Thunderbolt fast data transfer at CES

January is the time of year for the international consumer Electronics show which takes place in Nevada USA. It was expected that there would be some news of new Thunderbolt peripherals that would possibly be soon coming and made available to consumers. The Apple fans that have a Macbook Air are looking for perhaps a MacBook Air dock. A dock would be very handy so that users could use just one cable to have everything connected to the MacBook Air. It would save a lot of time and effort with plugging in and unplugging, especially if you are coming and going quite a lot with your ultra portable Mac computer.

To a certain extent the 27 inch Apple Thunderbolt is a MacBook Air docking station. On the large monitor from Apple with the Thunderbolt fast data transfer, there is just about everything you would need apart from Thunderbolt to HDMI and the specialist connections that you might find in a Black Magic Intensity Extreme Thunderbolt peripheral. The only thing with the 27 inch monitor with Thunderbolt from Apple that is a deal breaker for many, is the price. It is rather expensive and you and I, like many other Apple fans really want to see some affordable Thunderbolt peripherals.

Thunderbolt fast data transfer

What we want are those Thunderbolt devices that we can use to connect our older kit to, as well as having the ports and connectivity with new Thunderbolt peripherals and in particular Thunderbolt hard drives. There must be something weird happening and to do with the licensing money required by either Apple or Intel, that is making the technology to expensive to get put into the PC hardware. We do need to see the PC manufacturers spearheading a take-up of the Thunderbolt fast data transfer technology on the latest Intel motherboards, so that there will be the effect of economy of scale, bringing down the prices to an affordable level.

The GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter from Seagate

The hard drive manufacturer Seagate have come up with a device which will be an adapter for the hard drives that they have already. This is following on from the adapters they have made which allow those drives to be connected via either USB 3 or FireWire 800. This Thunderbolt adapter will allow a standard USB externally connected hard drive to be connected to a Thunderbolt port. I have to wonder if this sort of adapter, which looks as though it may be a little bit pricey, will give sufficient bang for the buck because they are not fully Thunderbolt. I suspect that these drives that are going to make use of the Thunderbolt specs will not be able to take the full advantage of the Thunderbolt data transfer speed. There could still be uses for this type of drive and there could be data transfer speed improvements that may be worth having, even though it may not be quite as good as having a Thunderbolt harddrive device that is designed around the proper Thunderbolt specs.

Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock

Belkin usually come up with affordable devices for us computer users, but the Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock which was announced at CES, January 2012, also looks like it could be too expensive for many users. On the other hand for a computer user that really needs to make use of the faster Thunderbolt data transfer, it could be just what the doctor ordered. In as much as, you will not have the heart attack that would certainly affect you by getting out the wallet to buy the very expensive 27 inch Thunderbolt monitor from Apple.

Does Apple really want the Thunderbolt fast data transfer interface to succeed

Just throwing the Thunderbolt port onto all of the new Apple computers during 2011, has proved so far, to not be enough push for the industry to make the Thunderbolt peripherals and Thunderbolt devices that should have arrived already. That is despite the power that Apple now has, by being one of the biggest manufacturers of computers both in the USA and worldwide. There are Apple fan boys that are asking the question, will we ever see sufficient take-up of this data transfer technology. Will the Thunderbolt specs properly get used in Thunderbolt hard drives at a price that we can afford to connect to our Thunderbolt enabled Mac Mini?