Mmmmm the warm smell of link bait in the evening. This reply will probably be longer than it needs to be but I find this stuff silly and want to vent.
TL/DR: The media loves writing "Apple v.s. the World" pieces and TB isn't really meant to compete with USB.
I, as well as many others based on comments I've seen elsewhere, think there are a lot of parallels between USB and Firewire and USB and Thunderbolt (TB). USB is a flexible interface you can use to connect to a camera, keyboard, printer, video adapter, hard drive, etc. It does a lot of this in software which means there's some overhead and various versions of the spec have had their own funky issues (like USB 1 & 2 being half duplex[1]). In the end it's "good enough" and no one except device implementors will have to deal with those problems. Firewire and TB are "better" technologies, designed to do some fairly interesting things. Firewire being essentially hot pluggable daisy chain-able SCSI and TB being an external PCI Express interface that can run over fiber optic cabling (whenever that shows up). As a device maker, unless your customers need any of those cool capabilities there's no reason to to use it. Same deal as with Firewire.
My take on articles like this is they're another case of some relatively boring technical enhancement being turned into the usual "My side must win" sort of religious war by the media (and parts of the general tech public) loves to turn these things into. Clicks are clicks after all. Partly this is because TB has been labeled an "Apple technology" because they helped with some trademark paperwork[2] and embraced it at launch. Unlike Firewire, Apple didn't do anything with the spec except say "Hey lets use this type of cable/connector." But honestly, that doesn't really matter because if it's related to Apple, they MUST be in some sort of battle against some force. In this case, the evils of USB...
Honestly, Thunderbolt seems great for Apple as their design aesthetic mandates (annoyingly IMO) a minimal complement of ports and TB doubles as a display connector and a data port. They won't see a cent by it becoming popular[2] aside from the sales of Apple branded accessories, but regardless TB makes it a lot easier for their customers to plug in an Ethernet adapter, keyboard/mouse, and a couple monitors without the need for a docking station (which is what I do with my MBPr) or a USB HUB/assorted mess (which is what I did with my MacBook Air).
Intel, as the creator of Thunderbolt, stands to make the most by it becoming popular (they make all the controller chips). That said, Intel is part of the USB consortium as well and it's hard to see how they can "loose" either way this goes.
Exactly. As far as I can tell, you cannot connect an external monitor to a USB port and have a GPU drive it. Thunderbolt serves a different purpose than USB: it is an interface between a small number of external devices and a small number of hardware components. The fact is that it can only at this point be useful for three things: displays, drives, and Ethernet. USB is what you use when you do not have another option. It is nice since it can support almost any kind of device because the protocol is not burnt into hardware, but of course the downside is that it has to implement the host side of things in software. Anyone trying to use a "USB video card" to play an HD video will notice how much of a toll it takes on the CPU. And when the CPU is fast enough not to be bothered by a 1080p video, we will instead be talking about 3D 8k video.
Basically, it is nice that USB just got faster, but IMHO direct access to the specific hardware (disk controller, video card, etc.) will always win.
Agreed. I used a USB 2.0 video adapter on my Air and while it was fine for a terminal, it probably managed 25FPS at best (Youtube is choppy). It also has to be by itself on its own USB controller (well KB & Mouse are fine) due to the Half duplex nature of USB 2.0. Using it on the same bus as a HD makes the display lag badly. Still cool that it can be done.
The new USB 3.0 ones probably fix all/most these problems but I just use monitors 1 & 2 for that ;).
I don't care one way or the other what apple does, but I find it ludicrous to be expected to buy a very-high-tech active cable to run a distance of five feet.
TL/DR: The media loves writing "Apple v.s. the World" pieces and TB isn't really meant to compete with USB.
I, as well as many others based on comments I've seen elsewhere, think there are a lot of parallels between USB and Firewire and USB and Thunderbolt (TB). USB is a flexible interface you can use to connect to a camera, keyboard, printer, video adapter, hard drive, etc. It does a lot of this in software which means there's some overhead and various versions of the spec have had their own funky issues (like USB 1 & 2 being half duplex[1]). In the end it's "good enough" and no one except device implementors will have to deal with those problems. Firewire and TB are "better" technologies, designed to do some fairly interesting things. Firewire being essentially hot pluggable daisy chain-able SCSI and TB being an external PCI Express interface that can run over fiber optic cabling (whenever that shows up). As a device maker, unless your customers need any of those cool capabilities there's no reason to to use it. Same deal as with Firewire.
My take on articles like this is they're another case of some relatively boring technical enhancement being turned into the usual "My side must win" sort of religious war by the media (and parts of the general tech public) loves to turn these things into. Clicks are clicks after all. Partly this is because TB has been labeled an "Apple technology" because they helped with some trademark paperwork[2] and embraced it at launch. Unlike Firewire, Apple didn't do anything with the spec except say "Hey lets use this type of cable/connector." But honestly, that doesn't really matter because if it's related to Apple, they MUST be in some sort of battle against some force. In this case, the evils of USB...
Honestly, Thunderbolt seems great for Apple as their design aesthetic mandates (annoyingly IMO) a minimal complement of ports and TB doubles as a display connector and a data port. They won't see a cent by it becoming popular[2] aside from the sales of Apple branded accessories, but regardless TB makes it a lot easier for their customers to plug in an Ethernet adapter, keyboard/mouse, and a couple monitors without the need for a docking station (which is what I do with my MBPr) or a USB HUB/assorted mess (which is what I did with my MacBook Air).
Intel, as the creator of Thunderbolt, stands to make the most by it becoming popular (they make all the controller chips). That said, Intel is part of the USB consortium as well and it's hard to see how they can "loose" either way this goes.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB [2]http://www.anandtech.com/show/5425/why-thunderbolt-wont-come...