Earlier quoted context omitted.
I for one don't miss serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports.
I miss serial ports.
Why?
Thunderbolt
91–100 of 211 posts
Re: Thunderbolt
#92I am delighted that Thunderbolt isn't reusing the USB plug form-factor. Early rumors showed Light Peak plugs that were the standard rectangular USB shape with fiber optic channels blended in: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/19/apple-to-introduce-light... The outer rectangular, doubly symmetrical shape of USB is a usability nightmare! You know what I'm talking about. Good riddance.
Yes.. 50% chance of getting it right every time, even though it feels like less than that! It doesn't help that some motherboards put the USB ports upside-down for some inexplicable reason, and when it's dark you can't see the little USB logo on the cable anyway.
Re: Thunderbolt
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> especially with USB3 being in the same ballpark in terms of speed. For some uses it's not just a matter of speed - USB2 and FW are similar in terms of speed but USB2 is pretty much unusable for multi-channel audio recording purposes.
And so is FW unless you buy one of the very expensive interfaces that happens to have highly optimized fine tuned drivers. Source: personal experience finding the drivers of most FW audio interfaces under $1000 impose outrageous CPU loads when doing many channels and using more than one device on the supposedly daisy chainable FW bus.
Funny, my experience is the opposite--FireWire drivers are generally very DMA oriented and require little to no CPU at all, while USB drivers tend to need more CPU for the protocol overhead. This is because FireWire is an address oriented bus and the hardware can map FireWire addresses to CPU addresses and DMA in and out with (literally) zero CPU overhead. A driver write would really have to go out of their way to make a FireWire protocol become CPU bound. I suppose the audio protocol is isochronous based which would be slightly different, but that is still DMA based in every FW implementation I know of.
8 channels of 24 bit/192KHz audio is only 2MB/s which is basically nothing. I'm very surprised that you would see any issues.
I have about 3 or 4 devices in my FW chain (including disks and scanners) and my sub $1000 FW audio interface works just fine.
Re: Thunderbolt
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure that Apple's dock connector is sold directly by JAE -- it's the 'DD1' listed here: http://www.jae-connector.com/en/general_en.cfm?series_code=D...
You can't just get them from JAE, you have to license the male plug thru Apple and it's a big process. And Apple lets no one but Apple use the female 30 pin plug.
License under what legal theory? It doesn't seem like a fairly ordinary plug would meet the standards for either patent or copyright.
Re: Thunderbolt
#95I am delighted that Thunderbolt isn't reusing the USB plug form-factor. Early rumors showed Light Peak plugs that were the standard rectangular USB shape with fiber optic channels blended in: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/19/apple-to-introduce-light... The outer rectangular, doubly symmetrical shape of USB is a usability nightmare! You know what I'm talking about. Good riddance.
Yes.. 50% chance of getting it right every time, even though it feels like less than that! It doesn't help that some motherboards put the USB ports upside-down for some inexplicable reason, and when it's dark you can't see the little USB logo on the cable anyway.
It's actually more like 33% chance. "Oh, wrong side. flip over Wrong again? Oh, I had it right the first time!"
Re: Thunderbolt
#96I am delighted that Thunderbolt isn't reusing the USB plug form-factor. Early rumors showed Light Peak plugs that were the standard rectangular USB shape with fiber optic channels blended in: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/19/apple-to-introduce-light... The outer rectangular, doubly symmetrical shape of USB is a usability nightmare! You know what I'm talking about. Good riddance.
Yes.. 50% chance of getting it right every time, even though it feels like less than that! It doesn't help that some motherboards put the USB ports upside-down for some inexplicable reason, and when it's dark you can't see the little USB logo on the cable anyway.
Wait, USB ports have a "correct" orientation? I just assumed it was random...
Re: Thunderbolt
#97So the whole USB2.0/Firewire is going to repeat? Sigh.
Thunderbolt aims to replace nearly every kind of single-use connectors (HDMI, DisplayPort, eSATA, USB, Ethernet). Unifying the connector for displays, peripherals, network and power is a great idea, so I can't complain if they're going up against USB 3.0.
Ha. Good luck to them. Thunderbolt will be lucky to replace firewire. There's no way in the world it can replace USB, Ethernet or HDMI. Just think of the number of devices out there with these ports.
It might replace SATA eventually, but it will have to fight against USB.
Re: Thunderbolt
#98i sense multiple external screens on a MBP :D
Re: Thunderbolt
#99I am delighted that Thunderbolt isn't reusing the USB plug form-factor. Early rumors showed Light Peak plugs that were the standard rectangular USB shape with fiber optic channels blended in: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/19/apple-to-introduce-light... The outer rectangular, doubly symmetrical shape of USB is a usability nightmare! You know what I'm talking about. Good riddance.
Too bad they didn't make the plug really usable: connect it anyway you want to.
There are probably many ways to implement that. An USB concept for it: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/double-usb-plug-conce...
Re: Thunderbolt
#100The problem with USB 3.0 is that it still isnt supported by Intel and probably never will since they developed Thunderbolt.
If you want USB 3.0 today, you need an extra Chip on your board because its not integrated in any chipset. When Intel integrates Thunderbolt nativly the game is over for USB 3.0