old and was a $1,200 custom build at the time. 4GB of RAM, the highest end Core 2 Duo available at the time, three hard disks,dual DVD burners, dual Geforce 8700s...the thing can still hold its own today, so there's no real need to replace it. The other machines we use on a mostly-permanent basis fit the bill here as well, but things get REALLY complicated when cameras and real-time mixing are brought into the picture for the special events we do.
Weird. My God was doing just fine with stone tablets until some old Jew busted them all up. Guess that's why he sent his son around to kick some ass.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Other than RS232, who's using IEEE1284? Who's using PS/2 Mouse/keyboard connectors?
A lot of people, apparently, given the healthy stock of brand new PS/2 mice I saw at my local friendly hardware retailer last week. I even picked one up myself for my aging IBM 600e, as the touchpoint is broken and its only got a single USB port, so you can guess how "pleasant" it is to save my files to an USB drive.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
my laptop has HDMI and DVI outputs, but my church's $12,000 switching/scaling system only does composite
That is either very very old, in which case the $12,000 should have been depreciated away, or very very poorly specified, in which case you might as well just go specify a laptop to go with it. $12k for switching and scaling of composite signals? You can do it for under $2k with a used Amiga and you get realtime organic wipes and the like in the bargain.
If the system is very old then replace it, no one cares if it cost $12,000 in 1979. If the system is very new then someone is an idiot and it's hard to care about your compatibility problems.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The system isn't really that old - we bought it in 2003. What made the thing so stupidly expensive is that it's a matrix switcher - it takes twelve inputs and routes them between eight outputs. We use that in conjunction with a Panasonic MX-50 video mixer which we also bought around that time.
Did *your* laptop have an HDMI output in 2003? few, if any, did until closer to 2007 or 2008, which is NOT the same as waiting a week or two to get a bit more RAM. As I said in some other reply, it was simply a matter of bad timing for a set of investments of that magnitude.
2003 is a little recent for being composite-only, but not egregiously. At that age and for professional budgets I would have expected to see at least S-Video if not component.
I still have laptops with S-Video/Composite out, so I would expect to use one of those if confronted with a problem like this. You can get quite powerful machines with analog TV-out.
My quest is for a stereo that does reasonably priced UP-conversion. I want to put all the kit in one place and run a long HDMI cable (which I already have) to the TV. That way I can have the video game consoles right by the couch. Right now my entertainment system is a PC. I mention this because if you could install a SFF PC near the input you could have any output you want, and it would be about the same price as a really good downconverter.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
FireWire has supported TCP/IP network connections between Macs for several years, as well.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The design goals and what is known about the high level architecture of Light Peak sure look like they were influenced by Apple. Light Peak is hot pluggable, can be daisy-chained, implements a carrier on which multiple protocols can be routed, and provides for electron/copper or photon/fibre carriers -- it's clearly intended to take the best ideas from existing connection types and roll them into one extensible architecture. There's some debate over whether or not Apple and Intel worked on this jointly, or not. Contrasted with the wholly-Intel effort and design abortion of USB (which utterly failed to learn most of the valuable lessons from prior connection protocols) the Light Peak effort demonstrates Apple's influence. Whether that influence is direct or indirect is mainly an academic question.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Extra "or not" available; free to good home.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.