New MacBook Pros To Sport Light Peak Technology 356
An anonymous reader writes "Over the past few years, Apple has systematically upgraded the base level MacBook to a level where the difference between the Pro and consumer models were arguably becoming negligible. That's about to change. Apple will reportedly introduce a completely re-designed MacBook Pro this April that will borrow features from the recently released MacBook Air. The new Pros will reportedly come with an SSD and Light Peak technology, a transfer protocol capable of 10 Gbps both up and down. Light Peak, jointly developed by Intel and Apple, will reportedly be an Apple exclusive at first."
Re:Fantastic (Score:5, Informative)
Light Peak is a design that is intended to replace the myriad of bus technologies present in the average computer.
For example...in my current rig, I have IDE, SATA (both 1.5 and 3gb versions, no SATA/6Gb),eSATA, USB & Firewire.
Light Peak is an optical technology eventually destined to replace all these different specifications into one 10GB/s-capable-today bus, with speeds expected to reach 100GB/s+ by 2020.
(All this info, and more, from TFA)
Re:"jointly developed by Intel and Apple" (Score:4, Informative)
Anybody got a source for that? Other than an Apple-fanboy-page.
The LightPeak page at Intel Research [intel.com]doesn't even mention Apple at all, but do mention partners like Sony and several others.
Some tech sites, blogs and fanboy pages have been posting claims/rumours of Apple involvement, but with Intel not acknowledging this, and even promoting Sony and others as partners, it doesn't seem very likely.
Re:Usefulness of Light Peak? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:SSDs - when will TRIM come to OSX (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/apple/2010/07/01/mac-ssd-performance-trim-in-osx/7 [bit-tech.net]
Maybe it does not need it?
Re:Fantastic (Score:1, Informative)
Gigabits not Bytes - http://techresearch.intel.com/ProjectDetails.aspx?Id=143 [intel.com]
Re:There's still hope (Score:3, Informative)
But every generation of your laptop doesn't need a whole new video connection. PCs are going from VGA to HDMI. That makes sense. Macs... started with some apple proprietary garbage, to mini dvi, to mini displayport, and now on to light peak... 4 separate connectors in the same period of time, while managing to bypass anything that anyone actually uses for anything else.
Umm, Apple have used VGA and then DVI and then Mini DisplayPort for video interfaces in the past 10 years. They had mini versions of these connectors, for which you were also given the necessary dongle to upsize it to the standard version of the interface.
There was also the short-lived ADC which was a superset of DVI and all machines that had an ADC connector on them also had a standard VGA or DVI port on them too.
On the PC front, you also seem to have forgotten DVI, which I'd warrant is a lot more common than HDMI.
Standard appears to have power... (Score:3, Informative)
Will lightpeak be able to power my external hard drive? Will it charge my HD video camera while I pull video off it?
Any description I've seen of it includes the ability to transmit power along with data. Yes.
Would you be interested in pulling video data off a camera in 5 realtime?
Is it easily adaptable to HDMI?
Probably, just as you can transmit HDCP encrypted video over a DVI connection just as easily as DisplayPort.
DisplayPort is fine and all, but the adaptor to connect my macbook to my tv cost a small fortune
If $5.13 [amazon.com] is a small fortune for you, I think you might be living with the laptop you have for some time. Just as HDMI cables are outrageous in cost when not purchased online, you have to shop around for things like DisplayPort cables too (though at the time you bought it choices were probably more limited).
But every generation of your laptop doesn't need a whole new video connection.
I agree, but LightPeak is such a huge jump in bandwidth that I think it will be a welcome addition to abilities - I don't think Apple will make it the only display adaptor for a while, out of necessity I'm sure a future Mac will also include Display Port, USB, and possibly even ExpressCard/34 (though that I could see dropping since uptake has been low and LightPeak is perfect for external storage).
Re:Fantastic (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Fantastic (Score:5, Informative)
Well said. Similar situation for me. I used Linux for years, and eventually just got tired of fixing shit. The first time fixing every single problem is a challenge, and as a student I enjoyed picking the system apart and troubleshooting. It was a good experience. But when the wireless breaks again and again. When the video is crappy again and again, eventually it wears you down.
Up until last year I didn't own any mac products and didn't see a need to. Now I have an iMac at home and my faster Windows machine gets turned on maybe once a month. I have a Windows desktop machine at work, but use the Macbook whenever I can. Now I have an iPhone 4 for work, and it is fantastic. The thought that went into every detail is quite extraordinary. We tested the latest Android phones, and while they do most of the same things, they aren't anywhere close to the iPhone. I see it the same as for MP3 players and the iPod. When the iPod was released all the other mp3 players were arguably better from a features perspective. And yet the iPod dominated very quickly. Ease of use and thoughtful design beats raw features every time.
Re:FireWire? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fantastic (Score:4, Informative)
The supreme irony is that Apple doesn't actually make anything which will be well suited to utilize Light Peak.
External storage. Hard drives are now a bit faster in practice than FW800, and a *lot* faster than USB2. Now, throw in multiple drives for a music or video setup. Which brings me to...
Music and video. FireWire is wildly successful here. As hard drives get faster (and SSDs begin to take hold), Light Peak can potentially replace FireWire, allowing for even *more* simultaneous HD video streams, etc.
(If anyone wonders why it might be said that Apple doesn't innovate, this is one good example: take something awesome and wrap it in pretty white plastic, doing nothing new with it.)
WiFi, USB, FireWire, magsafe, unibody cases, Face Time, iPhone, glass trackpads, iPod, the batteries in the current MacBooks, Bonjour, AirPrint, multitouch... The list of things Apple directly invented, co-invented, or were early adopters of is extensive. The notion that Apple doesn't innovate is way out there. It's extremely difficult to think of a company that innovates more than Apple!
Talk about a disappointing "gimmick". Hopefully it'll reach mainstream within the next year or two, or it'll likely see an unfortunate demise similar to Firewire (low adoption rates, fringe technology), making Infiniband look all the more attractive.
FireWire has been subject to demise? When exactly did this happen? It's not the dominant external bus, but it's very much alive and well. Apple had nothing to do with it's status of not being the dominant bus, the fact that it's so expensive is why (and that's also why it's such a great bus and is far from dead).
Re:Fantastic (Score:4, Informative)
Apple has had a lot to do with the current state of Firewire. They've removed it from their iPods and dropping it on their lower-end machines. They are also part of the reason it's so expensive, by charging licensing fees that pushed people to USB2 as it was cheaper. Firewire is not dead, but it's pretty much turned into a niche market at this point.
Re:Fantastic (Score:4, Informative)
Pat yourself on the back for catching me forgetting to delete some text from my post before hitting submit. I typed both and googled which is under OSX so I could delete the incorrect one. Why did I have to google it? Why do I not just know that? Because practically speaking THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO ARE MINUSCULE. So you gotta rmdir instead of rm -rF. BFD.