HP chooses USB 3.0 over Thunderbolt

This is a Chicken vs. Egg scenario and I don't blame HP for taking the position that it has. While I've yet to see USB 3 getting any serious traction either, there is nothing that actually makes use of Thunderbolt so there is no demand from customers for it. If Thunderbolt is adopted on devices such that customers buy Apple hardware in order to use it then I am sure that HP will have the incentive to adopt it as well.

I've got my fingers crossed for Thunderbolt simply because I don't like USB and I was very definitely a FireWire man.

Its so cute to see how whiny, insulted and enraged the author the article is, just to make sure one will ever mistake TUAW for a serious journalistic institution.

Just looked at original PCWorld article. There are a grand total of 4 comments, three of them smugly satisfied.

I like it here in AppleWorld.

Maybe they might reconsider Thunderbolt when something with a Thunderbolt Plug actually ships?

Just remember that your 2011 macbook pro has a 24x dvd-rom. That has not changed in many years. That will not play blu-ray. So much for Apple providing the best technology available. Jussayin.

Not to fan the flames, especially since it has already been pointed out (rightfully so) that this is a dollars/marketing game right now... But, if you reversed HP and Apple in the story, replaced a few words with bluray and DVD, you can see that decisions made for giving consumers "superior technology" isn't always in Apple's favor.

Apparently someone at HP doesn't understand that Thunderbolt is just a PCI slot in cable form.

It is not a replacement for USB 3.

Well... So far the only thing I can do with the two thunderbolt ports on my iMac is to plug monitors into them. I somehow suspect that you cannot daisy chain a monitor. So now I have no extra thunderbolt ports, and nowhere else to plug in displays. Thunderbolt will be out on jury for me for a few years if it is actually worth anything to me.

We'll see a year from now whether Thunderbolt is Apple's next Firewire.

Say what you want about Firewire: VERY few peripheral manufacturers supported it.

I would guess it was 98% USB, 2% Firewire. Ever see any Firewire memory sticks?

And the fact that the market majority is currently USB they have a serious advantage in this battle.

I'm afraid I will be making matters worse by playing wait-and-see with Thunderbolt.

I bought a Firewire card for my PC and had exactly ONE peripheral to use with it. That peripheral ALSO had USB.

Most of the comments and this article are very short sighted.

HP has to buy their motherboards from vendors who have integrated features. Obviously the value proposition is that the cost to integrate Thunderbolt into their motherboards hasn't reached a saturation point worth investing in yet.

Freakin... How long after FireWire got introduced did it take to showup as a built in feature of high end motherboards for PC builders? 2004-2005?

Before then you had to buy a 3rd party PCI card.

I mean, did none of you notice how many iMacs and MBP's ship with eSata ports? Those are on nearly all PCs now. Where were the built in SCSI plugs on the Mac Pro? It's an add in. Guys. Don't freak out because Apple picked a bleeding edge tech that PC manufacturers won't integrate for years. SCSI and eSata never took a hit for lack of inclusion. In fact, many people that used the hardware needed external controllers to manage the resources of the data adequately.

I can't begin to recall all the people who wanted video storage and would ask me to use the on board PATA Promise controller. Nevermind that it would share the bus with their FireWire or their analog capture card. No... The slowdown they'd see in use would justify the need for external cards. PCs have not changed guys.

Anyone wanting good Thunderbolt performance would seek out an external controller anyway on a PC. Trust me... Just cause we have something nice that's integrated doesn't mean that the PC world won't use it. Heck, if it's as fast or faster than the old Fiber channel cards expect to see some wide adoption in enterprise. It'll be around for years if this plays out.