Apple and Thunderbolt 3

[David Roth weiss]

Oliver, this a classic case of showing vaporware at NAB that has no immediate application. I doubt you’ll see any actual releases of working TB-3 hardware solutions until next year at NAB.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Charlie Austin]

[David Roth Weiss] “this a classic case of showing vaporware at NAB that has no immediate application.”

Vaporware? at NAB?? Impossible. 😉

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~

[Scott Thomas]

Blackmagic showed a new TB3 UltraStudio.

I saw a PCIe card (looked 4 lane) that had a USB 3.1 (C) connector and was told that it would work in a MacPro tower.

Now that wasn’t confirmation that it would provide TB3, maybe just USB 3.1? They seemed to lead me to believe it was TB3, but I felt that in the too-good-to-be-true category. Besides, there are no Mac TB3 drivers yet. No Apple system has it yet; just laptops with USB C.

I did see a “prototype” TB3 to 2 adaptor. So you can step down to 2, but not go the other way.

One small TB3 RAID box I saw is designed so that if you plug it into a USB C port without Thunderbolt, it steps down to USB protocol and still works.

Also, TB3 to PCIe boxes.

Proof that it’s here before next NAB? Maybe not, but I was hearing about TB3 last NAB, there are already PC motherboards with the standard… out now, and there was an entire pavilion showing working, if not production-ready hardware.

I think with the shared connector (USB C) we’re probably going to see a faster uptake and better selection of devices. On the other hand, we’ll probably not see much in the way of new TB2 devices in the future.

Finally: hopefully we’ll see a new MacPro at the WWDC with Thunderbolt 3.

[Shane Ross]

I am going to wager that we will never see another MacPro update. I’m sure Apple will discontinue that line and push iMacs as their main “pro” computer (it already is superior to the current MacPro trash can).

I also wager that Apple won’t implement Thunderbolt three for another year. For some reason they are no longer leading with this technology, but trailing with it. Many PC motherboards are touting Thunderbolt 3 already. Found this out in my research to build a Hackintosh. Which I had to drop because I couldn’t find a motherboard that had Thunderbolt 2…one that would work with the current MacOS El Cap. And the current OS doesn’t support USB 3.1…nor Thunderbolt 3.

Thunderbolt 3 is already here…just not at Apple.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Ricardo Marty]

At the moment asus has a couple of laptops that support tb3 with type c connector. Its there gamer rog. The specs are pretty impresive for the price. Just saw it at bestbuy for 1400.00

Ricardo marty

[Michael Gissing]

Just doing a PC rebuild at the moment with some upgrading and my new Asus motherboard has TB3 and USB-c built in. You connect TB3 to the same connector as the USB-c and the motherboard recognises and reads as TB3. Not sure if TB2 devices with a cable adapter will work or if they connect will be reliable. USB-c is a smarter option for drive makers and having TB3 is a bonus rather than an important requirement for me.

But yes TB3 devices like Blackmagic are available. I am setting up this upgrade PC with a view to the next Titan X card and future connectivity. Plus DDR4 RAM and an M2 system drive which is one of the fastest SSD drives on the planet (Samsung 512gig 950Pro)

So a real speed machine at so many levels to run Resolve. And an onboard 30TB RAID. Apple?

[Tim Wilson]

[Ricardo Marty] “At the moment asus has a couple of laptops that support tb3.”

I’ve had it for a while on my Dell XPS 15, too. Not a gaming machine at all, but a professional productivity model.

My favorite laptop ever, btw. Everything I wished my MBPs had been, and then some.

[Shane Ross] “I am going to wager that we will never see another MacPro update. I’m sure Apple will discontinue that line and push iMacs as their main “pro” computer (it already is superior to the current MacPro trash can).”

I’ve always felt that iMacs were underrated by a lot of people, but apparently not by Apple. 🙂

Not to get into a platform thing, but srsly, anyone committed to this form factor and multi-OS needs to see what HP is doing with the Z1: real live workstation specs…which as you note, Shane, Apple is too happy to leave behind.

[Shane Ross] “[Hackintosh]…which I had to drop because I couldn’t find a motherboard that had Thunderbolt 2…one that would work with the current MacOS El Cap. And the current OS doesn’t support USB 3.1…nor Thunderbolt 3. “

That’s the crazy part. You can’t buy a PC motherboard with an old-enough, low-enough spec to support the newest Apple OS.

Remember the days when Apple wanted to have the most powerful computers for video production?

Heck, back in 1999, they claimed to have a computer so powerful that it was forbidden from export to “certain” *cough*China*cough* “countries.” It wasn’t exactly true, but no need for the truth to get in the way of a good commercial.

https://youtu.be/gSFeunkpng8

Hilarious punchline at the end, but when seen from this vantage point, kind of sad, too.

[Ricardo Marty]

With proxy editing gpu processing and tb3 who needs more. Not as many as before.

Ricardo Marty

[Andrew Kimery]

[Shane Ross] “I’m sure Apple will discontinue that line and push iMacs as their main “pro” computer (it already is superior to the current MacPro trash can)”

The middle and top nMP’s will still beat the 5K iMac in GPU-centric situations, but for CPU I agree that it’s a wash. I wish Apple would put a desktop GPU in the top of the line iMac but I understand why they don’t (then it really would be way too close in performance to the top of the line nMP).

Save for my Mac Mini I’ve always bought towers and I just can’t seem to pull the trigger on spending so much money (either on an iMac or a nMP) for a new machine that’s pretty much locked from a performance perspective. I’m hanging on to an ’09 MP and the only reason this thing is still viable is because I can upgrade the I/O (added USB 3 and eSATA), the GPU and, if I’m feeling like a weekend project, the CPUs with a kit from OWC.

If a nMP came out tomorrow with current I/O, GPUs, CPU, etc., I’d be really tempted but there’s no way I’m spending top dollar for a computer that was released in 2013. If Apple licensed OS X to run on non-Apple hardware I’d get a Z workstation from HP tonight. Running both Mac and Windows machines is just another layer to my workflow that I don’t want to add if I can avoid it. Ugh. #FirstWorldProblems

[David Mathis]

Tim, thanks for posting that ad! I wonder if this how the NLE of today came into existence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaVgRj2e5_s

😉