CNET reports that Intel’s Light Peak, a high-speed connection standard capable of transferring data at 10 gigabits per second, will be arriving sooner than expected: sometime in the first half of 2011. And Apple’s poised to be an early adopter.
According to CNET’s industry source, Light Peak is “now on track to appear in products in the first half of 2011 – and likely earlier in the year than later.” And if past reports are true, Apple could be among the first to incorporate it.
It’s long been whispered that Apple conceived the idea for Light Peak in the first place, and they’ve reportedly helped Intel guide the development of the standard along the way.
Steve Jobs has said that Apple doesn’t see USB 3.0 taking off, and while Intel has said it would support the standard, many have speculated that Intel chipsets won’t support USB 3.0 until 2012. If Light Peak is indeed around the corner, as CNET’s source suggets, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Apple put their weight behind it in a big way early next year. CNET via MacRumors]
Steve
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 1:41 PMAnother example of Apple choosing some in-house tech over the proven and popular standard. Remember Firewire? Yeah. They had to have a nice slice of humble pie over that one. I don’t care how innovative Apple thinks it is, if they want to experiment, they shouldn’t test it at risk of the consumer. Every time Jobs has a pet peeve, his millions of consumers are forced into abiding by his bizarre rules.
G
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 2:24 PMI hear ya.
Fire wire is a great point. In all areas, it was actually superior to USB 1 and 2. But it still didnt take off because of the stupid regulations on its use and the resulting adoption. Light Peak may technically be faster than USB 3 – but whats the point if it won’t be adopted on mass?
Apple tend to like to have their fingers in too many pies, and while they see it as advancing inovation and productivity – doing something like this is very risky – not for them, but for the consumer.
It will be fun when they make the connection for the iphone 5th gen Light Peak only, but then have the connection standard abandoned by others
matt
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 3:16 PMand isn’t it fiber optic?
sounds expensive.
it also seems wasteful to just have one super powerful wire for everything (though I can appreciate the simplicity)
I don’t want to have to pay $10 a meter for a 100gbit cable just to connect my keyboard to my computer.
is all I’m saying.
“Steve Jobs has said that Apple doesn’t see USB 3.0 taking off” the ONLY reason he said this is because he bet on light peek. there is no other reason.
jason
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 6:34 PMalso last time i checked fibre doesnt transmit power.
though im sure they could have an optical cable and a power cable side by side within a link. It will be interesting to see how much extra power this consumes.
if devices need to be seperately powered it will definitely fail.
fibre also generally isnt that resilient (though there are some really touch fibre cables out there) and connectors are quite sensitive to dirt.
these problems are fine to have to tackle for a highspeed data link for an impotant device but for keyboards and thumbdrives etc its way to messy compared to usb.
also in all of this please show me a device that actually utilises the full capacity of a usb 2 or 3 port.
its only when you have a hub with mutiple devices.
an “optical” hub will not be a cheap device
xvart
Sunday, November 7, 2010 at 2:18 PMI remember the fire wire bun fight, apple did themselves out of that market by wanting too much for the license per chip. At the time it was reported apple wanted $1 per chip.
chris
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 6:32 PMWasn’t the imac g3 the first computer to feature USB as standard?