Re: @Craig S.

[Craig Seeman] "Think of a MacMini with one or two 16 lane PCIe slots for GPUs, SSD boot and one hard drive. three thunderbolt ports with a possible fourth being fiber thunderbolt. A basic i7 4 core system might be competitive with the higher end iMac prices. Top price might be a little lower than top MacPro."

[Craig Seeman] "Currently there is nothing [on the PC platform] matching the description. That may change but there are no Thunderbolt desktops on Windows. Only a Sony Vaio laptop at the moment. Apple will have a multiport Thunderbolt desktop. It's success will depend on the viability of the Thunderbolt market."

ThunderBolt might be a red herring here.

Let's assume for a moment that Apple builds your new mostly-ThunderBolt, highly-expandable, mini Mac Pro. Let's further assume that ThunderBolt does not become widely-adopted on the PC platform. Would that put the entire PC platform at a disadvantage?

I don't think so. PCs could simply continue to offer internal PCIe slots. Internal expansion would still be cheaper (or higher margin), since you wouldn't need internal TB controllers, separate external enclosures, or expensive active cables for every single device you want to add.

I agree that it is certainly simpler to plug in a single cable than it is to add a PCIe card. External expansion might make computer cases a little smaller, too (though multiple processors, GPUs, memory slots, and all the attendent power and cooling constraints are significant factors in case design).

That said, I don't see how ThunderBolt will lower the TCO for video production, or the costs for manufacturers. I think it will actually add costs (buying you simplicity), and will only increase expansion options for a single computer if you need to connect more than half a dozen high-speed peripherals.

Walter Soyka
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