[Gary Huff]

[Chris Harlan] “Yes, but so do my eSATA drives, except for my G-RAID mini which can run on USB while hooked up as eSATA.”

Well, that means you have TWO AC Adapters rolling, while an eSATA ExpressCard just requires the use of the one on the hard drive, so I don’t see that as an improvement.

Isn’t Thunderbolt supposed to provide power? Why does this adapter requires the use of its own AC adapter?

[Gary Huff]

[Dan Stewart] “I would consider a Hackintosh Smoke station.. anyone heard of a good recipe?”

I’ve heard great things about the new Ivy Bridge Gigabyte Mainboards with UEFI.

[Gary Huff]

[Chris Harlan] “I’m using the LaCie eSATA adaptor and it works quite well. It also has pass-through, making it daisy chain-able.”

Doesn’t seem very portable. Does it require the use of the AC adapter?

[Gary Huff]

[Alan Okey] “The 17″ will be he next casualty after the Mac Pro, mark my words”

Oh, I think it’s on its way out…I just want to see if they release an Ivy Bridge version. I’m coming at it from a DIT perspective, in which ExpressCard and USB3 would be ideal. If not, then I move to something else.

[Alan Okey] ” Yes, the next generation iPad will feature Thunderbolt.”

I bet it won’t. There’s a) no point to having Thunderbolt on the iPad and b) would require a redesigned Thunderbolt cable to fit a redesigned connector that would work with the iPad aesthetics OR would require a dongle. Given that Apple seems to be going for a slimmer connector, I highly doubt that there are enough pins that would make Thunderbolt a reasonable choice. If the iPad gets any kind of faster cable connection, it will be USB3 more than anything else.

[Alan Okey] “Embrace your new Apple Thunderbolt overlords, or embrace Windows/Linux. Welcome to the iFuture.”

Linux will require native Adobe apps before it goes mainstream in that way. So it’s Windows/OSX for the foreseeable future. I’m more than comfortable on both, and, frankly, Thunderbolt isn’t that bad of an option…if there were actually, you know, options for it. Where’s my eSATA adapter? Where’s my FW800 adapter? Where’s my USB3 adapter? Oh, they don’t exist yet. Belkin’s coming out with one in the fall, sans USB3 and eSATA. And Matrox is also coming out with one…but USB3 ports only. It’s like a comedy of errors.

Terrible growing pains for sure, but will it turn into anything like it’s proponents tout it to be? I think the saving grace is that you can now get Thunderbolt outside of Apple. Perhaps that will finally spur on development.

[Gary Huff]

Yeah, I don’t get this. The article states:

Apple is also planning to refresh a fourth piece of their Mac line, and this leaves the Mac mini and the Mac Pro. We are currently unsure whether or not the Mac Pro or Mac mini will be the fourth Mac updated at the conference, but both Macs are due for a refresh, especially the Mac Pro.

Frankly, I’m perplexed that they think it could be the Mac Pro when it’s clearly going to be an update to the Mini.

If Apple would put a decent GPU in the damn thing (a 1GB AMD 7000M or NVIDIA 600M would be ideal), I’ll buy one. It would be a good desktop machine for when I want to run OSX apps instead of having to dig out the 17″ every time. Unless they give the 17″ one more go with Ivy Bridge and USB3 (and ExpressCard). Then I’d get that one.

[Gary Huff]

[Thomas Leredu] “After the other day when the online Apple Store was down, on the french online Apple Store, the title of the web page was : “nouveau Mac pro-livraison gratuite” which means : “new Mac pro – free shipping”.”

You didn’t need to capture the screen. It still says this.

Doesn’t seem like much of anything.

[Gary Huff]

[Chris Good] ”
IS there something I’m missing, or are they out of their minds at Pandora?”

The latter…or it’s a typo…or someone there doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

[Gary Huff]

[Herb Sevush] “All I want is clarity – kill it or not, just let everyone know so we can move on.”

But then you wouldn’t break down and buy the 2010 model so that Apple can empty out its inventory.

[Gary Huff]

Apple is now a “Post-PC” company. The first move towards that will be emptying out the Mac Pro inventory and leaving that form of desktop behind. I bet iMacs will be next in a few years.

Eventually, iOS and OSX will merge. You can already see hints of that with Mountain Lion having Twitter and Facebook integration.

[Gary Huff]

[Clint Wardlow] “With the possible exception of Windows Movie Maker, which shouldn’t be discussed in polite company anywhere.”

I smirk thinking of how the discussion would go if Microsoft had released FCPX exactly as it currently stands instead of Apple (and called it Movie Maker Pro X). I highly doubt anyone here would be referring to it as “the future”.