Gah! Did anyone read my last post?

The current (only) iteration of Thunderbolt gives you a 2x PCIe Gen 2 connection at the end of the cable. You can do a lot with a 2x connection for sure. However, 2x is pretty limited if you do want to move a lot of data. Graphics cards, for example, require a 8x or 16x slot. Apples own fibre channel cards require either a 4x or 8x slot. A single PCIe gen2 channel gives you 500 MB/s transfer in both directions, or slightly less than the very latest SSD's can deliver when running at full pelt, so attach 2 of those in an external enclosure and you can potentially saturate a Thunderbolt connection. Heck, add a pair of USB3 ports and you're already very close to the maximum data rate a single Thunderbolt connection can handle.

Will Thunderbolt be upgraded over time? Of course it will. Will it be able to deliver a full 16x PCIe connection at the end of a wire? Quite probably, but I suspect that'll be the fibre based version. In the mean time, the next iteration of the Xeon chips used in the Mac Pro (and presumably the next set of Core i7 chips that use the X79 chipset) will be using PCIe gen3 , both available by the end of the year or Q1 2012. Will TB be upgraded to take advantage? In the fullness of time yes, quite probably. In time for the systems using new Xeon/i7 chips, who knows?

Try streaming 3D Red video (5K, 3D). A Mac just can't do it, at least not in real time. External Thunderbolt RAID arrays might be fast enough to record a Red 3D stream, as long as it doesn't go through the host.

A lot of video professionals are looking forward to the Big Little Disk, which should come out this summer. It might mean that they can stream and edit video in the field on a MBP, something which currently isn't possible.

As davrosG5 says, the bandwidth of Thunderbolt is seriously limited, if you want to move around large amounts of data.

Dave, there's probably about a couple of hundred people worldwide who need to do that on a regular basis.
If you're playing at sort of level of production, then you almost certainly have the budget to buy a Pro, or as is much more likely, lease one for your production.

It's like saying 'Try getting your estate car to do an 8 second quarter mile'.

In short the answer will be no. There are way too many who have a lot of their money and kit invested in Windows and it would be so expensive to switch it makes no sense even if they gave the OS away. The fact that the games are more numerous is a plus for many. Though I like the fact that there are many fewer games to choice from. The ones that are available for macs are good. Like a filter. For specific industries they can justify the expense of getting what they need regardless of the OS.

That was the whole point. Pixel Corp., for example, have long been using HD for their production and they switched to Red a while back and the last MacWorld was streamed in 3D HD.

They now use Red 3D in the field and want to check the shoot in real time - using FW800, each scene takes an age to load and it is inpractical. With a MBP with Thunderbolt and a BigLittleDisk, they would have a chance of capturing in real time viewing the scene and determining if they need to re-shoot, or make quick edits on the spot.

But that is already pushing Thunderbolt to its limits.

I think this thread has lost itself on Apple specifics.

Windows will not be hurt until Apple take over the business market which will also lead to more people being exposed to the OS at work and wanting it for their home PC.

Are they in a position to challenge at the moment?

Well, Apple has more cash reserve (real cash, apparently) than the entire market worth of Microsoft and Dell combined. I don't think they really care about or need to go after the business market in any meaningful way.

Aside from anything else, the business market in general terms splits into two parts - servers and desktops. Desktops is a high volume low margin business which is the kind of business Apple have avoided at all costs. The server market is more similar to what Apple do, but it's incredibly conservative and they tried it once - xserve and xsan - and hardly anyone bought them.

Apple can't make the kind of money in the business sector that they can in the consumer sector - given the make more profit than pretty much any business sector IT company you'd have to assume this to be true. Whatever resources Apple would have to deploy getting into the business market, you'd assume they'd make more profit deploying those same resources in the consumer market, where they can get more profit per dollar they spend. It doesn't really make any sense for Apple to push into the business sector unless they've reached the point in the consumer sector that they're making absolutely every dollar profit that they can from it. Until that point, they're better off trying to squeeze more out of that market than pushing into another one.

Jon

Apple are too far behind, to break into the corporate market.

And if they did, they are still, currently, heavily reliant on Microsoft and its partners. For the small business, they have some suitable tools, but for big corporations, they do not have the relevant toolset.

iWorks is not a suitable alternative to Microsoft Office, plus, if you have invested 100,000€ plus in custom macros etc. built around the MS Office suite, you are going to be very reluctant.

Likewise, the remote management tools are much more limited.

What do they have, in their product line up, to match Project, Visio, WSUS, SQL Server, Exchange Server, Oracle, SharePoint Server, Forefront, Citrix or Terminal Server and all the other tools corporates rely on to keep their businesses running?

And, if a company moans about spending 500€ on a new PC, because they can get one for 199€ at Staples, how are you going to convince them to fork out over 1100€ for a machine?

With companies looking more and more to Terminals (thin clients), instead of full blown computers, Apple need to look in other directions.

What they need, more than anything, is a good server platform, which they've just gotten rid of, with virtualised OS X, so that thin clients can attach and work on a central server. An Apple Blade Server, capable of running a couple of hundred terminals would be a good move, if they want to move into the corporate area. But given their recent moves, I am inclined to agree, they aren't interested in corporate clients.

Given that their biggest corporate desktop client to date is small fry for the likes of HP, Dell or Microsoft, they don't really seem to want to try.

They have several years of catching up, before they can compete in the corporate arena. That would eat up a lot of that cash reserve. It would be cheaper for them to buy up Microsoft.

I was mainly talking about the business market more for the desktop section, and not for making money in it per se. Familiarity is a big psychological selling point for the consumer market, as a majority of workers use Windows based machines I would wager it biases them towards Windows based machines in the consumer market when it comes to buying a home PC.

Familiarity is a big part of selling. If Apple want to hurt MS in the home market I would imagine they would have to attack it from the desktop aspect of the business marketplace.

Well Apple could supply thin clients, though if they maintained the Xservers which would make it easier to do. Though with their huge cash pile maybe they will bid for Microsoft?

Apple aren't interested in replacing MS in the corporate arena.
I think they're interested in selling addendum to the MS ecosystem, but not replacing it.
And let's not forget, the XServe is no more.

I hear those iPad things are becoming very popular in the business world.

Of course, those pad things will never catch on. They don't run Windows.

Actually, that's not strictly true, you can run Windows on an ipad. As they say, there's an app for that.

Apart from advertising bosses posing with them, I've seen 2 in my travels so far, and they were both privately owned and unofficially pulling data from the corporate network (both IT managers, so they probably get away with it).

We are currently looking for a bunch of tablets for a customer. Having problems finding anything at the moment.

Not iOS (must have Java), not Android (must be "real" Java), which pretty much leaves Windows tablets or full blown Linux (if you could find any). Needs at least 6 hours battery life... Causing many headaches at the moment.