You can virtually count on one hand the number of Windows PCs out there with a Thunderbolt port. Optical thunderbolt was supposed to take over from copper, and there was supposed to be a Thunderbolt port in every PC. Thunderbolt currently looks to be heading the same way. But it definitely became a niche product, with even Apple eventually dropping the port from its MacBooks. It’s still in use in many high-end setups, and you can still buy Firewire drives today. Partly because consumers buy numbers without necessarily knowing what they mean, but mostly because it was cheaper.įirewire didn’t die. And Firewire 800 left USB for dead.īut we all know that technological superiority is no guarantee of commercial success. Firewire 400’s delivery of 400Mbps was consistent, making it significantly faster in real-life use. While USB 2 claimed peak speeds of 480Mbps, it rarely delivered them. It’s all looking rather reminiscent of Firewire …įirewire was far superior to USB. Sadly, there’s so far not much sign of this happening. It’s impressive stuff.Ī fast, clever technology developed by Intel and enthusiastically marketed by Apple ought to stand a fighting chance at mass-market adoption. Thunderbolt 2 takes this approach one step further, combining two 10Gbit/s channels into a single 20Gbit/s connection, with the the Thunderbolt controller again doing all the work. The reason you can daisy-chain up to six separate devices is because Thunderbolt automatically multiplexes and de-multiplexes the signals as needed. A single wire carrying both DisplayPort and high-speed PCIe data is an incredibly elegant approach to minimising cable clutter even if you don’t need the blistering speed, especially when you can use an Apple Thunderbolt Display as a hub for your USB devices.