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Could Apple Be Forced to Switch to USB 3.0?

Next Monday the first SuperSpeed USB Developer Conference will take place in San Jose, CA. Roughly 14 months after USB 3.0 was first announced, the specs will finally be given to early product designers that plan to adopt USB 3.0, of which Intel is a major player.

Apple was invited to join the USB 3.0 promoters group back in 2007, but didn’t respond to the invitation on time. Senior Engineer Manager, Masami Katagiri, has helped define USB 3.0. He has explained that Apple could be forced to switch to USB 3.0 in a lot of its machines because Intel, their major silicon supplier, would eventually be using USB 3.0 in its chip sets. Even though Apple has recently conjured up a seemingly bountiful relationship with NVIDIA, both Intel and NVIDIA’s chips and GPUs will need to work side by side in most of Apple’s computers.

Intel recently grew restless about Apple’s new relationship with NVIDIA. “Intel is slowly waking up to realize that its technology might be at risk due to natural progression in the technology industry,” MacBlogz previously explained. “Over the last few years, the relationship between Apple and Intel has remained very neutral.” The comments made by Intel about Apple using an inferior platform for any of their products, isn’t shocking in the slightest. Many consumers didn’t acknowledge Apple computers as viable contenders before they transitioned over to an Intel platform.

Apple’s relationship with Intel is of extreme importance. NVIDIA has good offerings for specific applications within Apple’s machines, but the core infrastructure that Apple has leaned on for the last few years has been Intel, and Intel knows that.

Cnet explains: The USB 3.0 specification, a next-generation high-speed connection standard due in 2009, is significant because all future PCs and devices will use connectors based on it. The spec is also expected to offer 10 times the speed of USB 2.0–used in virtually all PCs introduced in the last few years–or roughly 5 gigabits per second.

Gizmodo points out that “we’ll all get comfy with the speeds of the new connection: at 4.8Gbps it’ll shift a 25GB HD movie file in 70 seconds. USB 2.0 takes 13 minutes and USB 1.0 over 9 hours.” The speeds are enough to make most people wonder why Apple didn’t hold out releasing a new line of notebooks until this technology was unveiled, and made available. Surely consumers would have understood purchasing the notebooks in late November, or early December. Perhaps Apple might have even been looked at as more cutting edge and in tune with their customers had they chosen to wait?

Apple has recently received a lot of flack for removing Firewire ports across its new Macbook line. Further studies and deeper investigation revealed that in order to accommodate the internal components, all of the ports were forced to one side of the machine. This in turn left Apple with a decision to make, and Steve Jobs has explained why that decision was made. Whether Apple chooses to build in native support for USB 3.0 into its future products is still unconfirmed.

[image: Brooke Crothers]