Should i buy thunderbolt or wait

This means it should come to new Intel Macs by early next year. Update: Apple has since confirmed that it will continue to support Thunderbolt on Apple Silicon Macs. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:. Engineers soon found that their prototypes with standard copper wiring were already achieving the results Intel wanted but at a much lower cost.

This new product was then released as Thunderbolt in the early s and at first available only on Apple devices, designed to be a potent and flexible connection. Compared to the often brand-specific cables floating around back then, this was an impressive creation suitable for many purposes.

It was particularly promising for designers or engineers who were using laptops but still needed high-powered connections to external storage, high-resolution displays, and similar accessories. Since the first Thunderbolt release made it out the door with some help from Apple, it was only available for Macs for the first year or so.

Technology marched on. Time had provided a more accurate look at how Thunderbolt was being used and where it should head in the future. The arrival of Thunderbolt 2 in June brought several significant changes to Thunderbolt technology.

Another significant change was compatibility with the latest DisplayPort standards and 4K. A lot of USB products are built to be disposable," he said. Intel has for years hoped to make its proprietary Thunderbolt technology commonplace among PCs if not as widespread as USB.

Tiger Lake and Thunderbolt 4 features should help its prospects. Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. We delete comments that violate our policy , which we encourage you to read. Discussion threads can be closed at any time at our discretion. CNET editors pick the products and services we write about. When you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Stephen Shankland. For instance, this Anker 2.

Note that current, copper-based Thunderbolt 3 cables experience signal degradation. While the spec allows for a cable up to three meters long, the maximum 40Gbps bandwidth is guaranteed only in cables up to two meters long. Optical Thunderbolt cables promise to remove this limitation. Speaking of bandwidth, Thunderbolt 3 as well as Thunderbolt 4 may be falling behind.

But HDMI 2. HDMI 2. DisplayPort 2. On closer inspection, they tend to fall under two categories: traditional desktop, and travel-sized.