

Apple behind Intel's new 10Gbps Optical Connector Standard - mikedouglas
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/26/exclusive-apple-dictated-light-peak-creation-to-intel-could-be/

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just_the_tip
Hopefully this means we can standardize data exchange on something like
Ethernet so that if some faster technology is invented on the physical layer,
it would be easy to upgrade. This scenario is what Bonjour is made for.
Imagine plugging in any peripheral into any port. The peripheral would
automatically assign itself an IP address with zeroconf, assign itself a name
with mDNS, and advertise its capabilities through services discovery, all
without requiring a DHCP server or DNS server. The backside of your computer
would be one power port and a whole bunch of Light Peak ports. No more fudging
around with USB, FireWire, BlueTooth, DisplayPort, DVI, VGA, all of which are
incompatible with each other but do the same task of moving data around.

Here's an excellent (but long) video on this topic:
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7398680103951126462>

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chime
Thanks for linking to the video. I'm 10mins in and loving it.

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lamby
We need more guys like that. "We don't have refresh buttons in the user
interface, because that would just be horrible."

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stcredzero
Natural Gas traders love interfaces like that. My former boss did a release
once, where you could do all of these incredibly impressive, perfectly
orthogonal mass-changes to disparate object types. But what the users were
really crazy about was the "Refresh" button he put in as a request.

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lamby
Am I understanding the story correctly - did the refresh button actually do
anything?

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stcredzero
It did what you expected. But here's the kicker -- the system already had
realtime refresh over JMS!

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olefoo
Sometimes a change in scale is a change in nature as well; what this type of
data bus means is that you can synchronize the entire state of the device with
other devices on the same physical bus in fractions of a second. This opens up
new opportunities of all sorts.

Given the proliferation of virtualization, even for mobile devices; it should
be possible to carry around on your phone a workspace of fairly sizable
dimensions and in human terms seamlessly copy the entire state of that
workspace to an external host, manipulate it there (think Surface or Minority
Report style interfaces, or VR, or specialist transforms that require vast
amounts of computing power) and then sync the device with the updated state
(and either purge or archive the copy).

No more progress bars!

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fuzzythinker
Don't think optical can carry power though, so would need a separate power
port or a hybrid port for devices.

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jonknee
That's a good point, but it should be possible to have a hybrid cable--
carrying power and the optical data.

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a2tech
One standard to rule them all? Make it keyed like Firewire and it sounds like
a real winner.

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blasdel
Oh god no, Firewire is a particularly bad example of a keyed port.

When implemented cheaply using a split flanged socket, the plug can easily be
pushed in backwards, spreading the flanges. Apple learned pretty quickly what
a terrible idea that was, and switched to a design where there's a hard ABS
ring inset in the aluminum exterior case. Unfortunately every other
manufacturer continued with the shitty design.

On top of that, the power supply is 12v/1A, and is carried on one of the
outside pins! If you shove it in backwards, power gets connected to data and
fries the board. They should have used the central pins for power and ground.

I've personally seen at least a dozen cases of fried Firewire ports, including
several epidemics where someone would fry ports on several computers using one
bad device.

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tesseract
Would you say that the GameBoy connector (on which the FireWire one is based)
is a better design in that respect?

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blasdel
The gameboy connector is rhomboid along the long edge and with a longer bevel,
making it much harder to insert incorrectly.

It's usage is also a very special case -- the variance is in the cables, not
the sockets. Only Nintendo had any reason to manufacture devices, and they
always implemented it correctly with fascia preventing forced insertion.

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carl_
So in 2012 can we be expecting iphone (as cpu) > 10Gbps > Keyboard Video Mouse
Network?

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stcredzero
I hope they can build a fiber interface into the Magsafe jack. That way, you
could have a monitor that's also a docking station, just plug in one cord!
Apple's almost there as it is now. An inductive charging stand would be just
as cool, especially if you could devise a data standard to work with it. Just
set your laptop in the stand, and it would get power, be hooked up to the
external monitor and all of the peripherals.

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brentbb
I don't see any word about licensing. I, for one, can't wait to see Monoprice
start pumping out jackbox sets for this!

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phr
Thanks for mentioning Monoprice. Cool company.

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sarvesh
Isn't it premature to call it a Standard? Apple may have pushed Intel to work
on it but getting it adopted as a standard is gonna take time.

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tvon
You are referring to the wrong definition of "standard". The article is
referring to a "technical standard", not an "industry standard".

edit: unless you just mean that the approval process for the standard will
take time.

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sarvesh
That's what I meant. Unless it gets approved as a standard it's not going to
be widespread.

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CrisJones
Hmmm, when did that ever stop Apple before? 3.5" floppies and FireWire come to
mind. :) At this point though, if Apple uses it, it _is_ a standard. Touch
screen smarphones come to mind! :)

