Thunderbolt technology

The latest Mac Books will come with the new Thunderbolt technology… This is yet another, ever faster I/O technology. While there aren’t any real uses for it…yet, I am left to presume that by the middle of this calendar year we will start to see a growing number of external devices equipped to connect using this new protocol.

For laptop owners (at least those with a new Mac Book…) there may be a sort of ‘golden age’ for laptops coming, in that this transfer technology is so fast that it allows a simple laptop owner (along with some peripherals…) to have comparable power at his (or her) fingertips to most big computer tower set ups…

There may be a point in time where this technology becomes as ubiquitous as USB 2.0 (yeah, I know USB 3.0 is coming, along with wireless USB, and some other ‘pie in the sky initiatives…). In any case, I suspect that there is a new connectivity paradigm coming, where Thunderbolt will start to take the place of USB for external drives (unless Network Attaches Storage comes to maturity in most home networks…).

Thunderbolt only allows a maximum of six devices to be chained at a time, but I have already heard about the prospect of tying trackpads, mice, and other (very) low speed peripherals to this sort of network… It looks like this may be a place where a lot of settling will be taking place in the next 12-24 months…