Some Mac gadgets like keyboards or mice don't really NEED anything beyond USB 2.0 speeds. But with our ever increasing hunger for huge music and video libraries -- backing up or copying data to a hard drive, or cloning a bootable OSX volume - even an external solid-state SSD is getting to be a long drawn-out pain.
Months have passed with new MacBook Pro and now iMac models with built-in ThunderBolt ports - and yet there's still no shipping ThunderBolt drives, cases, or drive interface adapters to make use of ThunderBolt's 10Gbps speeds. And even when solutions do ship - they'll be expensive high-end products initially - beyond the wallet of the average consumer. So far, ThunderBolt has been a big flop in the eyes of Apple's customers.
USB 3.0 IS getting traction in the PC marketplace with a growing selection of USB3 cards, drives, and SuperSpeed hubs. A few Mac USB 3.0 solutions DO exist for ExpressCard MacBooks and Macintosh Pro towers: Here, LaCie is bundling a cross-platform USB3 solution of RAID drive and SuperSpeed card bundle for Windows or Mac OSX.
It's still going to be a long, slow road to truly HIGH-SPEED gadgets on a Mac. Drives and storage solutions will come first, followed by USB 3 and ThunderBolt audio and video gear - the markets where the additional bandwidth is desperately needed today. For less demanding devices, both interfaces offer additional power, faster charging and split second sync times for handheld gadgets. The promise is just too compelling, but it may not be until 2012 that the pieces really come together. In the meantime: "Hurry up. And WAIT...."
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