Thunderbolt

After years of waffling, I decided that it was time to update my workspace to be more friendly to on-camera work, reviews, tutorials, product photography, podcasting, etc. Instead of having a space that I sometimes use for work, sometimes for study and entertainment, and sometimes for editing, I decided to switch it up and wholly dedicate it to video and photo production.

This setup is primarily powered by a 14-inch MacBook Pro connected to a single Thunderbolt cable. It’s also made possible by a whole host of software, including MovieRecorder, a pricey but fantastic application from Softron. MovieRecorder allows me to simultaneously record high-quality HEVC-encoded video in a multi-cam setup from multiple cameras directly to my computer, bypassing SD Cards of CFexpress cards entirely.

As you’ll see in my hands-on video, I’ve done many other things to customize my setup for productivity, and I hope you find it enlightening and fun. Be sure to subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube for more videos like this.

In 2024, there are more Thunderbolt monitors than ever. While Apple currently offers two options, its displays at $1,600-$5,000+ won’t be the right fit for everyone. Luckily, there are more affordable, solid choices from LG, BenQ, and Samsung. Below, we’ll cover the best Thunderbolt monitors for Mac as well as what you get with a Thunderbolt monitor vs a USB-C monitor.

BenQ has launched its latest monitor for designers today with a new 32-inch Thunderbolt 4K display. The PD3225U features 98% DCI P3, IPS Black, color settings that “perfectly match Mac and MacBook Pro laptop colors,” and more.

Dell is out the gate early with one of its CES announcements this year. Joining its UltraSharp Monitor lineup is the new 40-inch 5K Curved Thunderbolt Hub Monitor. Here are all the details on this big boy.

Apple’s “Thunderbolt 4 Pro” cable is regularly mocked for its $129 price point, but there’s actually an impressive amount of technology packed inside. A teardown last year offered a closer look at what’s inside the cable, and new CT imagery from the folks at Lumafield gives us another look and some comparisons to cheaper cables on the market.

After teasing its Apple Studio Display competitor in January and releasing the full specs and price details in July, the ViewFinity S9 5K monitor is now available. Here’s what makes it an interesting Apple Studio Display alternative.

Apple is rumored to announce iPhone 15 next month. At this point, multiple sources agree that the new phones will all be equipped with a USB-C port instead of Lightning. It’s no secret that USB-C has a bunch of advantages over Apple’s proprietary connector, but more than that, it seems that iPhone 15 will have Thunderbolt support.

Back at CES 2023 in January, Samsung teased its ViewFinity S9 5K monitor. Now details for the product that will go head-to-head with Apple’s Studio Display have been revealed including full specs, price, and an August release date.

Dell has unveiled a lineup of new monitors today at CES. Headlining the new products is the 32-inch 6K UltraSharp Monitor with powerful 140W charging for laptops, impressive I/O hub, 4K webcam, 99% DCI-P3 colorspace, and more.

Alongside the Studio Display and Mac Studio announcement last month, Apple also started selling a new 1.8-meter Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable. The company also said it would release a 3-meter version of that cable soon, and now it’s officially available to purchase. Apple’s 3-meter Thunderbolt 4 Pro cable will set you back a cool $159…

As I explained in my latest episode of Back to the Mac, the M1 Mac mini is my main desktop computer, but where necessary, I also use a 16-inch MacBook Pro in clamshell mode. In either case, I’ve found the OWC Thunderbolt Hub to be a great addition to my setup.

When using the M1 Mac mini, the hub expands the amount of Thunderbolt connections, which is a huge improvement since M1 Macs sport just two physical ports. For my M1 Max MacBook Pro, it allows me to maintain a connection to all of my Thunderbolt peripherals, including the Pro Display XDR, with just a single cable connection. Watch my hands-on video for the details.

Whether you’re an independent creative professional or an IT admin for a business or organization, fast and secure data is always a top priority. Without compromise, the all-new iodyne Pro Data stands out as the fastest RAID storage for M1 Macs with amazing 5 GB/s speeds, eight Thunderbolt ports, daisy-chain expandability, enterprise-grade encryption, and more.

Future Macs will benefit from Thunderbolt 5 bandwidth of 80Gbps, according to a photo accidentally tweeted by an Intel exec.

This isn’t a complete surprise – Intel’s director of I/O said back in March that the company was expecting to roughly double the 40Gbps speed of Thunderbolt 4 – but this has seemingly now been confirmed …

LG is expanding its line of UltraFine monitors at CES this year with a new UltraFine OLED Pro. This UltraFine display measures in at 31.5-inches and features a 4K resolution, and it marks a notable expansion of OLED display technology from smartphones and TVs to mid-size displays such as monitors.

There was much confusion earlier in the year when Intel first touted Thunderbolt 4 as the successor to Thunderbolt 3, implying that it would be faster. It quickly transpired that this is not the case: the new standard will offer exactly the same 40Gb/s maximum speed as Thunderbolt 3.

But Intel today released the full specs, and the company says that while it isn’t faster, it does have better specs in several ways …

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Update: Intel comment added at end.

No fewer than seven serious Thunderbolt security flaws have been discovered, affecting machines with both standalone Thunderbolt ports and the Thunderbolt-compatible USB-C ports used on modern Macs.

The flaws allow an attacker to access data even when the machine is locked, and even when the drive is encrypted …

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In theory, all USB-C cables should be the same: that’s the whole point of having a standard. In practice, there are different versions of the standard. More worryingly, many cables being sold as USB-C don’t fully conform to that standard – and that can be seriously bad news …

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Other World Computing has made a name for themselves among professional Mac users with their line of powerful and fast external hard drives and adapters. This year at CES, OWC is showing several new products, all featuring Thunderbolt 3 connectivity.

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In this week’s top stories: iPhone 7 leaks, more on the rumored upcoming MacBook Pros with OLED touch bar, what’s in store for WWDC 2016, and much more.

Apple also launched its Back to School promo for 2016, and designer brand Coach started preparing for a launch of its Apple Watch bands next week. Head below for all of the handy links to these and our other top shared Apple stories this week.

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Apple’s decision to equip the 12-inch MacBook with just a single port was a controversial one, but the USB-C port Apple chose just got a whole lot more powerful. Intel announced back in June that it was integrating USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 to create “one compact port that does it all” – and that port just hit the market in the form of the revamped Dell XPS range.

That means that a single port combines superspeed USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, PCI Express and power. The DisplayPort channel can simultaneously handle two 4K monitors.

Dell has opted to include two of the new ports, and this is an approach I think we can expect Apple to take with the new MacBook Air models (whatever they are actually called) and, in time, the MacBook Pro … 
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