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Back in March we covered Apple's aggressive Thunderbolt plans, and how we believed every Mac would be gaining Thunderbolt by the end of 2011. With the recently updated iMac and MacBook pro lines receiving Thunderbolt updates, nearly half of Apple's Mac fleet has now made the transition to the new technology.

The next Mac on the update roadmap is the Mac mini. But regardless of which Mac is next, Thunderbolt is an absolute game changer, and here's why:

1. Thunderbolt is a quantum leap in throughput. The technology boasts up to 10 Gbps (gigabit per second) of throughput. To put this speed in perspective, cable or FiOS internet connections to residential homes generally pumps through 15 Mbps (megabit per second). Think that's fast? Perhaps for ISPs it is, but just one Gbps equals 1000 Mbps, and the theoretical throughput of Thunderbolt is 10000 Mbps (or 10 Gbps). Pushing 1080p uncompressed HD video? Not a problem. How about multiple streams of 1080p video playback to multiple monitors, while backing up files to an external hard drive, all taking place on the same Thunderbolt daisy-chain, all at the same time. Suddenly you can see the potential of this type of throughput. Whether it's video editing, scientific applications, or home backup, Thunderbolt is a technology everyone will want to quickly utilize.

2. Thunderbolt is going to drive demand of SSD external storage. Today's hard dives with platters and slow I/O's is yesterday's tech. With Thunderbolt, pro and consumer users alike are going to want this speed, and what better way to do so than with a Solid State Drive. Pricing for SSD's is still pretty steep when compared to HDD drives, and the SSD storage is considerably smaller. The trade off is less storage that costs more, but once the speed of these drives with Thunderbolt is experienced, users will never go back to HDD.

3. Device makers will quickly adopt Thunderbolt. FireWire 400 was nice, but USB 2.0 largely squashed its wide acceptance in the market. Apple pushed Firewire 800, but it was a pretty large, costly technology, and it never gained much of a foothold. USB 3.0 is out in the wild and gaining traction, but its speed doesn't hold a candle to Thunderbolt's speed. USB 3.0 has a theoretical maximum speed throughput of 4800 Mbps. That's a nice pickup over USB 2.0, but this new USB technology isn't half the speed of the 10000 Mbps Thunderbolt. It's a no-brainer that camera (and video camera) manufacturers will find a huge advantage in delivering their customers Thunderbolt. The only way to achieve faster transfer rates beyond Thunderbolt is going to be direct transfer via SD card swapping.

4. One cable, one pipe, one chain. Thunderbolt doesn't just move files around at breakneck speed, it also pushes video to monitors. Consider having your laptop plugged into a hard drive (or two), which then plugs into your external monitor, which plugs into your all-in-one print/scanning device. Simply sit down at the desk with your laptop and plug in one little cable and everything's connected. In todays world, connecting all these devices would have required a pesky laptop dock (for PC users), or some form of DVI cable to the monitor, another USB cable to printer and another USB cable to the hard drives (or a daisychain of firewire cables). Thunderbolt eliminates all of this cabling mess.

Oh, one more thing. Intel's developed Thunderbolt and is supporting the technology in all of their forthcoming designs, but has very little motivation to support USB 3.0. Any questions? Didn't think so. You're so going to want this.

Related Articles: 

• Comparison: MacBook air vs MacBook pro

• Mac pro update with Thunderbolt

• Mac mini update due this month

• Macbook graphics face-off: Intel HD Graphics 3000 vs nVIDIA GeForce 320m

5 Comments

1. Walker - Texas Ranger ~ May 5, 2011 18:45
   I can wirelessly print, requiring no cable, but his point is still valid if the speeds pan out. One cable technology for everything but power - pretty nice.
2. Harvey ~ May 5, 2011 19:06
   In physics, quantum leaps are on the sub-atomic level. Thunderbolt is a weird name. Has anyone ever seen a thunderbolt or heard the lightning roar?
3. Nate ~ May 5, 2011 19:35
   Intel is supporting USB 3.0, and it is likely that it will gain a foothold in the PC market. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20053639-64.html) Nevertheless, one can hope that Thunderbolt will become widely used. It doesn’t matter if it’s more popular than USB 3.0 as long as the peripherals are available. For comparison, it’s always been easy to find Firewire peripherals—superior to USB 2—even though USB was more widely adopted.
4. Xavier ~ May 5, 2011 20:59
   @walker texas ranger It does include power, not clear how many devices though.
5. Robert ~ May 6, 2011 16:11
   #2. I am hopeful Thunderbolt will drive SSD sales but until then, it should drive compact RAID sales. Instead of buying external drives with a single 1, 2, or 3-TB external drive, buy RAIDs with hardware controllers that support multiple drives. Plug Thunderbolt into the controller and you have 24x the capacity of the largest SSD (480GB OWC) for the same price and possibly at the same speed. Don't need that much disk space, use smaller capacity drives but include at least 4 of them in the RAID. #3. I'm hoping more vendors will actually start delivering external drives with the Thunderbolt interface. So far only one has (Promise Technology--not counting Lacie because I've never liked their drives). One thing I'm wondering is whether Thunderbolt will be able to be used as a replacement for ethernet networking, at least on a local basis because of distance limitations. 10Gbps is 10x faster than gigabit ethernet and is the speed you can get on advanced ethernet equipment. I haven't read if this is possible but it would make for a really interesting LAN configuration.

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