Josh Ong
VR-Zone cites an anonymous source who claims Apple is "still looking" at USB 3.0 for future products and may beat Intel in supporting the standard. Though Apple has for some time been rumored to be planning on bringing USB 3.0 to the Mac, the company's recent commitment to the high-speed Thunderbolt interconnect has dampened talk of USB 3.0.
The third-generation of USB offers speeds of up to 5Gbps, 10 times that of USB 2.0. The standard is backward compatible with the previous generation, but has yet to see widespread adoption.
According to the report, USB 3.0 host controllers have finally reached an "affordable level" for Apple, roughly $2-3 each in large quantities, compared to $10-15 for Intel's Thunderbolt chip. The move is said to help Apple cater to consumers who may not need or be interested in high-end Thunderbolt products.
The report also noted that Apple is working with partners to help bring to market more affordable Thunderbolt storage solutions for small businesses and demanding consumers.
For its part, Intel has affirmed its commitment to both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. In April, the chipmaker said it will release chips supporting both standards next year. Thunderbolt made its debut on Apple's new MacBook Pros this February. Co-developed by Apple and Intel, Thunderbolt offers bi-directional channels with transfer speeds of 10Gbps each, twice as fast as USB 3.0.
The world's largest PC marker, Hewlett-Packard, has thrown its weight behind USB 3.0, noting in May that it had yet to find a "value proposition" for Thunderbolt. Of course, HP's support may not count for as much, now that the company is looking to either spin off or sell its PC business.
A recently granted patent shows Apple has looked into USB 3.0 support for its dock connector. The invention details a smaller 30-pin dock connector that could provide support for "one or more new high-speed communication standards," such as USB 3.0 and DisplayPort.
-m.jpg)
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Thomas Sibilly
Marko Zivkovic
Andrew O'Hara
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
85 Comments
"The world's largest PC marker, Hewlett-Packard, has thrown its weight behind USB 3.0"
What weight would that be? Didn't they just throw in the towel?
I'd like to see 2 USB 3.0s and one thunderbolt/display port.
Apple definitely should offer USB 3.0 on new machines. If anybody attempts to make the foolish argument that Apple already has Thunderbolt, then hurry up and show me a link as to where I can buy a Thunderbolt flash stick or a single Thunderbolt external drive for pretty cheap. I see Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 as being two separate things and not necessarily in competition with each other and new Macs should have both connectors. Who doesn't want the fastest transfer rates possible?
I have a few USB 2 flash memory sticks which I use to transfer some files on my machines and they work fine, but USB 2 is pretty fucking slow and I wouldn't mind getting much faster speeds with USB 3. Firewire 400 is faster than USB 2 even though the specs on paper say otherwise. The only problem is that nobody makes Firewire flash sticks, it's all USB now. And Firewire peripherals almost always costs two times the price of their USB equivalent. I was looking to get an enclosure or drive dock recently and I found that the Firewire version was more than double the price of the USB 3.0 version, which is much, much faster.
Having USB 3.0 on new Macs gives the users a whole lot more options when choosing the best and fastest peripherals to hook up to their machine.
Apple doesn't even need the 3rd-party USB 3.0 controller chip. They can just use Thunderbolt to lead off to an internal hub that leads to the USB ports. However, that does limit the Thunderbolt port so it has its drawbacks.
"The world's largest PC marker, Hewlett-Packard, has thrown its weight behind USB 3.0"
What weight would that be? Didn't they just throw in the towel?
Post of the week! ...They threw in a weighted towel...