News Seagate ends mainstream Thunderbolt support

I liked the concept of Thunderbolt, but never actually managed to use it beyond a gigabit ethernet adapter. Partly due to the lack of uptake on the PC side - I wanted to have an iMac that would have the PC hooked up to it to use as a display.

USB's power in the marketplace is just too dominating for competition.

 

Either that or the licensing model for Thunderbolt was to restrictive.

 

That's a possibility too, plus the expensive controller chips.

 

Thunderbolt will die the same death Firewire did... It'll be dismissed as an Apple-only [and expensive] option and eventually lose out to the on-paper inferior but more widespread and widely adopted USB standard of the day...

 

great idea, just too expensive for what it offers in relative terms.

 

It was and still is too expensive to be viable as a "universal" connector. Sure, it's very fast and can drive displays and what not, but that doesn't really matter to people compared to the "cheaper" USB 3, and "cheaper" dedicated DP/HDMI.

 

The big issue is that companies feel the need to charge ludicrous prices for their products just because it has a Thunderbolt port. Just because I own a Mac doesn't mean I'm loaded - I'm hardly going to spend £200 just for a goddamn dock or double that for a multiple hard drive enclosure when my system costs just under £1000. The only use I have for it right now is the ethernet adapter.

It doesn't help that Intel refuses to give its blessing to external GPU solutions either.

 

I could be wrong, but i think it costs a fair amount to go through the certification process, and the standards are set pretty high for the hardware, cables, etc, etc. So it all adds to the cost of the final product.

I think that's more to do with Apple, i gather they are the only ones that are allowed to hang the Thunderbolt connection directly of the CPU, everyone else has to go through a ASIC added onto the board.