This week, the blogosphere is off complaining about Apple again. This time, the target is the $49 introductory price for an Apple Thunderbolt cable, but that’s par for the course.

In case you tuned in late, Thunderbolt is the new ultra high performance peripheral port that debuted on this year’s MacBook Pro refresh, and later on the latest and greatest iMac, where you get two such ports on the larger screen models.

Thunderbolt, dubbed Light Peak by Intel during the development stage, promises data throughput of 10 gigabits per second in each direction. That’s equivalent to PCI Express, the peripheral bus found on the Mac Pro and loads of high-end Windows-based PCs, and it offers the promise of being able to connect all sorts of powerful devices, from extra displays, to RAID drives and audio/video breakout boxes, to even a Mac portable without the need for internal expansion slots.

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This article was posted on Monday, July 4th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: Expansion Card, Intel, Light Peak, Mac, Mac Pro, Macintosh, PC., PCI Express, RAID, Thunderbolt, Windows.