Apple Cuts Price of Thunderbolt Cable, Adds Shorter Option

10 bucks for a meter of copper wire , best way to con suckers ever  

I suppose this is what has become of Tom's.. No wonder I've stopped coming here as often. I'm expecting negative votes for even adding this comment, but seriously, is this even news?

enzed: Why isn't this news? It's an article about a price drop on cables, and would be essentially the same for any other tech related product.

You mean I could buy some regular ol' copper wire for a buck and do what thunderbolt does? Cool!

If it does so good why isn't it everywhere ? Not many people like to overpay that much for a damn cable, Thunderbolt was Dead on Arrival

you are kind of missing the point.

its really just 20 thin as can be copper wires, and a plug...
if it wasnt for that stupid chip, which i believes only purpose is to stop cheaper cables from being bade, than you wouldn't pay more than 5$ for 6 foot cable,

Ah, $10 discount. That must be the discount you get after you bend over.

I hear you.
There has been a recent price drop on certain micro-USB cables on Amazon, how about an article about that?
/s

That wasn't his point though. He was simply ignorantly hating on Apple. Is it overpriced? Yes, but it's much more than a copper wire. It's got active processors in each end, that's why it's so quick and remarkably consistent. Though, I wouldn't say the price is entirely justified.

ok, lets take a look at this here for a minute.



and



now lets convert that to mb

2211.84 mb per second
over 2 gb per second

thats display port, sure its not full duplex... but not really the point

honestly, i don't think there is a single thunderbolt thing that needs thunderbolt...
the only reason they use it is to sell the cables that you HAVE to have to use thunderbolt.

Apple haters should simply skip these news articles. I am not a fan of Apple at all, but c'mon don't read it if you don't like it. How old are you, 12?

Apple is nothing as nobody have pulled off better scams than Monster Cables.

ok, before they get mentioned, yes, some ssds in a raid case could use thunderbolt, but thats one specific use.
and i don't see it on the market.

also a exturnal gpu could use it, but again, i just don't see it out right now.

but what is the standard thunderbolt thing?
a display port port?
a harddrive?
possibly a camera or some connectors for ipad/phone

really nothing that has it needs it, or would be just fine on a usb3 or esata port.

What is at each end of the cable is a transceiver, not a processor... unless you want to do something fancy that requires that sort of intelligence such as Thunderbolt-over-40GBase-LR. The main reason for putting those into plugs is so cable manufacturers can use whatever type of cable they want between the transceiver chips at each end. (Or do whatever weird stuff they think they can find a market for.)

For short cables, you can put a dumb high-bandwidth low-power amplifier on each pair and call it a day, total cost is under $3. For fancy long(er)-range cables, the manufacturer can use multiple boosters and possibly repeaters on the cable or use fiber. Some companies may even make Thunderbolt-to-QSFP/SFP+ optical transceivers (or maybe straight LC/SC ones) so you can slap one of those at each end and use (almost) whatever length of whatever type of fiber you want to use.

I love how people use this to complain about the cost of cables from the fruit company. You can get a 5 ft. CAT 5 cable from the dollar store for $1. Or you can go to BestBuy and pay 15$ for one. All companies do this. Sony, IBM, SAMSUNG etc. They all change connectors on their phones too. I would bet most of you have a few old phone chargers and data cables that are in a box somewhere because they are now useless. It is just one more way they all make money from us. It is not just one fruit company that does this. But I do agree how is this tech news. Haven't alternate cables been available from other places for less for a while now.

Riiight then. Catherine's become an Apple fangirl now or what?

$39 for 2m = OH NO SO EXPENSIVE
$29 for 0.5 = OMG MASSIVE PRICE CUT

They're charging 75% of the price of a 2m cable for only 25% of the length. Can't believe this is the same site where people discuss things like $/GB.

I'm sorry Toms, but your site seems to have been lost in Apple's reality distortion field. $29 for a 1.5 foot cable is in no way reasonable. Not at all. Even $29 for a 6 foot cable would in no way reasonable.

These prices are reasonable only to iSheep who love nothing more than getting their bank accounts raped by Apple's overpriced everything.

I wonder who makes the embedded active chips in both ends of the Thunderbolt cable, how much of the total cost of the cable is made up in the price of these chips! Ok, a Thunderbolt channel consists of 2 wires, and these 2 wires can both transmit 10 Gigabits per sec. one from the device, and one to the device giving the channel 20 gigabits of total bandwidth, for 2 channel thunderbolt that's twice the 20 gigabits! Now, up to 7 devices can be daisy chained together and still maintain the theoretical maximum of 10 gigabits per sec. transission speed, your device better have 2 Thunderbolt channeles (4 wires) unless you want it to be the endpoint device! Thunderbolt is a data transmission protocol that allows the PCIe and display port, data transmission protocols, access through the Thunderbolt protocol to be transmitted over the Thunderbolt wires, buy encapsulating the PCIe and display port data packets inside a Thunderbolt packet for the ride over the thunderbolt cable via the Thunderbilt controller and assoicated firmware! The devices on either end of the Thunderbolt cable do not see all this work being done, in fact it is hidden by the hardware/firmware of the Thunderbolt hardware/firmware, and the devices just see the PCI or display port packets and are none the wiser to where the PCI or display port packets came from! Thunderbolt is not the only way to do this as PCI or display port packets can be transmitted over 10 gigabit ethernet too, with the proper encodeing hardware and firmware, just ask the cloud computing people, as they make extensive use of PCIe other ethernet!

BigMack70, Just reporting on a price drop does not imply a love for Apple, but is is so much fun reading the posts of the knee jerk Apple and PC fanboys, that's why I come to tom's, just to read the my computer company has a bigger D_ck thn your computer company has! People with money to burn have plenty of other companys that they spend their chump change on, and for some people 3 grand is chump change! But let me tell you something, poor people suck just as much as the rich people, and here's the rub, there are more poor people! So Apple gets the chump change from the rich people, and the PC makers get the chump change from the poor people, and Apple and the PC makers both belong to the same country clubs!
Thunderbolt and most of thunderbolt's expense is brought to you by Intel, so it is Intel that is inside your bung Hole!, and maybe a little Apple!

Reporting a $30 cable 1.5 foot as being "almost reasonable" is ridiculous.