Apple To Unveil Light Peak, New MacBook Pros This Week? 311
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?"
Where does Light Peak fit? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What's the use (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [appleinsider.com]
Re:Yet another Apple "standard" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What's the use (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:1, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [arstechnica.com] 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?