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?"

Comments

The hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey internet! Something is really screwed up here. I ordered a new power supply online a few days ago.. and the store sent me two tracking numbers. “Weird” I thought, but I assumed they just somehow referred to the same thing. After checking the tracker they have taken different routes.

Double checked to make sure I didn’t order two of them or something my credit card was charged the right amount, and this is a fairly large company so I can’t imagine them screwing up and sending me someone elses order.

I feel I should call them, but I don’t really do that.

This is gonna get very, very interesting :(

Re:The hell

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the use of this high speed link, especially on a laptop, when disk speed would be the limiting factor?

Re:What's the use

[Renderer of Evil]

MacBook Air comes with Flash storage. Apple has said it themselves they are moving in that direction where SSDs would become the norm.

Re:What's the use

[TheRaven64]

Presumably you can plug it into something much faster. When I was video editing on my old G4 PowerBook, I plugged in a couple of 7200RPM drives on a FireWire 800 chain. This was much faster than the local disk - I used one for scratch renders and one for the project. The external disks could each handle about 30MB/s, back when my internal drive couldn't hit 10MB/s, and FW800 was fast enough for both disks to be running that the same time.

These days, you could easily plug in some external SSDs, and hit an order of magnitude or so higher transfer rate. I'd also be quite surprised if Apple introduced new MacBook Pros without making internal SSDs standard across the entire line (as they did with the MacBook Air already), in which case the internal disk is much less likely to be a bottleneck for anything.

Re:What's the use

[chaim79]

Light Peak isn't really a port standard like USB or Firewire, it's a consolidator. You can run USB over Light Peak, same with Firewire, HDMI, Audio, Networking, etc. The goal with Light Peak is to connect two cords to your laptop (power and Light Peak) and have everything connected to the other end of Light Peak (Monitor, USB keyboard/mouse, Firewire drive, Ethernet, etc), making it much less cluttered around your laptop and enabling you to pick it up and go fairly quickly. This really shows off in smaller devices, take a Netbook or a Tablet, instead of needing all that space and hardware for USB, and the like you can simply route it over Light Peak and have one connector take care of it all.

Since this is an Intel standard (albeit sponsored and pushed by Apple) it doesn't come with the restrictions that Apple would have placed on it if it were their own standard. This should be fairly open and available. I bet within a year, two at most, nearly all laptops will have this port, and there will be expansion cards available for PC's to add the port. That is, unless it's a total flop, which is possible.

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal with Light Peak is to connect two cords to your laptop (power and Light Peak)

Maybe not even that - they'll possibly have power & light peak in one cable: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/20/apple_to_announce_new_high_speed_connector_for_macs_report_claims.html

Re:What's the use

[Crudely_Indecent]

Sometimes data isn't intended to be written to a disk.

Do you save-to-disk every YouTube video you watch?

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you save-to-disk every YouTube video you watch?

Only the ones featuring Justin Bieber.

Re:What's the use

[commodore6502]

>>>What's the use of this high speed

Uncompressed video which requires ~3 Gbit/s to stream 60fps 1080p.

Re:What's the use

[Crudely_Indecent]

What's a Beiber?

Re:What's the use

[commodore6502]

>>>Do you save-to-disk every YouTube video you watch?

Yes.
It's called buffering.
Else I'd not be able to watch youtube on Dialup or cellphone.

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

You buffer to disk? What, do you have 32MB of RAM to go with that dialup connection? By the way, how's life in 1997?

Re:What's the use

[Junta]

But you can run audio, video, ethernet, and USB over displayport and displayport has 20 Gb/s.

I don't understand why do a new tech when a standard already exists with twice the bandwidth and an eye for encapsulating other common needs.

Re:What's the use

[v1]

As some others are pointing out, this is not about moving data to/from the internal hard drive. It's about accessing data quickly, and consolidating connectors.

I just got a new display for my laptop so I have a bigger screen when I'm at home. When I get home, I plug in:
- power
- left usb
- ext speakers
- dvi
- right usb
- ethernet
- firewire

That's a LOT of stuff to mess with every time I dock/undock. I'd LOVE it if they'd change the magsafe so the center (data) pin was a full duplex optical connector that could make one thin cable break out ALL of that stuff I have to plug in one at a time now. It may not cover all of those angles, but I'm hoping it does. It's possible.

Also there's a connector wear issue. full size DVI cables aren't the best thing to have to be constantly plugging/unplugging. Ethernet cables break their clips. USB starts to go in upside-down. Ext speakers fit nicely in the mic port. And none of them is really built for a very high number of operations like the magport is.

As for speed, imagine much faster access to external storage - a nice RAID5 hooked to your laptop via lightpeak, for editing video, where the speed limitation is your cpu, your ram amount/speed, and your storage. Laptops as you point out have speed issues with internal storage, between 5400-7200 usually, so external storage is a better choice. Natively best you can do is firewire800, 79mb/sec. (the other faster option is getting an esata expresscard, I have one, they can be 150mb/sec+) But imagine 250mb/sec+ lightpeak access speeds for video editing, no card required. *drool*

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

Cable length

Re:What's the use

[LordLimecat]

Buffering can happen to RAM.

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

I just hope apple continues to offer a traditional hard drive solution. I don't care about speed, but rather disk space. Aside from the Mac Pro and the high end iMac, I can't even buy a new Mac that can handle my iTunes collection. I'd need 2 512GB SSDs in raid 0 to handle it now.

Re:What's the use

[Malc]

Might as well throw in USB 3.0 as well.

The one thing I like about my Dell laptop at work compared with my MacBook at home is that PC manufacturers make docks. I don't have to unplug/insert a bunch of cables every time I want to move.

Re:What's the use

[s73v3r]

It would be a rare case, but I would say using the laptop on a production shoot, where the laptop would be feeding into a Xstore or other RAID cluster.

Re:What's the use

[s73v3r]

Are you saying that, instead of my laptop currently having several USB ports, there would just be one LightPeak port on the laptop, which would connect to all of the USB devices? How would that work?

Re:What's the use

[je ne sais quoi]

You had me going until this statment:

Since this is an Intel standard (albeit sponsored and pushed by Apple) it doesn't come with the restrictions that Apple would have placed on it if it were their own standard.

This is complete and total bullshit. Apple has promoted open standards FOR YEARS. Webkit? Apple's (yes I know it was built off of khtml). CUPS? Apple owns and maintains it. HTML5 vs. flash? Apple supports the open standard. Firewire? Apple was one of the few major players to support it. USB? Apple helped drive the wide-spread adoption of USB by forcing its use with the imacs.

The bottom line is that if you think Apple doesn't support open standards, you're either a troll or badly misinformed. It could be you're thinking of another major industry player who likes to buy off standards committees.

Re:What's the use

[ctishman]

The historical irony of this statement is not lost on me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerbook_Duo

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

Only problem is, there isn't enough bandwidth to do all that.

Consider the 3200x1200 display setup I currently use on my desktop. That would take at least 8 Gbps all by itself (3200x1200 at 60 fps) leaving very little for my relatively slow RAID array which runs about 4 Gbps (made of 4 pretty old drives running about 500 MB/s).

This is all old technology (3+ years) too, it will only get worse as newer faster stuff comes out. I don't see how this connector can be all that useful. Call me when they have 100 Gbps going, that would be useful.

Re:What's the use

[similar_name]

Do you save-to-disk every YouTube video you watch?

I believe the browser usually does, or used to anyway.

Re:What's the use

[dagamer34]

What you need is a NAS server dude.

Re:What's the use

[Crudely_Indecent]

Depends on the headers sent with the video.

One of my clients requires that streamed videos not be stored on the client machines.

Re:What's the use

[Entropy2016]

Firewire? Apple was one of the few major players to support it.

They didn't just support it. From what I remember, Firewire (the original Firewire 400) was actually invented by Apple. And it was open for everyone to use. The only thing restrictive about Firewire which Apple might be guilty of is their ownership of the logo for it.

Re:What's the use

[commodore6502]

True but since most computers don't have enough RAM, it gets buffered to the hard drive (virtual ram).

Re:What's the use

[BlackSnake112]

Imacs started around 1998. My pc from 1996 had USB ports on it. Only 2 at 1.0 speeds, but they were there. Every pc I have seen since 1996 has had USB ports on them. Granted most people did not use USB until 1998, 1999. Didn't apple want firewire over USB? Which was why apple had firewire ports on their machines until recently. Firewire is a trademarked by apple. The mainstream market picked USB over firewire. Or could companies not using firewire have been to use the term "firewire" companies had to pay apple? IEEE 1394 doesn't have the same ring to it as firewire does.

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what she said...

Re:What's the use

[chaim79]

3200x1200? is that dual-screens? I doubt that's the intended marked they are pushing for with Light Peak. Though this is my own speculation from reading the articles about it my understanding is that Light Peak is mostly intended for Laptops, which don't usually support dual external monitors. There are a bunch of the higher-end laptops that support dual with the laptop screen being one, however that's still only one monitors worth of bandwidth over Light Peak.

Looking around, the benchmarks I'm seeing for most hardware RAID solutions is around 100MB/s to 250MBs, the only RAID solutions I saw that went as high as what you are describing are very expensive Server class RAID solutions. Again, this is not the target audience for Light Peak. You don't connect a Server-class $10,000 RAID to a laptop.

It looks like Light Peak isn't for you, none of the examples you are describing has anything to do with the target purpose and use cases of Light Peak.

Re:What's the use

[Overzeetop]

No, no, no. You connect your lightPeak to a hub, or to your monitor, and then run your USB/FW/DP cables from that hub to everything else. For a desktop, it's almost useless, as the octopus now originates from your monitor, or perhaps a hub near your monitor. You still need the regular ports on your PC so that you can have a small octopus from your external HD, camera, network, etc coming from the computer for things that run right off the main box.

The real (only?) advantage I see is that this could become a docking port connector to replace the (limited) port replicators and unique-by-laptop-series docking station connections.

Re:What's the use

[li99sh79]

The difference though is that the iMac had zero legacy ports. That move created quite a market for USB peripherals.

Re:What's the use

[Gilmoure]

I have family AV library on a Mac Mini server (with a couple 1GB drives hanging off it by Firewire). It can stream 3 different movies (to Mac laptops/iMac) simultaneously via wireless without stuttering so that works for around the house. What I'd like to see is iTunes (on my server) able to stream over 3G to iPhone/iPads the way EyeTV can. That would be sweet!

Re:What's the use

[Gilmoure]

My Duo 270c still runs great!

Re:What's the use

[Desler]

True but since most computers don't have enough RAM, it gets buffered to the hard drive (virtual ram).

Really? Since when do most computers not have about 50 megs of RAM? The average youtube video combined audio/video rate is around 350kbit/sec and even if the clip were 20 minutes long would only need 46 Megs of RAM to buffer the entire thing. Even if you went up to the 720p level you can buffer almost the entireity of a 10 minute clip in just over 100 megs. Considering that 2-4 gigs of RAM in new computers has been standard for the better part of a decade, who the fuck doesn't have enough RAM to buffer Youtube clips?

Re:What's the use

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, it would totally suck to have power, USB, ethernet, DisplayPort, and FireWire all running through one 1cm x 0.5cm connection...

Are you joking?

Re:What's the use

[Concerned Onlooker]

We have people using PCs and Macs where I work and that's what the PC folks say. Usually they say that right before they say that their laptop is jacked up because they just took it out of the dock.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

Legacy ports which... were standard?

Re:What's the use

[name_already_taken]

3200x1200? is that dual-screens?

Most likely - my Apple 30" screen is running at its native resolution of 2560x1600. 1600x1200 is one of the resolutions I can set the adapter to, so most likely 3200x1200 is 2x1600x1200.

How do you calculate Gbps for a monitor anyway? I multiplied 3200(Horiz. pixels/scan line)x1200(Lines)x60(Hz frame rate)x24(bits per pixel) and came up with 5.5Gbps. Around 5.9Gbps for my 30" display. Did I miss something? I assume there are sync pulses too, but not 2Gbps worth of them.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

iPod dock connector?... Some recent Shuffle with lockout of unauthorized headset controls? Lack of access to those players via file system or MTP? One-off DRM? (no, it isn't gone - look at, say, e-books; or generally "one appstore to rule them all")

They don't appear to have much of a very clear position when it comes to promoting open standards... just when it seems practical to them, I guess.

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking around, the benchmarks I'm seeing for most hardware RAID solutions is around 100MB/s to 250MBs, the only RAID solutions I saw that went as high as what you are describing are very expensive Server class RAID solutions. Again, this is not the target audience for Light Peak. You don't connect a Server-class $10,000 RAID to a laptop.

Uh, are you kidding? Regular consumer grade drives run over 110MB/s for a single drive. Pop about 5 or 6 of them in a RAID10 or RAID5 and you'll be pushing well over 500MB/s using these cheap consumer drives and Linux software RAID.

Re:What's the use

[tibit]

I will tell you of one specific application I have in mind: high speed digitizers. Modern graphic hardware can easily process (filter, render, etc) continuous 1Gsample/s data streams. With a commoditized high-speed interconnect, you can have a laptop-based "digital phosphor" oscilloscope that can pretty much blow out of the water every DSO and DPO out there that costs less than say 30k$. Same goes for real-time spectrum analysis, demodulation, software-defined radio, etc.

It should be fairly easy to get a 1Gs/s digitizer hooked up to a light peak link using an FPGA. Even a few of them, or even more slower digitizers. Gigabit Ethernet, can't handle a two channel, 16 bit, 250Ms/s data stream. A 12 bit 250Ms/s chip from Linear costs about $130 qty 1; a 500Ms/s one from Intersil goes for $12 more. A 12 bit 1Gs/s costs about $900.

Re:What's the use

[commodore6502]

>>>Really?

Yes really. If you don't believe me, turn off "file paging" (control panel-system props-performance-virtual memory), and try to watch youtube using nothing but RAM. It won't work. In fact you probably won't be able to load Firefox.

Re:What's the use

[Desler]

Yes really. If you don't believe me, turn off "file paging" (control panel-system props-performance-virtual memory), and try to watch youtube using nothing but RAM. It won't work. In fact you probably won't be able to load Firefox.

Just did that. Works perfectly fine on my 3 year old laptop and my 6 year old desktop.

Re:What's the use

[rueger]

I bet within a year, two at most, nearly all laptops will have this port

At which time Apple will discontinue it on all of their machines....

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

Nope they where not standard... they where usua, but connectors etc could be different from device to device even though they implemented the same protocols etc.

USB is closer to a standard, and Firewire is an standard, governed by IEEE. OpenCL is a Standard that Apple initiated but is governed now by Khronos Group.

In that sense Googles WebM is not a standard but MPEG 4 is which has h.264 and is governed by ISO/IEC. h.264 even has an ISO number.

So while some tote Apples webkit as an Standard it's not a standard, but its an open platform.

And to the one trolling about usb in PC back in 1996. Yeah there was some PCs who had USB ports but far from all. Even less there where no peripherals using USB then. The Apple iMac propelled USB market. And nearly every USB peripheral that came out then had matching color for each iMac color.

~99.5% of all USB peripherals back then where designed for the Macs. Especially the iMacs.

I remember the times when the using iomega Zip disk on a PC, slow as HD diskette. On the mac almost as fast as the internal hard drive, plug n play even.

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly don't own an iphone or ipod.

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

Have you tested your raid for that?

Not impossible, but you need to have raptors or similar drives in there on separate controllers I guess. Or some SCSI disks for getting up to 500MB/s.

I have standard Sata 300Gbps 3x250GB 7200 RMP in raid 0 and that gives me a sustained write or read around 250MB/s so if you got som 15000 RMP drives there you just might be correct. But 500MB/s sounds bit too impressive to me.

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

The ipod's all of them play standard formats. Which is less you can say about zune or creative. Yeah they all play mpeg1 part 3 (mp3) but few play MPEG4 material, the ipod does.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

You can have a bit of a mess with various USB plugs, too. Most "legacy" devices and cables didn't present much more troubles... (when it comes to "standard")

Generally, saying how "nearly every USB peripheral that came out then had matching color for each iMac color. ~99.5% of all USB peripherals back then where designed for the Macs. Especially the iMacs" seems to come from a very local perspective, also (kinda like iPods "dominated"... if one looked at few markets. Like iPhone "dominates" and Nokia in general or Samsung & LG touchscreen "feature phones" (Corby, Star or Cookie) are nowhere to be seen).

iMacs practically didn't exist in most of the world (that's still largely the case, go through random countries in Statcounter). OTOH, IIRC, in the second half of 1998 new PCs adopted ATX en masse, with its two USB ports. Oh, and I don't think I've seen more than a few "translucent random color" peripherals around... (some categories of them weren't even needed much, in grander picture, like USB FDD drives)

Apple abandoned their "legacy" ports (different, here very much non-standard), which were sort of dead already / USB was how they could jump on economies of scale. Of scale.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

Which doesn't change the examples I listed and the conclusion... (plus - iPods were dwarfed by AAC capable (and where's eAAC and eAAC+, in "all of them"?) mobile phones long before Apple AAC joined real life standard, outside of one DRM-locked source; you might want to verify basics next time BTW, like this "few play MPEG4")

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

If Light Peak can form a network between machines - imagine a Beowulf cluster using it!

Re:What's the use

[BlackSnake112]

I remember the times when the using iomega Zip disk on a PC, slow as HD diskette. On the mac almost as fast as the internal hard drive, plug n play even.

So your saying that macs had faster USB ports then pcs did? Or are you trying to compare USB 1.0 speed to firewire 400? There is no competition, firewire 400 beats USB 1.0. I think it beats USB 1.1 as well.

Does firewire beat the internal zip dives? The ones that were IDE or SCSI connected? That might have been a more fair comparison.

Re:What's the use

[internettoughguy]

The only thing restrictive about Firewire which Apple might be guilty of is their ownership of the logo for it.

Not true.

Re:What's the use

[UnknowingFool]

Some recent Shuffle with lockout of unauthorized headset controls?

To what are you refering? If you're referring to the iLounge article, you should do your homework. Despite the hysteria of the iLounge article, Ars Technica found that there is no authentication in the headsets. iPod Shuffle 3rd generation headset have to have the controls built-in to the headsets but there is no DRM chip. At least two 3rd parties in the article confirmed that they had headsets available and that they didn't require authentication but merely a change in design from other headsets.

Lack of access to those players via file system or MTP?

I think you're confusing a method and a requirement. See the requirement is that you needed to sync up your music on your computer with the player. It used to be necessary that you needed file access to move your files onto your PMP player as few had syncing software that worked well. The method was required. If you still want to be able to do that, then that's your choice. It's not a requirement these days.

One-off DRM? (no, it isn't gone - look at, say, e-books; or generally "one appstore to rule them all")

I don't think you quite understand how content systems work. See the content provider whether it is music company or a book publisher gets to decide whether they want DRM. If Apple or MS or whoever wants to be able to sell their content, they have to negotiate with the content provider. Amazon was able to get DRM-free music because the music companies realized too late that their insistence on DRM only made Apple more powerful; however, if you remember correctly Apple offered DRM free music before Amazon as EMI had allowed them to sell it although at a slightly higher price. The other music companies did not agree until about a year later. If you have a problem with DRM, I suggest you have a talk with the content providers.

They don't appear to have much of a very clear position when it comes to promoting open standards... just when it seems practical to them, I guess.

And how is that different from any other company?

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

Regular consumer drives rarely go over 60MB/s. I would like to say 50MB/s but I du understand that some development has happened. A good drive might do 80MB/s.

But an drive that gets 110MB/s is surely no consumer grade hard drive.

Now I'm talking Hard drive speed, not cached speed. If the hard drive can use it's cache it can reach some higher speeds, but will not sustain that speed.

So if you talk maximum speed of the disk for a short burst... well maybe then. But they average way below that.

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

Well as long as it runs i flash, that 50MB will be 50GB

Re:What's the use

[RocketRabbit]

There is a difference between "peak" and "sustained" and I think you forgot to check the sustained speed of your regular consumer drives.

They only rarely hit 110MB/sec once the buffer is full, and the buffer is full almost instantaneously.

40 or 50 megabytes per second is pretty good for the WD Green drives.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

And how is that different from any other company?

Exactly the point (though probably not "any other" but "most"); while some people seem to flaunt some supposed impressive openness.

(and if, beside that, you insist on pointless rhetoric... 1) could it be why the line about some Shuffle was so vague? (never heard of iLounge BTW) 2) don't twist it into something different - it's a fact that we have a standard way of syncing, MTP (and previously file access, which of course was non-optimal / but it's good to have), one which Apple doesn't want to use 3) you really managed to convince yourself / believed PR how that has anything to do with dismissing the possibility of licensing the DRM scheme to "competitors"? Apt nick...)

Re:What's the use

[crafty.munchkin]

I hope you mean 1TB drives. Otherwise I'd be very surprised if you could have 3 different movies stored on there...

Re:What's the use

[Jake Griffin]

DisplayPort

Bandwidth - 1.62, 2.7, or 5.4 Gbit/s data rate per lane; 1, 2, or 4 lanes; (effective total 5.184, 8.64, or 17.28 Gbit/s for 4-lane link); 1 Mbit/s or 720 Mbit/s for the auxiliary channel.

Light Peak

Bandwidth - 10 Gbit/s (demonstrated), 100 Gbit/s (claimed by 2020)

Re:What's the use

[Gilmoure]

D'oh! But yeah, approaching 900 GB of movie and music files.

Still, I do have a Quadra 650 (33 Mhz) with a 40 MB drive that still runs. 'Course, the OS fit on 7 floppy disks.

Re:What's the use

[UnknowingFool]

1) could it be why the line about some Shuffle was so vague?

So what you are saying is you made a completely vague complaint about the Shuffle which had no real merit to it just to complain about Apple?

don't twist it into something different - it's a fact that we have a standard way of syncing, MTP (and previously file access, which of course was non-optimal / but it's good to have), one which Apple doesn't want to use

Your preferred method is to have file system access. It is not really the requirement and never has been. As for MTP, Apple hasn't adopted it, so what?

you really managed to convince yourself / believed PR how that has anything to do with dismissing the possibility of licensing the DRM scheme to "competitors"? Apt nick...)

Here's the way I see it: Apple developed the ecosystem that consumers have wanted to use. Part of that was the development of DRM system that the content providers could accept. What you're proposing that Apple must be forced to license that to competitors because . . . you don't like it? By your logic, Amazon should be forced to license the AZW DRM for their Ebooks to Sony and Barnes and Noble.

Re:What's the use

[Firehed]

On a high-density drive, 80-90MB/s is quite common. And I'm not talking high-end drives - I'm referring to the 2TB drives that can be had for $85 these days. I've been doing some spring cleaning on my hard drives this weekend (freed up about 3TB across many, many drives so far), and transferring a 300GB system backup disk image between two drives in the 1TB capacity range (I think one Samsung and one WD) it was sustaining around 85MB/s, maybe 75MB/s by the end of it as the data was physically closer to the spindle. They'd easily burst to 110-120MB/s.

And that's before you get into consumer-grade SSDs. They certainly have a price premium over mechanical storage, but a good drive will perform around the 200MB/s range and still only cost a couple hundred bucks (but a crappy SSD really makes very little difference). That's quickly escaping the point of your post, but I'm not talking enterprise-grade hardware either.

I'll be really interested to see if new tech for external drives speeds that up. I don't know whether what I'm working on is slow because of the interface (FW800 - so it shouldn't be) or the Drobo (4 drives in pseudo-raid, but god-only knows what's really happening in that box) but it's rapidly approaching unusable. Can't beat the thing for backups, but actually running anything off the drive gets more painful by the day. A very jittery performance that averages out to... maybe 5MB/s on a good day.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

Yes, yes, thanks for showing again how Apple loves closed non-standards, if there's a chance it pays them good; q.e.d. (which isn't changed by "1)"; & learn to read, nowhere did I say that I prefer filesystem access (quite the contrary, "which of course was non-optimal") while saying we do have open standard, in MTP, ignored by... guess who)

Re:What's the use

[UnknowingFool]

Yes, yes, thanks for showing again how Apple loves closed non-standards

Every company has their standards some of which may be open. You only chose to complain about Apple when everyone does it only because you don't like Apple. You chose to leverage complaints about Apple for no real reason because you don't like Apple.

& learn to read, nowhere did I say that I prefer filesystem access (quite the contrary, "which of course was non-optimal") while saying we do have open standard, in MTP, ignored by... guess who)

I admit I didn't read that carefully if you admit your bias.

Re:What's the use

[martinX]

That dock was nearly as expensive as the Duo itself. If the point was for the Duo to replace a desktop, the dock needed to be $300 not $3000. And without the dock, the "Duo" was really an "Uno".

My wife (GF) had the PB Duo 210 and I had the LC III, both running System 7.1 - the bestest and most stable OS in the world.

Re:What's the use

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no competition, firewire 400 beats USB 1.0. I think it beats USB 1.1 as well.

In the real world it also beats USB 2.x

Re:What's the use

[Draek]

Firewire? Apple was one of the few major players to support it.

Of course they did, they crippled it with patents then tried to charge fees to anyone else that dared use it, that's why it eventually ended up thrown into the depths of irrelevance in spite of its alleged technical superiority. Sounds familiar? it should. Why?

HTML5 vs. flash? Apple supports the open standard.

Because they're doing it again.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

Did you miss also the topic of TFA or of grandparent post to which I replied? They seem to be kinda about Apple; GP slightly one-sided (vs. "Exactly the point..."). Well, I guess some lapses of functional literacy might help such perception of bias.

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

So you just confirmed what I said. Well maybe I was bit pessimistic with 60MB/s. But as you said a good drive can do 75-85MB/s.

Burst is different, which is only small files, and with small files speed matters less.

If you only get 5MB/s on a raid on FireWire800 something is wrong. Cant say about the box. But the interface should sustain a minimum 25MB/s Then i consider it multiplexing. So 50MB/s should be no problem over Firewire800.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

The sudden but inevitable click of death was settling any differences before not too long, anyway ;p

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

yes few play MPEG4, but MPEG4 contains a lot of formats. AAC is MPEG4p3. h.264 is MPEG4p10.

And why don't just eat your own words search for ipod in text you'll find out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Efficiency_Advanced_Audio_Coding

PS. iTunes Music is DRM free and been so for quite a while.

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

Yep so it does. But others are keen on theoretical figures. However USB performance is upgraded with computer hardware performance upgrade. Firewire performance is not affected as long as the hardware is fast enough.

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

yes but before the imac, USB peripherals where just as non existent. There where no utilization of USB before the iMacs. They propelled the USB market, and now it's living on it's own.

But I doubt that whitout the iMacs then that we would be using USB2 and 3 today.

Re:What's the use

[UnknowingFool]

The GP said: Apple does support open standards.

You said: Here are some unrelated complaints about Apple specifically that have no merit but Apple does not always follow open standards.

My point: If you're going to lodge a complaint, it should have merit and not merely reflect your bias. And most companies only follow open standards when it suits them. IBM doesn't support Linux because they are altruistic; IBM supports Linux because they sell services doing so.

Re:What's the use

[Ol Olsoc]

They still have Firewire. Original USB was not near fast enough for video transfer.

Re:What's the use

[juasko]

Well before the iMac all macs had SCSI ports usually both internal and external. Sometimes they had different scsi controllers for internal (faster) and external the old original scsi port. Still faster than anything on the average pc out there. True you could equip the PC with faster SCSI card, but you needed a PCI PC then. The macs NuBus was running at 1/2 of PCI speed and the standard PC bus back then was running on 1/8 of PCI speed, just cant remember the name of that bus. Never had to deal with it, just laughed about it as I used mac and saw the difference i IO speeds.

The PCs back then where quite fast in CPU performance, the 386s n early 486. But IO was terrible. The motorola chips used by Apple n Commodore where quite much more capable, but where not spinning as fast. But only with the 386 Intel started to compete with motorola chips on performance.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

If you want to include "a lot of mpeg4 formats", instead of just sensible ones in context, then portable Apple devices are also out of luck... especially in video tend to greatly depend on reencoding.

And you really managed to convince yourself that the above Wikipedia link, mentioning few recent models, is a counterpoint to my where's eAAC and eAAC+, in "all of them"?(*) Meanwhile, I'm listening now to an iPod (surprised? I know, hard to believe how for many people it's not a worship of one company) which never will, as is the case with vast majority of them in the wild.

(*)hint: it subtetly implies that's not a problem with all... but with well enough to make your "they were best in format support" absurd.

PS. It's like talking to a goldwish... the point about DRM was very clearly about the past (plus Apple is at their game in other areas - probably a large reason to support only "open web standards", why they shun Flash - forcing content providers to go through iApp or iTunes, to get 30%)

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

Hey, it's a matter of interpretation, not facts.

You think: "a line of computers forming less than 1% of sales (but visible at my place!) pushed the whole market"
I think: "they were mostly riding on a wave of larger movement, while shedding their legacy isolated (mostly not used by anybody else) connectors"

What could be more probable... (aka "how many times do we have to hear that Apple propelled something... from one of very few very atypical markets?")

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

"Doing it again" probably having a bit different twist this time - by supporting exclusively "open web", they force any content provider which cares to go through iApp / iTunes DRM / etc. ...getting their 30%.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

"It has no merit in showing they don't follow open standards, that's bias... and besides they do that because it suits them". Nice going there.

Re:What's the use

[sznupi]

That's not about first half of the 90s... (still, "only since 1985 Intel started...", yeah). Back then Macs were nice in comparison (still under-performing, for the excessive price - especially excessive considering insane premium at my non-core-market place ... yes, I was one of very few from my place using, say, LC475 - to mention one with a name that stuck for some reason), still not as deserving as Amigas (oh, also a place where they very much dominated for a long time)

Yet another Apple "standard"

[sunderland56]

Just what the world needs - yet another "standard" used by Apple and nobody else.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Anonymous Coward]

Like what else?

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Anonymous Coward]

Like USB. Remember when everyone laughed at them for being the first to put it on their computers? Ha, the fools.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Enry]

You misspelled Firewire

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Apple Acolyte]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[rubycodez]

yeah, remember when they had that weird screwy SCSI disk while IBM PC Compatibles had MFM and RLL drives? man, those weirdos....

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[jedidiah]

Apple wasn't the first to put USB on computers.

Apple was the first to give users NO OTHER OPTION.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Lumpy]

"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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[jedidiah]

...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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Clockwurk]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[peragrin]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

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?

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[vux984]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[s73v3r]

As opposed to the legacy technology that's still in use by every other company?

Tell me, how is that Microsoft PlaysForSure?

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Who's using PS/2 Mouse/keyboard connectors?

Model M for life, yo.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Skweetis]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[toriver]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[iluvcapra]

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...

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[chaim79]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Gilmoure]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[vux984]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[DarkVader]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[vux984]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[vux984]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[vux984]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[vux984]

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...

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Anubis350]

I use a model M on my Mac Pro. I have this nice, handy, $5 USB-PS/2 adapter that works flawlessly

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[bonch]

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?

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[bonch]

When Apple does something, everyone else tends to follow, so I don't know what you're referring to.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[bonch]

Which forced device manufacturers to support the new standard and led to USB adoption throughout the rest of the industry.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[bonch]

Nobody "forced" you to buy anything. I can't believe you're actually still angry over Apple adopting USB almost 14 years ago.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[bonch]

There is considerable transitional pain.

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[bonch]

everytime I buy a new laptop I need new adapters

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[bonch]

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.

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[bonch]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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...

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Anonymous Coward]

...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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[AshtangiMan]

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?

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[vux984]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[vux984]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[vux984]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[NormalVisual]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Firehed]

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.

Re:Yet another Apple "standard"

[Draek]

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.

Pray for Steve

[Anonymous Coward]

All this hubub is to pay for Steve's new pancreas so he lives to see the next release of the iPod which will be colored fauve with matching earbuds!

Where does Light Peak fit?

[jacks smirking reven]

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...

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

No they won't get royalties. It's Intel's baby, not theirs.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares who pushes it, so long as it's useful and widely adopted?

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[JesseDegenerate]

First, it's intel's tech, not apples. Second, apple's pushed alot of good tech forward, maybe it's just that i'm not a bigot, but who cares who's pushing it? Would you rather sony push it and rename it ilink2? I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem with Google pushing it? which makes your post, infuriating to me. Any company that brings it, even in a proprietary form will spur on innovation. I didn't hear anything about DLNA until Apple started pushing airplay. The rise of android can be easily traced to apple's iphone, and a very worried verizon wireless. it's good for us all, ffs.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't hear anything about DLNA until Apple started pushing airplay.

wat. Win7 supported DLNA out of the box. So do various Motorola and Samsung Android phones.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Orestesx]

I was going to attempt to refute your comment about bandwidth, but it appears that you are right and the summary/article are wrong. The summary says GB or gigabyte, but it looks like it's actually 10 Gigabit, scaling to 100 Gigabit by 2020. Note to anonymous submitter and editableapple.com: bandwidth is measured in bits.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[jo_ham]

No royalties to Apple - it's Intel's.

As far as royalties on the firewire connector, it's $0.25 per device (regardless of ports) and the money is split between several companies, including Apple. I suppose Intel and Apple could do something similar here, but given the way Apple took mini-Displayport (it's royalty free), I think they learned their lesson on port royalties. No idea what Intel will do though.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple Hater. Plain and simple. This attitude of some of you is getting old.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

uPnP itself isn't all that new, and DLNA is just a re-branding of the same.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Nursie]

When was that?

'cos the rest of us got interested back when the ps3 was released and used it for media streaming.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[rsmith-mac]

I do understand the need to have a universal, optical interconnect

Just keep in mind that the first generation of Light Peak isn't optical, it's copper.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple Fanboy. Plain and simple. This attitude of some of you is a dead horse by now.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[UnknowingFool]

I would take any Apple rumors with a grain of salt until Apple announces. From what I've read, some of these rumor site reporting that Light Peak will be used in the iPad 2 which makes even less sense than a MacBook Pro. Some of these site are merely speculating on some one's speculation and have no inherent understanding of the technology. So I would be skeptical.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

First, it's intel's tech, not apples. Second, apple's pushed alot of good tech forward, maybe it's just that i'm not a bigot, but who cares who's pushing it?

Bigot or no, at least I boycott dictators.

Steve Jobs is no different than Fidel Castro, if he had his own country you can bet he'd be executing people for sport (assuming that nice new Liver and Asshole he got are "clean" and not from the black market).

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever your opinion on Apple as a company, I sincerely hope we can all wish the best for Steve Jobs. The sad news that he is only weeks away from meeting his make is not in actual fact that sad, if you're an advocate for freedom on the internet.

While some of us will applaud his skill in selling tat to idiots, albeit people with all the technological expertise of a duvet, his business tactics have become more and more oppressive, and even balanced observers have noticed a tendency toward what can only be described as 'evil.'

As far as I'm concerned, the life of one of the workers in his sickening factories, is worth ten times more than his pathetic evil ass.

His recent moves to collaborate with Rupert Murdoch have been the last straw, and have led many of us to conclude that what is best for Steve (and the rest of us) is that the fucking cunt croaks fairly quickly, and that his shitty company dies with him; it really is about time.

Please take a moment to share a prayer with me.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't understand is why Intel is releasing two standards at the same time: USB 3.0 and now Light Peak. Are they supposed to do different things?

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really... Apple for DLNA? AirPlay came out at the end of 2010. Windows 7 had that since beta in 2008. PS3 is another good example.

No we dont want Sony pushing it either - they arent any better (MemorySticks). Apple turned firewire into a failure. We are still waiting for a widespread viable alternative to USB2. Firewire 800, USB3, eSATA etc still arent ubiquitous.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA Intel claims that Light Peak is 10gb/s....way way way...faster than HDMI or displayport.

At that speed you would be able to transfer an entire blue-ray disk worth of data in 30 seconds.

Plus, this is just the beginning....its going to get way faster as the standard evolves.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Light Peak is going to be copper first, so it offers no real advantage over an already popular interface (USB 3):
http://www.slashgear.com/intel-light-peak-to-debut-with-copper-cables-not-fiber-optic-13119184/

Proprietary matters, I'd rather see a bunch of companies come out with a standard than just Apple and Intel. Otherwise Light Peak will be just another Firewire. And you are a bigot, just one that is against anything Apple.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google bought "Android, Inc." in 2005, and the first iPhone only appeared in 2007.

Also, weren't gPhone and iPhone rumors being discussed long before anything materialized? The iPhone may have been available before any Android-based OS, but I don't think that means you can say that the iPhone directly stimulated the development of Android.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't hear anything about DLNA until Apple started pushing airplay.

Have you been living under a rock?

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[JesseDegenerate]

and airplay isn't airtunes; that was out in june of 2004?

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[JesseDegenerate]

Oh yeah Verizon's droid campaign had nothing to do with competitive pressure from idevices? at a time when they were publicly acknowledging they fucked up passing on the iphone? why i both responding to ACs idk

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[drinkypoo]

I went with firewire and now USB3 is coming out to fix the problems with USB2 and yet firewire penetration is poorer than USB2. Why? It's at least partly due to licensing fees.

Re:Where does Light Peak fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your logic is horrible.

Editors: please fix the title

[necro81]

The new connection tech is called Light Peak. The summary has it right; the title has it wrong.

Re:Editors: please fix the title

[TheRaven64]

Actually, the headline is correct. Apple is going to unveil a new light speed this week. It turns out that the reality distortion field allows light to travel up to 100 times faster. There will also be an announcement of a partnership with Virgin Galactic.

Re:Editors: please fix the title

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you ever feel like the editors are typing the equivalent of "FRist post!!!!" ?

Re:Editors: please fix the title

[rubycodez]

that's good they're upping the light speed, I'm tired of flipping the switch in the bathroom and having time to squat down on the john before the light from my old CFL bulbs illuminates the room.

Re:Editors: please fix the title

[Merk42]

But scientists don't increase the speed of light until 2208

Not a very high quality article.

[Andy Dodd]

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.

Re:Not a very high quality article.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Problem 1: It's 2011. You can't be "delaying something until 2010" in 2011..."

It's a Y10K issue, maybe they're delaying until 12010?

"Problem 2: USB 3.0 is deployed already. So they clearly can't be delaying it."

Your and your linear time perceptions, what kind of conspiracy theorist are you?

Re:Not a very high quality article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem 2: USB 3.0 is deployed already. So they clearly can't be delaying it.

Intel has yet to release a USB 3.0 chipset themselves - other companies have released them, which is why there are products on the market, but Intel hasn't. That's why you see it on such few computers at this point - it isn't incredibly high end, but Intel is withholding because they want to give LightPeak a fighting chance. (At least that's the theory) Once Intel comes out with a USB 3.0 chipset, it will be much more prevalent.

Re:Not a very high quality article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel hasn't released a USB3 chipset and doesn't provide enough bandwidth on the Core i5 bus to support both USB3 and PCIe3 at once.

Re:Not a very high quality article.

[Sky Cry]

Appears to be already fixed in the article: "some have speculated that Intel is delaying support for USB 3.0 until 2012".

Re:Not a very high quality article.

[Theaetetus]

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...

They fixed it apparently: "Lastly, some have speculated that Intel is delaying support for USB 3.0 until 2012 to help Light Peak get off the ground."

Re:Not a very high quality article.

[noidentity]

Explanation: Light Peak causes the creation of time machines, and this author had already traveled back before 2010, written the article, and mistakenly posted it in 2011. Simple mistake, really.

Re:Not a very high quality article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem 2: USB 3.0 is deployed already. So they clearly can't be delaying it.

USB 3.0 is standardized and deployed, but Intel has not yet implemented a USB3.0 stack in it's processing chips. This means that anyone who wants to ship a device with a USB 3.0 port needs to implement their own stack. This is unlike many of the other standard interfaces (such as USB2.0 and even Light Peak) that have direct hardware support within the Intel chips.

So it's not impossible for a manufacturer to add support for USB 3.0, but it's not as easy as adding, say USB 2.0. Most manufacturers would rather wait on deploying USB 3.0 until Intel has built it into their chips, primarily for cost reasons.

Re:Not a very high quality article.

[AbRASiON]

Absoloutely incorrect.

Intel ARE delaying USB 3.0 to THEIR chipsets natively and considering how long USB 3.0 has been an official specification, it's definitely longer than normal.
Obviously this isn't stopping USB 3 but you're seeing less support for it because boards manufacturers have to purchase a 3rd party chip in order to provide USB 3 on an Intel board, which is of course currently the most popular type as usual.

Sure Asus or MSI might put the chip on there but is HP, Dell, IBM doing so on their regular desktop machines for small business and end consumers? Those machines like to stick to the core chipset provided by intel and not add too many bells and whistles

Intel want lightpeak to beat USB 3, I actually want it to as well, I think it'd be fantastic if it's done right. None the less, they most certainly are deliberately avoiding native USB 3 support on their chipsets at this point in time.

Re:Not a very high quality article.

[Draek]

You people and your silly linear conceptions of time.

Dupe

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this same exact story (even including pending laptops) posted around a month ago?

just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hubs

[Joe The Dragon]

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.

Mind your B's

[Anonymous Coward]

10G[B]/s or 10G[b]/s? Wikipedia says 10Gb/s.

Re:Mind your B's

[Nethemas the Great]

But does that mean gibibits or gigabits?

Re:Mind your B's

[jandrese]

Since it is a communication tech, almost certainly 10Gb/s. 10GB/s would be right at the edge of what a full power modern PC can keep up with (assuming you're not doing anything with the data). Dedicated bit blasters like video cards can run faster but even super high resolution 3D displays though (WQXGA at 120hz with 32bit color would be pushing 15Gb/s. The point is, nothing on the consumer level is even close to 80Gb/s (10GB/s), so it would be gross overkill and very expensive on modern machines.

Re:Mind your B's

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, it's communication technology. That means it's giga (10^9), not gibi (2^30). Only memory related things use powers of 2.

Re:Mind your B's

[Anonymous Coward]

gigabit

Gibibits is represented by Gib

To one-up Apple...

[dclozier]

Microsoft has announced Ludicrous Speed!

Re:To one-up Apple...

[Crudely_Indecent]

They've gone to plaid!

Re:To one-up Apple...

[JamesP]

Yes, Microsoft took Light Speed and increased the speed of it!

Unfortunately, data went to the past, instead of going to the other connector.

Re:To one-up Apple...

[Kamel Jockey]

Stop this thing! I order you! STOP!!!!

Re:To one-up Apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which, will be supplanted quickly by the press release for Absolutely Ludicrous Speed because Ludicrous Speed, upon analysis by geeks worldwide, was quickly lambasted on sites like /. when ALS was found to be slower then Apple and Intel's tech.

Sony was rumored to be pursuing a tech called ALSO (Absolutely Ludicrous Speed to Oblivion) but decided that would confuse consumers if they found out their PS3 did not have an ALSO port since the PS3 already did everything anyways.

Sure why not

[Nethemas the Great]

It can go right along side the PC Express card slot and other worthless port technologies pock marking notebooks.

Re:Sure why not

[drinkypoo]

If you mean the ExpressCard slot (is there such a thing as a single slot which does PCMCIA and ExpressCard?) then why didn't you get a subnotebook if you didn't need one? You can get a laptop without expansion in all kinds of sizes now.

Apple have officially lost me...

[darien.train]

So Intel is delaying USB 3.0 support so that Apple fanbois can transfer Apple DRM media to their mobile devices faster? Does anyone else see this as part of a move to cut the PC out of the Apple device loop? That what it looks like to me...and good riddance. I'd rather have a fucking Zune.

Can somebody help me figure out what business Apple is even in anymore? It's like they're now half a console producer (think XBOX live for apps and media) and half a tech-hipster "me get shiny thing first" club with personal and professional computing peeking out of a smaller and smaller hole.

Case in point- I also know quite a few video editors loyal to Final Cut that are now looking to move to Adobe Premiere (because it 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.

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[geek]

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

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[aardwolf64]

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...

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[capsteve]

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.

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[darien.train]

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!

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[darien.train]

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.

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[MacGyver2210]

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.

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[darien.train]

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.

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[darien.train]

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.

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[makomk]

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.

Re:Apple have officially lost me...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're statement makes a lot of assumptions

"You are statement makes a lot of assumptions"? WTF does that mean?

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Voyager529]

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.

Awesome, magical experience, magnificent x20

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose Apple will naturally call it magical and magnificent technology. Filled with magic pixie dust. They will say it twenty times to emphasize the magical nature of this so that people will once again behave like brainless sheep and buy everything from Apple.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[jimicus]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

yeah but...

[Thud457]

is it going to support my Atari SIO bus gear?!

Nope...

[Junta]

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

Obsession

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you people cum every time Apple spits? You are sick!

Apple totally sucks.

[bennomatic]

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?

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

"everyone else is doing it... within a year or two after they release it?"

You answered your own question.

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[ddd0004]

That's not why they suck. They suck because they charge over $500 to wrap mid-level hardware in a shiny unique package. They suck because they try to stifle development efforts that are not theirs or that deliver a competing service to theirs. They suck because they are a marketing and design driven technology company and not a engineering driven technology company. The old adage "Form follows function" doesn't apply at Apple. It's "function follows form, marketing and authoritarian control" for them. Luckily, their customer is doesn't care he or she just wants a kick-ass shiny toy he can show off.

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[zoroaster37]

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.

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

your understanding of 'innovation' is, based on my own personal understanding, quite innovative

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[bennomatic]

:) Whoosh?

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[bennomatic]

I was just pre-empting the trolls. :)

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[bennomatic]

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...

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[bennomatic]

Why is it that *almost* everyone who called me out on my pre-emptive troll posted as ACs?

Re:Apple totally sucks.

[zoroaster37]

Ahh...sometimes the dry wit is a bit too dry for the interwebs...

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[jo_ham]

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.

But why?

[Adam Appel]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[MoonBuggy]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[MoonBuggy]

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).

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[LordLimecat]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[maxume]

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).

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[vux984]

I'm running mad looking for an HDMI-to-RCA downscaler

http://www.svideo.com/hdmi2svideo.html

Cadet Stimpy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Engage Manual Override!

How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[l0ungeb0y]

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.

Re:How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[MacGyver2210]

For those of us building our own computers, the i7 9__ Extreme was 6-cores...and the Xeons are up to 8-core versions.

Re:How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Don't you think that has more to do with how Intel changed their mobile chipsets than Apple's call? A key difference between Intel's Core 2 Duo and their i3, i5, and i7 series on mobile was the integration of Intel's GPU in the chipset. Intel integrated other features and that's great except that not every laptop maker wants to use Intel's GPU. Companies like Dell merely do not use the onboard GPU and use the ATI/nVidia chip instead for their higher end laptops. But the thing is, the GPU is still running and sucking power. Now before the Core 2 Duo didn't have the video integrated. Also the desktop versions of i3, i5, and i7 do not have integrated GPU.

So if you're Apple you can't use the desktop versions because they draw too much power and are not suitable for laptops but the laptop version isn't quite optimized for mobile because of the changes. My guess is that Apple had to spend more time optimizing the chipset to use automatically switch between graphics chips. In the previous MBP, it also featured graphics switching but that was for the older architecture. Maybe there problems involved that we are not aware of and Apple wasn't ready to release until they got it working right.

Re:How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

You're kind of wrong.

From what I understand, the C2D/i$number issue in lower end products and the 13" MBPro has to do with the fact nVidia and Intel got into a huge spat about chipsets.

Now that nVidia's not making i3/i5/i7 chipsets, getting good 3D in a tiny(well, for MBAir, MacBook and 13" MBPro) integrated logic board is kind of a frustrating challenge. Previously, they could've just used an nVidia chipset part that handled north/south bridge AND GPU.

Re:How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[UnknowingFool]

According to wikipedia, you can't get a mobile version of the Core i series without an integrated GPU regardless of who makes the chipset. See also Arrandale.. That's my guess as to why the 13" uses the Core 2 Duo still.

Re:How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Yeah, because the GPU is on the CPU itself. nVidia doesn't make an integrated chipset+GPU for Core i series like they did with the Core2Duo. Which means having a discrete nVidia GPU on board. Which means the logicboard has to be a little bigger, which they can't do on the 13" model.

Re:How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[UnknowingFool]

I suppose that Apple could squeeze it in the 13" MBP. I think it may have come down to a business decision that 13" MBP owners were not not as likely to need the additional horsepower that the Core i-series would provide in trade-off for battery life or whatever.

Re:How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

It might have been a battery life/heat issue too. The 13" can only fit so much battery into it, the 15 and 17 OTOH...

Re:How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[petermgreen]

Not all of the 9xx extreme chips are 6-core and not all the 6-core 9xx chips are extreme.

As for the xeons there are 8-core ones in the 75xx line but the entire line has very low clockspeeds compared to the 56xx line which cancel out the extra two cores so afaict the only reason to buy it is a requirement for more than two sockets or insane ammounts of ram.

Re:How about QUAD-CORE i7?

[petermgreen]

While IIRC they did refuse to license some interfaces to nvidia that was IMO a side issue. You wouldn't want to hang a GPU off DMI anyway and mobile chips don't have QPI.

With the laptop and mainstream desktop i series chips Intel got rid of the northbridge and moved it's functionality into the CPU package (with the top end i series stuff intel moved the memory controller into the CPU but kept the fast IO on a separate chip). This essentially reduced the graphics choices to either use what is built into the CPU (if any, not all i series chips have integrated graphics) or use a discrete PCIe graphics solution with it's own memory (which adds cost, size and power consuption).

AS I understand it (unfortunately finding good comparative benchmarks seems very hard) with sandy bridge the graphics integrated in the CPU have finally caught up with what nvidia integrates in their chipsets for core 2 processors.

um...

[Charliemopps]

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.

Re:um...

[Wovel]

I assume from your description you are not running any Linux Variant or OSX, heck your not even running Windows 7.

I can quite easily break 10mb/s and even 20mb/s to the Internet on WiFi.... I routinely break 400mb/s between laptops over gigabit ethernet. 70-80mbs is common on N.

Why do you suck so bad at moving data? During off all your damn anti-virus-net-filter-save-me-from-my-self-crapola and see what you can do.

Re:um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on! Why don't you address the real question here - why is Steve Jobs competing in a jailhouse rodeo competition tomorrow afternoon? Is this really appropriate behavior for someone that is so close to death?

Re:um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you have something bad in your network?

I have no trouble moving data with scp at 11MB/sec over fast ethernet, from a vmware guest on a quad-core xeon, through a few switches, to my workstation. No SSDs, just regular hard drives.

Are you sure you aren't confusing Mb and MB?

Re:um...

[gmhowell]

Oh come on! Why don't you address the real question here - why is Steve Jobs competing in a jailhouse rodeo competition tomorrow afternoon? Is this really appropriate behavior for someone that is so close to death?

After staying on your mom for 8 seconds last night, it shouldn't be any big deal to get on another 1000 lb. cow.

Cause and effect...

[itsdapead]

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.

Re:Cause and effect...

[darien.train]

The main factor I'm aware of in the migration away from Final Cut systems is lack of support (they've pretty much stopped updating it) and cost of maintenance/storage.

With Final Cut Pro it takes 4 Apple servers to create a decent HD asset storage array because they've pretty much completely stopped caring that their professional workflow suggestions are laughable on their face. 4 Servers not including the storage medium! WTF?

Re:Cause and effect...

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Well I've always considered the MacBook Pro as pro-sumer more than professional. The desktop Mac Pro was more of a professional build. It will be interesting to see what they do there.

Re:Cause and effect...

[iluvcapra]

The main factor I'm aware of in the migration away from Final Cut systems is lack of support (they've pretty much stopped updating it) and cost of maintenance/storage.

Compared to the update schedule and cost structures of, say, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut is still pretty formidable, but that's the market they seem to think about now, large production houses, feature films and HD television shops that want RED workflows. I notice that the winner of the Eddie on Saturday, The Social Network was an FCP show, as was True Grit; Fincher and the Coen's have been using the platform for years and it generally takes about a decade of a vendor screwing up before people like this starting looking for a new platform. (I think Avid was on Media Composer 4 for like, what, 8 years?

There really is no problem with FCP workflows at this point, you just have to pay. And as long as Premiere doesn't have Avid's negative matchback or Final Cut's color tools and particular RED workflow features, that's probably where it's going to stay.

On their own motherboards no less

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:On their own motherboards no less

[makomk]

Please remember USB is Intel's spec. If they wanted to "hold USB 3 back" or something they could just not release it.

They tried doing that too. In fact, I'm not sure if the spec for USB host controllers has officially been released even now, though the other OEMs did try and strong-arm Intel into releasing it.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Anonymous Coward]

You want DisplayPort.
Can output component, drive LCD directly (internally in laptops) and output HDMI, DVI, VGA, etc.

Well if Apple would make real docks

[Shivetya]

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

Re:Well if Apple would make real docks

[tibit]

Apart from the video display, everything else can run quite satisfactorily off a single USB 2.0 hub, as long as you don't mix device speeds. This means you can have a network adapter to attach to the house wiring, backup storage, USB audio, etc. Again -- as long as all devices are of the same speed, the bandwidth is merely shared. Using multiple device speeds causes lower speed devices to rob higher speed devices of bandwidth, since the USB trunk (hub PC) switches to a lower speed when talking to lower speed device.

Re:Well if Apple would make real docks

[juasko]

Apple made the first dock able laptop, it sux that they don't do it anymore.

I'm thinking...

[MacGyver2210]

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.

Re:I'm thinking...

[jo_ham]

You mean like the mini-Displayport - a port they standardised and has been rolled into the displayport standard, that is also royalty free?

All of the ports on the back of a Mac are standard - USB, Firewire, Mini-displayport, ethernet, 3.5mm hybrid toslink/analog audio, SD card reader (some machines)...

Sorry, what "trendy white gold latched cable that I can only use with one computer" are you talking about? None of my cables that are hooked up to my Mac are from Apple, except the power cord and that's a standard IEC "kettle lead" too.

Re:I'm thinking...

[petermgreen]

The big area where apple has been a pain is display connectors. In the last decade they have used the following

VGA: standard
DVI: standard
ADC: apple proprietary version of DVI that carried power and USB as well as the digital signals
Mini VGA: apple proprietary
Mini DVI: apple proprietary
Micro DVI: apple propietary
Mini Displayport: initially apple proprietary but later standardised

Using 7 different display connectors in one decade seems rather excessive to me. Only time will tell whether they stick with mini displayport or continue to jump arround all over the place.

Firewire has also become a bit of a mess connector wise though that is only partiatlly apples fault. There wasn't much they could do to stop sony introducing the small unpowered connector but i'm pretty sure they could have made the 800 connector backwards compatible like they USB guys did when they introduced USB 3.

Re:I'm thinking...

[jo_ham]

That's a little disingenuous - VGA and DVI were used at the same time, and on the larger machines both ports were visible. The same was true for ADC and DVI - Apple shipped cards with both ports so you could select the one that worked for you. For laptops, they went with the most flexible port possible at the time and then used adapters.

Micro DVI was used on a single generation of Macbook Air - a very specific ultra-portable, it's hardly representative of the bulk of Apple machines sold.

They're not "jumping around all over the place" - it just looks that way if you compound 10 years worth of change and *all* the models they have ever made, especially if you count mini DVI as a separate connector to DVI, and mini VGA as a separate connector to VGA. Back when mini VGA was being used, Apple included the adapter in the box with every machine that shipped with a mini-VGA port, enabling you to use VGA with very little hassle. They don't ship adapters any more (sell them as accessories), but the point remains - if you compound those, the port selection effectively reduces.

In terms of firewire, they could not easily make the 800 port backwards compatible with the 400 port due to the way the pins were setup, and the original design of the 400 port (that put all the moving parts inside the cable), but I personally prefer the 400 port to the 800 - I was never a fan of the connection integrity on the 800 port, especially using cables that had large EM donuts on them. They are pin compatible though, so you can get a hybrid cable with a 400 port on one end - less than ideal, but not much else could be done.

The new mohawk.

[magusxxx]

Apple gets Light Peak. Microsoft gets Widow's Peak.

Re:The new mohawk.

[azgard]

And BP gets oil peak.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It can replace HDMI to an extent

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:It can replace HDMI to an extent

[sirsnork]

How is 10Gb/sec not fast enough for SATA which runs, at best, at 6Gb/sec?

Not to mention there are very few drives that can even top 3Gb/sec

Re:It can replace HDMI to an extent

[pipingguy]

I run an external 30" Samsung 305T (it needs two connections from the laptop) from a 17" MacBook Pro and the display is still flaky, goes fuzzy every now and then.

Another parasitic blog that scrambles the facts

[1u3hr]

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.

Re:Another parasitic blog that scrambles the facts

[furball]

Pretty much sums up why I don't ever RTFA.

Re:Another parasitic blog that scrambles the facts

[Anonymous Coward]

"Any TWAT," you say? Don't bite your tongue! Say it loud. You're male and you're proud! Don't half-step! Go straight to "CUNT." Post like you got a pair!

What isp will allow you to do that?

[LBJLVC]

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?

Re:What isp will allow you to do that?

[Wovel]

Umm ok sure. You know this has little or nothing at all to do with your Internet connection right?

Maybe you were confused by the moron earlier who could not copy files between two PCs in his house faster than most of us can download them from the Internet.

Re:What isp will allow you to do that?

[Desler]

Light Speed has nothing to do with your internet connection or networking. It has to do with having bandwidth enough to support USB, video output, etc all through one cable.

New MacBook Pros...wait

[CrowdedBrainzzzsand9]

I'm waiting on the PowerPC-version of the new MacBook Pros. I suggest everyone do this until [fill in your Apple gripe].

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[vlm]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[similar_name]

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

You don't need a quad-core i7

[mozumder]

on a laptop.

Re:You don't need a quad-core i7

[Overzeetop]

Unless it's your primary computer and you do your number crunching on it on a day to day basis. Why buy two computers when you can have one that can do both jobs? Most good chipsets throttle back power extremely well nowadays, so carrying the extra cores has a lower power penalty.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[evilbessie]

You thought of an AV system, my receiver will downscale any input to composite out you could probably find one for $300.

dock is a nice idea but

[v1]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Buelldozer]

"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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[JonySuede]

might I suggest you an hdfuryII adapter, it cost 180$ and it convert hdmi to component

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[uglyduckling]

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.

CNet

[Gary W. Longsine]

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.

Re:CNet

[1u3hr]

but in this case it's not clear that you've traced the story back to it's origination.

It's is clear though that the blog cited by the submitter and endorsed by Slashdot isn't it.

Re:CNet

[Gary W. Longsine]

Agreed.

you forgot to add...

[Gary W. Longsine]

"Crazy kids, get off my lawn!"

One Cable

[Gary W. Longsine]

LightPeak doesn't prohibit the use of a power conductor in the same cable. All you "two cable" people are cracked.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[CyberDragon777]

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.

"screwing people over"?

[jscotta44]

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!

Re:"screwing people over"?

[Sycraft-fu]

No they screw people over by removing things before they are done. A great example was the USB transition. USB had only been out for a very little while and was seen on a few systems. Apple decided they liked it and introduced it. However they didn't add it as an option, they made their systems USB ONLY. So all your old ADB peripherals didn't work anymore, and there was little in the way of USB peripherals available.

The right way to do things is to instead add the new technology, and keep the old one until it isn't useful. That's what Intel did with USB. Their motherboards got it, of course, it was their standard. However they kept PS2 on there. Only somewhat recently have they killed off the PS2 ports on their new products since they are no longer needed.

Re:"screwing people over"?

[jscotta44]

Ah. What you call screwing over I call progress. There were so few periphials for the "Beleaguered" Apple products at that time, that going from few Mac compatible ADB devices to few USB devices made little real difference. And it ushered in a host of products that were compatible to both Windows and Mac computers because the device makers no longer had to worry about some proprietary Apple interface. Nor did they have to keep screwing with the flaky (high performance, but flaky) and expensive SCSI devices. So I call that a huge win – not a screwing over.

However, if you had a huge investment in ADB devices and/or SCSI devices, I can see where you might think that. However, if I recall, there were interface boards for the PowerMacs (not the iMacs, which were certainly not "pro" systems anyway) that gave you ADB capability. I know that my last PowerMac G4 tower and my G5 tower had SCSI boards in them.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Voyager529]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Voyager529]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Voyager529]

I was looking at it for that reason; I intend on doing further research into its potential. Thanks for the reminder.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Voyager529]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Voyager529]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[gmhowell]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[Voyager529]

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.

Re:just what we need $30+ adapters and powered hub

[drinkypoo]

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.

TCPIP over FireWire

[Gary W. Longsine]

FireWire has supported TCP/IP network connections between Macs for several years, as well.

Who's on First?

[Gary W. Longsine]

"So Intel's idea (Light Peak is Intel's technology, not Apple's)"

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.

meta

[Gary W. Longsine]

Extra "or not" available; free to good home.