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mLogic announces mBack external drive that lives on the back of your iMac
mLogic has announced the "world's first" zero-footprint hard drive for iMac and Apple displays, called the mBack. The mBack works by fastening to the cord hole via an adapter on the back of an iMac or Apple display, allowing it to take up no physical space on your desk. Even when the drive is attached, the mBack allows the iMac's or Apple display's power cable to run through its original opening. The mBack is bus-powered, so it doesn't require an additional power cord cluttering up space, and comes in white and aluminum to match Apple's hardware. It's USB 3.0-compatible and comes in sizes ranging from 500 GB to 2 TB. It's also Time Machine-ready right out of the box. Interested users can purchase the mBack now from mLogic's website. The mBack cost US$100 for the 500 GB drive, $150 for the 1 TB drive and $260 for the 2 TB drive.
mLogic's mLink Thunderbolt PCIe Mac expansion chassis now shipping for $399
After a lengthy delay, mLogic's mLink PCIe Thunderbolt expansion chassis is now up for grabs. The device branches to any Mac computer equipped with the high-speed port, allowing you to install a half-length PCIe board -- opening up a world of RAID storage, high speed networking and video capture to otherwise slotless Minis or Macbooks. The company says it's now in stock and shipping for $399, and added that it made good use of the lag time for more extensive thermal and EMI testing. A special Red Rocket model is supposed to follow along at $699 for RED cinema camera RAW video conversion duties, but if plain old 2K or HD video is good enough, hit the source to get it.
mLogic's mLink Thunderbolt chassis shipping this month, Red Rocket board version to follow
If you're still wondering how to make use of that Thunderbolt port on your computer, here's a new option. mLogic, a fairly new company that shares the same founder as G-Technology (now under HGST), is now taking orders for the $399 mLink Thunderbolt expansion chassis and will start shipping it this month. What this little box offers is the ability to connect almost any half-length PCIe card to Thunderbolt-enabled computers, so the possibility is endless -- be it for RAID storage, high-speed networking or 2K video acquisition. We noticed that the mLink was meant to launch this time last year, but CEO Roger Mabon explained to us that this massive delay was due to the unexpectedly lengthy Thunderbolt qualification process, on top of the company's further extensive thermal and EMI testing on the product, so it's confident that it now has a rock solid product. In addition to this model, mLogic is also working on a variant dubbed mLink R, which is tailored for Red's Rocket video transcode accelerator. It's currently listed for a much higher $699, but having seen the much larger Rocket chassis offered by other companies, we're certain that the better-off production crews will be happy to pay the premium in exchange for portability. Stay tuned for news on its availability. %Gallery-170772%
Thunderbolt devices are still irritatingly thin on the ground
Apple's announcement of Thunderbolt on Feb 24th was greeted by excitement, as Mac users became aware of the tantalising possibilities of this new high-speed port. There's lots of things Thunderbolt can do that were simply not possible before -- driving multiple external displays from a single port, "docking" a laptop to a selection of external ports via a single cable, expanding a laptop with high-performance desktop graphics cards. Then there are applications that older standards like Firewire and USB simply aren't fast enough to cope with, such as capturing uncompressed 1080p video or very fast external drives like RAID arrays or sold state drives. Our own Chris Ward went so far as to ask if Thunderbolt could foretell the end of the line for the Mac Pro as we know it, by allowing a Mac mini sized chassis to be endlessly exapanded via external Thunderbolt-connected peripherals. And yet... ten months later, if you go to Apple's store and search for 'Thunderbolt', you'll see just 11 products, three of which are Apple's own ultra-expensive Thunderbolt Display (plus its VESA mount) and the official Thunderbolt cable. There's three LaCie BigDisks, at $500 for 1 TB and $600 for 2 TB, or $900 for an ultra-fast SSD unit. There's four types of Promise Drobo-like RAID boxes, starting from $1150. Finally, there's a Promise Thunderbolt-to-Fibre-Channel adaptor, for $800 (Fibre Channel is an multi-gigabit enterprise-grade communication protocol used to connect with storage-area networks like Apple's Xsan, among other applications), allowing Thunderbolt-equipped machines to participate in distributed video workflows. None of these are remotely mainstream devices. The 2 TB LaCie disk is almost twice the price of an equivalent eSATA/Firewire model, at $329, which will be just as fast using eSATA as it is Thunderbolt. So where are all the devices that normal humans might want to buy? Has Thunderbolt arrived as more of a damp fart? My research for this post started when I was considering an iMac purchase. I'm not keen on Apple's official SSD pricing, because a top-of-the-line aftermarket model (twice as fast) is available for about $150 less. If possible, though, I'd also like to avoid the work of swapping my own drive in -- I'm sure I'll spend half my life trying to remove dust from the inside of the screen afterwards. Logically, I thought to myself, I should be able to buy some sort of reasonably priced Thunderbolt-connected drive bay that would be just as fast as an internal drive, right? Wrong. Such a thing doesn't exist. The only thing close is the $900 LaCie model I mentioned above, and it's a whopping $500 more expensive than the OCZ drive I am considering. No-one is offering a cradle you can put your own drive into. Nor can you buy... well, most of the things I mentioned in the first paragraph, actually. There's been plenty of promises from third parties, to be sure. Sonnet, in particular, has announced a broad range of exciting products, such as an Expresscard/34 adaptor (pre-order now, ships by December 14th). With that card cage, lots of expansion options open up (like eSATA ports). However, Sonnet's PCIe Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis, which will connect any normal PCIe x16 card -- like a high-performance graphics card -- and the RackMac mini Xserver -- which will convert a Thunderbolt-equipped Mac mini into a 1U server -- won't be available until "early January." Another raft of devices were announced at the Intel Developer Forum in September of this year, but manufacturers were long on promises and short on firm prices or ship dates. Blackmagic's HDMI capture device is available now, but that's a rather specialist piece of kit with a hefty $300 price tag. Belkin's Thunderbolt Express Dock (a dongle with Thunderbolt on one end and USB/ethernet/etc. on the other) won't be out until "spring 2012" and has no suggested price. mLogic's mDock looks interesting, but the company doesn't even have a full website up so we couldn't contact them for any updated information on when it might ship. Even Apple itself hasn't showed much follow through for Thunderbolt devices. We've got the Thunderbolt Display, with its extremely handy forest of ports which are ideal for laptop users working on a desk. The 27" 2560x1440 screen is certainly sumptuous, but at $999 it's a pretty specialised device -- and there's nothing else on offer. So, almost ten months after Thunderbolt was announced, its initial high promise is still mostly unfulfilled. TUAW reached out to several of the manufacturers mentioned above but frustratingly none of them would comment about why the peripherals have been exceedingly slow to ship. I have theories -- Thunderbolt remains highly expensive to implement and purchase, for example. Consider that a single Thunderbolt cable costs more than an entire eSATA-equipped drive dock. Also, despite Apple's high Mac sales of late, and all current Mac models (except the Mac Pro) coming suited and booted with at least one Thunderbolt port, there can still only be a few tens of millions of Macs out there with it. In the grand scheme of things that isn't a substantial install base for OEMs to target, compared to (say) the sheer volume of PCs with USB ports. Hopefully we will soon see Thunderbolt ports on PCs, which will help address both of these issues by giving OEMs a wider base to target and bringing some volume to manufacturing to bring prices down. For now, though, Thunderbolt's strong early promise remains mostly unfulfilled.
