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12 Possible Uses for the Thunderbolt Port

Thunderbolt has been on the market for less than a year, merely we're already dreaming of all the cool things we might be able to practise with information technology.

More than six months after its introduction, nosotros're still waiting for the explosion of cool peripherals to plug into our shiny new Thunderbolt I/O port which now comes standard with all Macs (save for the lone holdout, the Mac Pro). Sure, we've seen some awesome, lightning-fast RAID storage and some hints of other greatness to come, but what about other potential uses for the technology? Here are a dozen things nosotros'd like to see that port used for -- so let's become smashing, engineers!

1. Video Capture & Playback

One of the few things holding dorsum the current Mac lineup is the absenteeism of internal PCI Limited slots, which are pretty much required to practise HD video capture and playback from anything more than FireWire-based camcorders. Blackmagic Pattern has already introduced the UltraStudio 3D, a $999 portable Thunderbolt box which handles most any digital or analog signal you tin throw at it -- but it would be nice to have something less than half that cost for those on a budget.

Blackmagic Design offers Thunderbolt video capture – at a price.

2. SCSI

Those of you reared on USB and FireWire probably don't remember SCSI, which was the leading I/O peripheral connexion on the Mac for many years. Although Apple tree has long turned its back on the applied science, many pro users still utilize PCI-based SCSI cards to access a multifariousness of tape fill-in drives (including DLT, required for DVD mastering with CSS encryption). Nosotros'd love to run into at least one peripheral maker create some kind of Thunderbolt to SCSI span and then nosotros tin find out what's on all these former Iomega Zilch disks laying effectually the part.

Mac SCSI port, oh how we miss thee.

three. Other PCI Express Cards

The Mac Pro is currently the merely arrangement capable of using internal PCI Limited cards, although companies like Magma accept been providing laptop users with external ExpressBox solutions for years. Unfortunately, those require an ExpressCard slot, which is now long gone from the MacBook Pro – so why not bring this ability to all Macs featuring the Thunderbolt port? As it turns out, Magma is indeed working on a new Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis, so our prayers will be answered soon enough.

PCI Express cards are limited to the Mac Pro – for now.

4. H.264 Compression

EyeTV maker Elgato has long sold a peachy piddling USB 2.0 fob called the turbo.264 HD, providing hardware accelerated video conversion software to make short work of your iOS encoding. As bang-up as it is, we think Thunderbolt could brand our H.264 encoding faster yet, so we'd similar to see someone jump on this bandwagon. The turbo.264 Hard disk already does its magic in most real time, then how fast could Thunderbolt do the aforementioned? It boggles the mind.

We'll take one of these in Thunderbolt, delight.

v. Super Fast Graphics

Then you bought a MacBook Air with Thunderbolt and now yous're looking for a lilliputian more "oomph" from your graphics processor? How nigh a 27-inch display with its own GPU capable of supercharging your Air while it's continued? That sound you merely heard was us blowing your listen, wasn't it…

A Thunderbolt display with onboard graphics processor? Be still our hearts!

6. Burn in a Flash

Steve Jobs may have infamously called Blu-ray a "bag of hurt," but now that nosotros can burn such discs from Last Cut Pro X, external burners may get a new lease on life from the Mac. Unfortunately, called-for BD-R discs is a painfully slow affair right now – simply with Thunderbolt and faster external drives, we recall it could absolutely scream.