The Thunderbolt port was introduced by Intel in early 2011 but hasn’t gained much traction because of a 1-year exclusivity agreement with Apple. It has only just started appearing in Windows computers but adoption has been slow. I think a major part of the problem lies with the product positioning and marketing.
Thunderbolt has mostly been sold as a fast port, like FireWire was marketed years ago. It offers very fast transfer rates for external hard drives, for example. However, the problem arises when people compare it to other ports, most commonly USB 3.0. The vast majority of external devices already use USB and it’s plenty fast for most needs. That makes it hard to justify the cost of Thunderbolt devices if it’s only to shave a few fractions of a second off file transfers.
Product Framing
What might help sell more Thunderbolt devices? Better framing of its benefits. It’s technically a port, but consumers might better understand its benefits if it’s sold as a docking interface.
Yes, a dock. Thunderbolt is fast because it offers a lot of bandwidth, meaning that a lot of information can run through that one cable. It combines a PCIe interface, Mini Displayport (the port itself is the same as a Mini-DP), and even a power source. You can use that bandwidth to run one extremely bandwidth-intensive device, or you can hook up many devices through that one cable.
The Daisy Chain
Thunderbolt’s greatest strength in my eyes is its ability to be “daisy-chained”. That means you can hook up devices in series, i.e. device X to Y to Z. With other ports (like USB) you have to plug everything directly into the computer – X to Z and Y to Z.
What does that mean in real-world terms? Say you have a laptop, a monitor, a printer, and two external hard drives. Without Thunderbolt, this is how you would wire them:
- Monitor to Laptop (via DisplayPort, HDMI or other)
- Printer to Laptop (USB)
- External HD 1 to Laptop (USB)
- External HD 2 to Laptop (USB)
In that scenario you need 3 USB ports on your laptop as well as a video port for the monitor. Enjoy unplugging all that if you want to sit on the couch with your laptop, then plugging it all back in later.
With Thunderbolt you have more options. You could wire the devices from one to the other: HD to HD to Printer to Monitor to Laptop, so you only have one cable to the computer itself. You could also plug both hard drives and the printer to your monitor, then plug the monitor to the laptop with a Thunderbolt cable. See how Thunderbolt is a lot like a dock?
External GPU
Thunderbolt’s impressive bandwidth also allows you to use a single resource-intensive device in ways that were not really possible until now, even with ExpressCard ports. The most notable of these solutions is the external GPU (graphics card).
Laptops are getting smaller and lighter, but for people who need a lot of graphics muscle (for gaming or CAD, for example), these new machines don’t cut it. They need powerful graphic cards that are big, need a lot of power, and generate a lot of heat. Small laptops don’t have enough room to accommodate them, they are too small to cool them adequately, and the card alone would draw more power than the rest of the laptop combined. It just doesn’t work. That’s why professional “workstation” laptops are so big and chunky.
That comes at the expense of portability. They can be upwards of 3″ thick and weigh 8+ lbs, not to mention the enormous power adapters they require. Not exactly the kind of device you want to bring on a plane or use to browse Facebook while watching TV.
Thunderbolt can remedy that by shifting the graphics card outside the laptop. Sony has been doing this for a while with their Vaio Z, but Thunderbolt makes it accessible to all. You can put your beefy GPU in a case with its own cooling and power supply and plug it into your laptop’s Thunderbolt port as needed. You can have all the power you need at your desk but still have a laptop you can use on the go, just by unplugging one cable.
Drawbacks
Unfortunately, this new product positioning – Thunderbolt as a dock – would effectively hamstring Thunderbolt for desktop computers, at least at the consumer level. Desktops aren’t portable so the docking argument is pointless – everything is already built-in.
I think it’s worth it though. Thunderbolt on desktops will almost certainly remain a niche product for professional applications – like FireWire – and these users will understand they’re buying it only for the bandwidth, not for docking. In any case the desktop market is rapidly declining, which makes that demographic’s value questionable in the first place.