Apple News, Analysis and Podcasts

Intel's Light Peak technology (also known as Thunderbolt) was first introduced on Apple's MacBook Pro line-up last month. Thunderbolt is set to race across the Mac platform, spreading across Apple's entire lineup by the end of 2011.

The next Mac product to include Thunderbolt is the Mac Mini — via a product update due this month. Following the Mac Mini will be updates to the iMac and Mac Pro towers. That said, both systems update timelines have varied greatly in the past few years. What is not known is how many Thunderbolt ports each system will receive.

The Mac Pro was last updated in August 2010. We believe Apple will choose to launch Thunderbolt on their new Mac Pro towers at NAB this April and at the same time announce the largest-ever update to Final Cut Studio. We assume Apple will be most agressive with their Pro market space, opting to include at least two Thunderbolt ports on the Mac Pro, or as many as four. Considering Apple takes up to two years between Mac Pro updates, two ports until the next hardware revision (2013) is questionable, even though the technology is daisy-chain capable.

The MacBook Air appears slated to be the last Mac in Apple's lineup to receive the Thunderbolt technology, sometime during the late-fall of 2011. Considering Apple may have sold upwards of 1 million MacBook Air laptops in the December Quarter (Apple's fiscal Q1), we question whether the entry-level white MacBook will live beyond a fall MacBook Air update. 

As for other products, such as Apple TV, or the iPad, it will be difficult for Apple to shoehorn in Thunderbolt technology, considering it is heavily tied to Intel's PCI-X bus technology, which would need to be heavily re-worked to conform to the ARM platform. At best, iPad would receive a rather large 30-pin adaptor for Thunderbolt, while Apple TV may — at some point — have it built directly into it's tiny shell.

3 Comments

1. Bob ~ March 7, 2011 22:18
   Small correction: that should be PCI Express, not PCI-X.
2. -hh ~ March 8, 2011 02:07
   In conjunction with suggestions that one won't ever be able to buy a PCIe card to upgrade an existing Mac Pro (true or false) effectively means that the retail sales of the current Mac Pro should have fallen off a cliff last week. As such, an update to the Mac Pro simply cannot come soon enough. But then again, Sandy Bridge based Xeon CPUs aren't officially due yet from Intel. IIRC, 4Q11. Schedule Clash. Hopefully, Apple/Intel has some early Sandy Bridge Xeons for early delivery. Otherwise, the current high end customers may very well wait until the next Mac Pro bump so as to not pay for Interface in 2011 and CPUs again in 2012. -hh
3. Steve ~ May 6, 2011 00:44
   Well, maybe not the MacMini after all... :) Of course, I have the benefit of hindsight here. I'm waiting anxiously for the Minis, now that the iMac upgrade was released. I need to replace an aging G5 that's running my house.

Leave your reply