Questions & Answers for Apple Thunderbolt Cable (2m) - White

no. this is just a thunderbolt cable. you need to wait till july when apple releases the thunderbolt to firewire adapter.

• Answered by Timothy P from Los Angeles
• 03-Jul-2012
• Flag as inappropriate Answer (Can the Apple Thunderbolt Firewire cable be used to connect my minidv sony camera to my macbook air?)

Thunderbolt is a more versatile interface than USB, it can transfer both data and video signal. That means you only need one port to accomplish data transfer and video output, there is no need for two separate ports (ex. USB and DisplayPort). Thunderbolt uses the old Mini DisplayPort so you can still use your VGA/DVI adapters. Thunderbolt also have Daisy Chain capability, you can connect up to 6 devices on one Thunderbolt port (ex. You don't need 6 ports to connect 6 devices).

Like another commenter said, the theoretical speed of Thunderbolt is up to 10GB/s, or 20GB/s for TB2. Whereas USB 3.0 is only 5GB/s. Although the practical speed won't be much different as the hard drives are nowhere close to that speed. A 5400rpm HDD will be >100MB/s, 7200rpm will be ~150MB/s (my numbers might be a little off), SSDs will range from 300MB/s to 700MB/s (depends on the NAND used). With that said, USB 3.0 is good enough for simple storage use (TB might be better for RAID and other storage systems), especially if you count in the cost factor. Your practical transfer speed depend more on the hard drive you use, so I suggest you to spend the money on a good hard drive/SSD.

Because Thunderbolt combines Mini DisplayPort and PCIe. Theoretically, you can get an external PCIe adapter and plug in something like a GPU (assuming the "drivers" and power supports). I'm particularly interesting in this because Apple doesn't like to give you a strong GPUs to drive a 2880x1880 Retina display on a 15" rMBP. Anyway, PCIe is a strong interface and it can add endless possibilities to a Mac. There is more to Thunderbolt than people think.
Good luck!

• Answered by Cong W from San Francisco
• 13-Jan-2014
• Flag as inappropriate Answer (What is wrong with USB that I have to use Thunderbolt?)

Yes. Promise and Lacie both said that they would support booting from the Thunderbolt port.

• Answered by Eric N from Newington
• 30-Jun-2011
• Flag as inappropriate Answer (Could I use an external Thunderbolt Drive to boot OS X?)

Yes. Both of them have at least one Thunderbolt port.

• Answered by Birincsik J
• 06-Feb-2013
• Flag as inappropriate Answer (will a thunderbolt cable connect a macbookpro 2012 to a Retina MacbookPro ?)

Apple announced there would be a Thundebolt to Firewire adaptor coming soon. Until that arrives, you may wish to consider other options as follows.
If you have access to the underlying 2.5" SATA I/II drive inside your current storage device, you may also be able to use the Seagate Thunderbolt adaptor for their GoFlex Pro series of external drives, was their adaptor can handle the 2.5" HDD directly

• Answered by Thomas R from Cupertino
• 15-Jun-2012
• Flag as inappropriate Answer (How can I connect my MacBook Air (via thunderbolt) to my 500GB drive (has Firewire 800 and Firewire 400)?)

No, you cannot use a thunderbolt cable to connect a non-thunderbolt monitor. You have to get a Mini DisplayPort cable instead. Even
if your HP monitor has a socket that seems to fit, a thunderbolt cable cannot display any picture.

• Answered by Peter S
• 28-Mar-2015
• Flag as inappropriate Answer (can i use a thunderbolt cable to connect my 2014 macbook air to an HP monitor?)

Thunderbolt is a point-to-point interface, that also allows daisy-chaining to up to seven devices. The new iMacs have other ports besides just Thunderbolt out their back, so in effect it already is a hub for these different port types. IF you want to chain via the Thunderbolt port, you need to make sure each device connected to your iMac has two Thunderbolt ports, one for its "upstream" Thunderbolt partner and one for its "downstream" device chain. Be careful, though, for not all Thunderbolt devices have this second port, so they have to be wired into your string as the last/end-point

• Answered by Tom R from Cupertino
• 03-Jan-2012
• Flag as inappropriate Answer (How many devices can be connected - simultaneously - to one thunderbolt port?)