Roger Fingas
Upcoming Macs may support USB 3.1 Gen 2, enabling peripheral speeds up to a maximum 10 gigabits per second, code discovered in macOS Sierra suggests.
A string in the Sierra beta mentions SuperSpeed+, a term reserved for Gen 2 ports, 9to5Mac noted on Wednesday. In fact it also specifically cites the 10-gigabit speed cap, twice as fast as Gen 1.
Apple could be planning to include Gen 2 on updated iMacs and MacBook Pros, which should be announced sometime this fall. Support would likely come through Thunderbolt 3, which is not only cross-compatible with Gen 2 but offers native speeds up to 40 gigabits per second, and DisplayPort 1.2 connectivity.
Most people probably won't see an appreciable difference from Thunderbolt 3 or Gen 2, at first, but the technologies could simplify connecting devices like 4K monitors, and speed up backups and file transfers on some external drives.
While there have been few rumors about what upgrades Apple has in store for the iMac, the MacBook Pro is expected to be thinner, and sport an OLED strip showing context-sensitive commands. Higher-end models should come equipped with AMD's Polaris graphics chips.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
21 Comments
Nice! Will be a nice upgrade whenever I make the jump from my 2012 MBPro. No time soon though...
I currently use my TB2-equipped 5K iMac with my Promise TB2 disk array. Try as I could, I wasn't able to remotely saturate the bandwidth. As much as I'm impressed with the speed of TB2, it's amazing to know that TB3 will push the envelope even more. We just need the hardware that can take advantage of such bandwidth. Sure, adding extra 4K-5K monitors would be a start, but storage devices to use that bandwidth would be a pretty amazing thing. Expensive I'm sure they will be.
Apple holding out for native support via Kaby Lake.