Apple ThunderBolt Accessories and Peripherals


Mac ThunderBolt Computer Accessories

The first ThunderBolt accessory category to leverage the incredible bandwidth of ThunderBolt technology has been external backup drives in mult-drive and dual-drive RAID storage arrays. An increasing number of ThunderBolt drives have reached the market: Apple now lists a dozen ThunderBolt Storage Accessories at the Apple Store online - If you're willing to pay full list price. More competitively priced options are avalable at Amazon.

Currently shipping are the Pegasus HDD RAID series from Promise Technologies, and the LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk offerings using either pairs of SSD or conventional spinning platter mechanisms. Note: None ship with a required TBolt cable, so be sure to order an Apple Thunderbolt Cable separately.

Apple ThunderBolt Adapters

Apple itself has announced two adapters for ThunderBolt. First to ship is the $29 Thunderbolt Gigabit Ethernet Adapter handy for MacBook Air models needing wired connectivity. For other Mac models and specific network applications, having a secondary Ethernet port can be handy.

The Apple ThunderBolt FireWire 800 Adapter that was announced took longer to ship. That was unfortunate because its a desperately needed solution to leverage existing FireWire 400/800 storage devices or as a way to use Target Disk Mode to help transferring files quickly from pre-ThunderBolt era Macs.

2013 ThunderBolt Accessories Announcements

MacWorld 2013 offered some interesting USB 3.0 and ThunderBolt for Mac announcements. The 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas also delivered some interesting ThunderBolt peripheral product announcements that are really opening up choices in the ThunderBolt accessory market in the year ahead. Most notably an Thunderbolt SSD Drive From ElGato, a ThunderBolt Hub-Dock from Belkin, An eSATA to ThunderBolt adapter from LaCie, and shipment of Sonnet Techologies ThunderBolt to ExpressCard converter and more.

DisplayPort ThunderBolt Monitor Accessories

Apple ThunderBolt 27" Display

w/TBolt, USB2, FireWire, Ethernet

Because the ThunderBolt interface includes multiple monitor DisplayPort standard and capabilites, it's a natural candidate for widespread adoption on both the PC and Macintosh platform. The first monitor product: Apple's ThunderBolt Cinema display actually incorporates a multi-interface ThunderBolt 'Hub'. It's single TBolt cable also breaks out to FireWire 800, USB 2.0 and an additional Ethernet port on the back of the display.

PCI Expansion Via Apple ThunderBolt Accessories

Because ThunderBolt provides direct access to the PCI-Express bus, the notion of having to open your computer to install a 'card' may become a thing of the past. In effect, the tiny TBolt mini-port is a virtual expansion card slot. Of particular note are Sonnet Technologies ThunderBolt products poised to ship in the year ahead. An external Express Card slot adapter; the Echo Expresscard/34 ThunderBolt Adapter - which should allow for a variety of existing SuperSpeed USB 3.O, FireWire, and eSATA cards. A PCI-E multi slot card expansion chassis, and some Ethernet and FireWire ThunderBolt adapter accessories are in the product pipeline and slated to ship in 2013.

Apple ThunderBolt Accessories For Audio and Video

The Apple video editing and Mac music recording market is keenly interested in Apple compatible Thunderbolt port gear. For video, the insane amount of storage needed for long, high-definition 1080p uncompressed HD video is staggering - and a great match for TBolt's bandwidth.

The same can be said for the Music industry who need zero-to-no latency bandwidth that ThunderBolt audio accessories can deliver - as well as ample storage solutions to store samples, instruments, loops and edits. A few A/V companies have announced Apple compatible ThunderBolt video and music production accessory options that are hitting the market: The AJA Video IO XT Professional Thunderbolt I/O for video capture and playback and the currrently shipping:

Blackmagic Design ThunderBolt Ultrastudio 3D

Video Capture and Playback