USB3 ON MAC - READ THIS FIRST:
LaCie is leading the Mac USB 3.0 market for owners of Intel Macintosh Pro towers with PCI slots - and for now discontinued MacBook Pro models with ExpressCard/34 slots built-in. LaCie offers optimized USB 3 Drivers for Mac OSX Lion and Leopard 10.5+ to go with these Mac compatible USB3 cards: The driver currently only supports LaCie brand USB3 drives - at this time. You MUST pair LaCie products for a working USB 3.0 backup drive solution.For PCI-e Mac Pro Towers:
LaCie USB 3.0 PCI Express Card - Model 130977
For 15"-17" MacBook Pro ExpressCard Slots:
LaCie USB 3.0 ExpressCard/34 - Model 130998
For external hard drives LaCie supports with their USB 3.0 adapter cards, it is essential to match the cards with LaCie SuperSpeed drives
from their current product lineup.
Alternately, CalDigit and Sonnet Technologies offers Mac SuperSpeed USB3 drivers specifically written for their USB 3.0 cards AND works with a wider variety of 3rd-pary drives. So, unlike LaCie, the drivers are more 'universal' and not locked to their own brand of drives.
Apple Compatible USB 3.0 Gear From CalDigit
Sonnet Technologies recently joined the Mac SuperSpeed market with it's pair of cards:
Sonnet Allegro USB 3.0 PCIe Card USB3M-E
Sonnet USB 3.0 ExpressCard/34 USB3-2PM-E34
Sonnet Drivers for Mac OSX 10.6+ are available here.
Coming To A Mac Near You : USB3 Super Speed Peripherals
Apple and Intel seem to be deliiberately dragging their heels on USB 3 in thier logic boards. It's not for lack of currently shipping USB 3.0 peripherals. So Why The Delays? Does Apple lack cutting-edge innovation? Is Intel Corp incapable of desiging and delivering state of the art USB3 integrated circuits? Or would they prefer something more proprietary like ThunderBolt to get established first? You see, ThunderBolt is something more patentable, something they hold more intellectual property and liscensing rights over, something they can profit more directly from with per-port licensing. So, say hello to the new ThunderBolt Mac port on the latest MacBook Pro, Air, Mac Mini and iMac models. Don't expect built-in USB3 ports until later 2012.
USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Accessories For Mac
The USB 3.0 spec was finalized in 2009. Chipsets now being manufactured, tested, implemented in computer logic boards. Many SuperSpeed peripherals are in thier 2nd generation. On the Windows side of things: ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, etc. are already shipping logic boards with USB 3.0 support, many using NEC's SuperSpeed chipset. And USB3 peripherals have started showing up with a nice selection of USB 3.0 products available. But where's Apple? Were still waiting for USB3 ports built into any shipping Mac hardware.
USB3 Is Backwards Compatible With USB 1.1 & 2.0 Speed Peripherals
When Apple ever delivers USB 3 support - even if it's via a USB3 to ThunderBolt adapter - It will continue to work with your existing USB 2.0 and 1.1 Mac add-ons: Keyboards, mice, printers, backup hard drives, portable speakers, HD TV Tuner sticks, Digital Cameras - while bringing a new era of high-speed peripherals to the market.
New USB 3 SuperSpeed Cables, Hubs, Connectors and Adapters
Better. Faster. The new USB 3.0 specifications will have the same sized Type A cable connector as USB 1.1 and 2.0. At first glance the 'A' cable looks identical, but inside there are 5 additional pins that USB3 cables will detect to handle the higher signaling rates.
At the device end new 'B' size plugs as seen below will become common, as well as a new mini USB 3 plug standard for gizmos like digital cameras and other small form-factor devices.
Note The New *Shape* Of The Device-End Connector
How Fast Is 3.0 Universal Serial Bus Technology?
SuperSpeed USB from USB IF on Vimeo.
The very first iMac introduced Universal Serial Bus spec 1.1 to the masses. It was 12MB per second, which was fine for 'slow' devices like Apple keyboards, mice and printers. But then along came USB 2.0 - at potentially 480MB per second, it was literally FOURTY TIMES FASTER - a huge leap forward.
While still not optimized for HD camcorders and video (FireWire 400 - 800 has excelled at that) - USB 2.0 was important for OS X hard drive backups, flash-drives, high-resolution scanners and All-In-Ones. USB 2.0 was also important for QuickTime video capture and Mac HDTV tuners which demanded more bandwidth.
USB 3.0 will get even more elbow room with rip snortin' 4.8Gbps SuperSpeed - A TENFOLD leap! USB3 also has refinements for lower CPU utilization, reduced device polling, and smarter, better power management. USB3 also supports BIDIRECTIONAL data transfers - a significant advance over USB2's one-way, uni-directional model.
Why USB 3? - What Gizmo For Mac Needs 4.8Gbps Bandwidth?
In 2010 and Beyond: USB 3 peripherals for Mac will again be TEN TIMES faster than USB 2.0 - Apple friendly HD DV USB3 camcorders, High-Definiton USB 3.0 HDTV tuners for Mac, as well as bandwidth hungry flash memory based Mac SSD - Solid State backup drives in particular will demand and make fantastic use of version 3.0 super-speed advantages. Faster syncing of next generation USB3 enabled iPods or iPhones will benefit as new models adopt this new interface standard.
PCI Cards and ExpressCard USB 3.0 Adapters
Nec Japan NEC Japan recently announced a USB 3.0 controller, backwards compatible with USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 due to arrive at retail mid to late year - supporting USB3.0 Superspeed (5Gbps) along with the older 480Mbps, 12Mbps, and the 1.5Mbps specifications.To get a good sense of the speed bump SuperSpeed USB will provide, NEC's press release compared the transfer a 25GB Blu-ray disc from disc to a computer hard drive: 70 second transfer with USB3.0 interface as compared to 14 minutes with USB 2.0 - Quite impressive! It's cards like these that will likely show up in Mac Pro Towers first.
ExpressCard 2.0 Spec To Support USB SuperSpeed
Current ExpressCard specs just couldn't support USB3's full bandwidth - it's current theoretcial bandwitdh is only 2.5Gbps. So in many ways, the next generation -- ExpressCard 2.0 -- had to wait for USB 3.0 specs to finalize before it's final architechture and needs could be spec'd out. It too will be backward compatible.It'll be interesting to see how this will play out on Mac computers. Apple recently completely REMOVED the ExpressCard slot on 15" Unibody MacBook Pro's, opting for an SD slot instead. That leaves only the current 17" model still supporting Express-Cards at all. And without SuperSpeed drivers in OSX Leopard, the future of USB 3 on the Mac is still unclear.
But in the meantime, the Windows market is getting interesting, and some people are already enjoying the benefits of SuperSpeed with PCI USB3 cards, USB 3 backup drives that are taking advantage of the USB3 drivers Windows now offers.
