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 |
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