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macOS Sierra beta points to future Macs equipped with 10Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2

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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.



21 Comments

hypoluxa 22 Years · 619 comments

Nice! Will be a nice upgrade whenever I make the jump from my 2012 MBPro. No time soon though...

sflocal 16 Years · 6138 comments

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.

ireland 18 Years · 17436 comments

Apple holding out for native support via Kaby Lake.

lorin schultz 10 Years · 2744 comments

ireland said:
Apple holding out for native support via Kaby Lake.

As desperately as I need a new MacBook Pro, I'm willing to wait a little longer to get the latest and greatest, not because I'm likely to exploit the benefit now, but since I keep these things for five years at a time, the more "current" it is out of the gate, the less I suffer in years three, four, and five.

fastasleep 14 Years · 6451 comments

ireland said:
Apple holding out for native support via Kaby Lake.

No. The Skylake chips most likely for MBP just came out, Kaby Lake probably not til mid-2017 if it sticks to a similar timeline to Skylake.