Lacie, known for their popular Mac external storage devices, has announced a thunderbolt hub with eSATA ports.  In the Mac world, this is very big news because Macs, which currently do not support USB 3.0 nor eSATA, can now leverage external drives with the same speed as internally connected drives.  With USB 2.0, editing video or file transfers where unnecessarily lengthy.  With the new Lacie hub, this should hopefully bring new life to all these external devices.  The hub is expected to be available first quarter 2012.

If you are a Mobile user, particularly one with the new thunderbolt or display port connections, you may be considering the Apple Thunderbolt Display or former Apple Cinema Display.  Since the iMac 27" are also usable as display via the nifty target display mode feature, this is an alternative I wanted to additionally consider.  After various forums and research I came to the following observations which I'm currently experimenting with to configure the my ultimate docking station for my MacBook Air 11".

First, lets start by laying down some facts as ultimate the facts which are more pertinent to your situation will have higher weight in deciding which direction to choose for your display needs.  Below are some pros / cons when considering the use of each: 27" cinema display, 27" thunderbolt display, iMac 27" 2010 display port model, iMac 27" 2011 thunderbolt model.

• DisplayPort has wider compatibility with a somewhat simplified spec when compared to thunderbolt
• The Cinema Display & iMac 27" (2010 model w/ displayport), can be connected to any display port compatible device or digital display capable of adapting to displayport
• The thunderbolt display would provide expandability with the ethernet, firewire, & additional USB ports (USB 2.0 though)
• Running Windows in Bootcamp currently will not work in target display mode iMacs using thunderbolt, does however in cinema and thunderbolt displays
• When using target display mode, the ports on the back of the targeted iMac are not transferred to the connecting MacBook like they are in the dedicated displays
• an iMac serving primarily as a display for a MacBook would have a double duty of being a workstation for whomever needs it while the MacBook is not docked
• the typically more powerful iMac is available to be used for high end duties such as video editing or gaming

So, interestingly enough though, no such hub existed at the time, however Belkin recently showcased their upcoming Thunderbolt Dock, with the same ports as the Thunderbolt display, making such a configuration a possibility.  Since thunderbolts can drive display port monitors, using such a hub/dock with a mini displayport display should have straight forward compatibility.

The next hurdle would be the accessibility of connected devices.  No one wants to disconnect a device from one computer to then reconnect it to another -- let alone multiple devices.  The Cinema Display and Thunderbolt display both redirect the devices to the connecting MacBook via their USB & thunderbolt connections respective, however a connected iMac in target display mode doesn't.  

So far I was leaning towards the one of the stand alone displays, however if a USB hub switcher existed where I can switch a device from one computer to another at a push of a button, this would allow for what I would call the ultimate docking station for a Macbook.  So with this new device, in theory, I can leave my iMac 27", say, rendering a video off an external USB data drive while I can be working on the MacBook using another USB drive.  Or a more typical scenario, I can temporarily redirect the time machine drive to the MacBook, let it do is incremental back, and then redirect it back to the iMac -- all with a single push of a button and without interrupting other USB devices who can be connected to either computer - WOW!.  After searching forums after forum, I found one small niche company who makes such an adaptor.  The device allows for 4 USB devices to be connected to 2 computers, mutually exclusive to each other and one computer at a time.

I bought this USB device for a little less than $50 and was off to try this new setup.  Although the configuration is not complex, I decided to diagram a possible configuration.  It's not too clear, but in essence:

• The iMac & Air are connected via displayport cable.
• Both computers are connected to hub
• Port A of hub has time machine drive
• Port B of hub has my main data drive for video, etc.
• Port C has a simple USB hub where I attached my keyboard, mouse, has an extra vertical port for plugging in a flash drive from time to time.

With this configuration, I can easily move time machine from one machine to the other with a push of a button.  Or similarly, my main data drive can switch from one to the other.

One benefit over the external displays is the ability to plug in external speakers to the iMac 27.  These speakers are permanently connected to the iMac and work as any normal set of speakers with the addition of working with the MacbookAir when in target display mode.  The current cinema & thunderbolt displays do not have this plug and as a result you need to plug in the speakers to the MacBook every time you dock if you want to use them.

In summary, I have what I consider the ultimate MacBook docking station.  As soon as the Belkin thunderbolt hub/dock arrives, this will change a bit, however it will be just as good or better than the thunderbolt display.

Folks, I just came across the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt drives in the Apple store by chance.  And surprisingly there are two versions -- the 1TB and 2TB disk versions.  They will soon add SSD versions in the near future, however this is a welcomed surprise.

From the looks of it, it supports a native RAID0 stripped set by default with 7200 rpm drives delivering an astonishing 250MB/s -- other configurations such as Raid1 are also available according to references.  For a consumer oriented drive, these are speeds previously only achieved by expensive and dedicated NAS storage devices with similar raid configuration. If you consider you have two drives in one unit, effectively duplicating the price with a comparably sized external drive, the price no longer feels unreasonable.

To save space and weight, the enclosure houses 2.5" drives rather than the typical 3.5" drives weighing a reasonably light 1.4lbs.

The solid aluminum construction is typical of LaCie's build quality and additionally serves as a heat dissipator for the drive internals.

You will definitely want to have a time machine drive paired up to this speed daemon because unfortunately, the RAID0 effectively halfs the shelf life of the drive as failure of any of the two drives may effectively ruin your data.  With today's reliable drives, this is less of a worry, however it's a prudent thing to do as this will surely be the primary working drive housing important data, such as home video's, given it's speed benefits.

Belkin announced the first independent thunderbolt hub!  This is a dream come true for those who do not want to dish out the $999 for an Apple thunderbolt display.  It seems to have the same ports: gigabit ethernet, 3 USB, and 1 thunderbolt for daisy chaining.  There is no release date specified and no price however however some speculate upwards of $50 since a thunderbolt cable alone from Apple is $50.

Unfortunately, it seems the USB ports are 2.0 instead of 3.0 given the ubiquitous blue connectors USB 3.0 ports usually have.  Lets cross our fingers though and hope for at least one USB 3.0 port if not all. 

With this, one needs to really consider if a less flexible Thunderbolt display is worthy over the more flexible Cinema Display.  The cinema display would simply plug into this hub (including it's USB) and now you have the same configuration as the Thunderbolt display (need to plug in only one cable into your MacBook).  The mini displayport technology in the cinema display is known to be more flexible than thunderbolt.  As a simple example, many have connected their xbox 360's with the appropriate adaptor -- even the iMacs from 2010 can be used as displays for MacBooks within Bootcamp -- something the iMac 27" from 2011 with thunderbolt cannot.

For more details on the connections options see this post I made a week or so ago:

Connecting your Apple iMac 27 or Cinima Display using only one connection similar to Thunderbolt Display

In this video, I diagram the various options for connecting an iMac 27" (as a display in target display mode), a Cinema Display, & the new Thunderbolt Display to a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro with thunderbolt port.

It turns out, you can achieve the same results as a thunderbolt display (having to connect only a thunderbolt cable) using either an iMac 27" or Apple Cinema Display.

In the video below I diagram the options and actually uncover some benefits in connecting a Cinema Display or iMac over utilizing the newly released Thunderbolt Display.

NOTE: To see details, you may have to switch to the HD 720 on the bottom right of the video screen and/or choose full screen

I have a MacBook Air 2010 model with the mini display port.  At the office we recently ordered an iMac with the thunderbolt port.  On occasion, I want to use my MacBook Air at the office so I was exploring the option of using the iMac 27 as an external monitor via the thunderbolt port.

The latest macs, both the 2009-2010 models using mini display ports as well as the 2011 using the thunderbolt ports support a feature referred to as "Target Display Mode".  In essence, when properly cabled with either of the two cables, hitting Command/F2 will enable it.

The main question is, what are all the possible combinations?  Meaning, here I am with a mini display port MacBook Air and an thunderbolt iMac 27", do they communicate?  Turns out no, a mini display port cannot target a thunderbolt machine (or monitor) as a target display.   So a little frustrated, I went to them Apple store to sort things out and the Apple employee was super friendly on testing all the combinations with a new thunderbolt MacBook Air and cables I had just bought.  Here are the results:

One thing to note, when using target display mode and mirroring, the resolution will default to the lowest resolution device. In my case, I had a MacBook Air resolution displayed on the iMac 27 which didn't look great for extended reading. There are two ways to achieve target display native resolution. One way is to close the MacBookAir and tap on the mouse to wake it up. When it wakes up, it will adjust to the target display resolution. With the Thunderbolt MBA, you will need to have the magsafe power plugged in. I am not sure if this is required also for the Minidisplay MBA.

The second way entails setting up a second monitor side by side (uncheck mirroring). The problem here is, if you want to ignore the MBA's monitor and solely use the target display, the dock and menu bar are annoyingly on the MBA monitor making it very cumbersome to work. We accidentally came across a nifty solution by trying out various options. We discovered, just like you can move the orientation of the second monitor, you can move around the menu strip too. So while viewing the monitor orientation window, click and drag the little white strip above one of the monitors and drag it to the other. This in essence moves the doc and menu over to the target display monitor. At this point, you can either dim the brightness of the MBA and you are all set to go.  Thanks!

Unfortunately WordPress didn't make it convenient for migrating blogs out of their system.  As a consequence, I'm linking to the original posting for this topic so others can have access to the comment history.  Moving forward I will be updating this blog.

http://mike952.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/thunderbold-and-minidisplay-mac-compatibility-101/