LaCie Thunderbolt Drive

It's shipping! Finally!

Still quite ugly IMO, but meh...can't have everything I guess?

Edit: Even though the lacie site only offers a meagre 240GB SSD, there's actually a 500GB SSD offering on the Apple store! http://store.apple.com/us/product/H7151ZM/A?mco=MTY3ODQ5OTY Still a bit small, but much better than the alternatives! Finally! Hopefully someone will have early reviews and benchmarks of it. This could be the solution we've all been waiting for!

Also really hope the 2010 Apple display can close a daisy chain from it (unlike the new displays).

 

$1500 for a 500GB drive?!

Solution to what exactly?

 

Solution to getting a decent SSD external through a decent connection on a Mac laptop really. Macs don't offer native interfaces for USB3, and FW800 is a bit inelegant IMO, nowhere as fast as TB, and is horrible at daisy chaining (although I don't know from experience how well TB does on that front either).

$1500 is steep, but as with all technology, over time I'm sure the price will go down as competitors spring up with their own products. What's important is that someone took the first step of making one in the first place, even if the price is a bit outrageous for most consumer needs. (Assuming that it actually sells of course. If no one buys it, I suppose other manufacturers might decide to postpone their own competing products.)

 

$1500 for a small RAID with no NAS ability
for vital work the 500 is still techincally a 250 as you will mirror the two SSD'S

Depending on drives used $300-400 each. = $600-800 for drives = $700 - 900 for enclosure. OUCH.

..... add insult to injury??

 

Fair enough.

I agree with the need for a better external interface than USB2 or FW800, but the requirement for an external SSD I'm not so sure about.
HDDs will reach some pretty good speeds via thunderbolt, though obviously not as quick as SSDs, so I doubt that demand for such a product will be that high.

 

Yea, and maybe they'll lower the price if no one buys it. I hear more TB peripherals are being introduced these days too, although I suppose it'll be months/years before they're out on the market.

It would be nice eventually for all drives to have SSDs that are as cheap as HDDs and interface with TB (or something just as good) at some point though.

 

I'm just waiting for a reasonably priced TB external enclosure - 2.5" or 3.5" one.

 

I too am waiting for an enclosure. I have this nice 7200RPM 2TB hard drive just sitting here. Well, it isn't just sitting here since it is hooked up to my nettop via eSATA but my MBP would be better suited for using that since I don't use my nettop for anything other than Hulu Plus playback.

That and I am also waiting for a dongle that will add USB 3.0, eSATA, and a few other connectivity options through the TB port.

 

i think people may lean more on a hybrid drive with thunderbolt then ssd. even with the ssd their using what they are asking for the enclosure is outrageous. like someone else pointed out its only 800 for the two drives and they are buying mass volume not retail so its alot less.

*edit holy crap who designed that. they need a new designer something fierce. that is the ugliest drive ive ever seen

 

+1 on ugliness, I think I'll buy a MBP13 over that thing.

 

I believe at one point, LaCie actually made a big deal out of the "superior" design. They also hire designers for a lot of their products and then mark the price up correspondingly. Sad isn't it? I had a few of those grey monstrosities on my desk for several years (yes, that same design has been around for years unfortunately), and trust me, they don't really get any more aesthetically pleasing over time :/

That said, my current lacie is just a standard black box with a light underneath it. Nothing fancy, but doesn't look horrible either (I feel like that's what I could say for most externals though--I've yet to find one that looks "good"--only ones that don't look bad).

 

If it's true, that you can daisy chain a display port Display through this and a Thunderbolt Display... (MBP - TB D - LC - mDP Display) ... I don't get why it doesn't work without the LC (or the Pegasus Raid)...

 

First, your link no longer works. Second, I'm confused why you feel an external storage drive needs to be "attractive"? Huh?

I realize you said IMO, but how is FW800 "inelegant"? It works and it's very fast. Not faster than USB3 or TB but those interfaces just came out so I fail to understand how FW800 is inelegant?

I fail to see your logic here. . You do realize if Apple had that way of thinking the iPad wouldn't have ever surfaced. Tablets weren't selling before the iPad got here. They were expensive, they weren't designed well and running Windows 7 on a tablet didn't work but that didn't stop Apple.

Another example, Elgato's EyeTV became successful because Elgato saw that nobody was making a TV tuner solution for Mac while there were a ton of options for Windows machines. Just because a company can't sell it's initial product offering doesn't mean other companies will stupidly hold off on putting their products out there. If anything that should be an opportunity for companies to look at why that product failed and make a better product and get it out there fast so they can get the market share just as Apple did with the iPad.

 

For the same reason I want my laptop to be "attractive." Aesthetics matter. Besides, why wouldn't you want an external storage drive (or anything you use for that matter) to be aesthetically pleasing, as long as the price of such aesthetics is reasonable?

USB3 has been out for a while. TB is a bit newer, but how is that relevant to elegance?

Perhaps in an ideal world, all businesses would be willing and able to spot such opportunities and take advantage of them. Unfortunately, many businesses are conservative when entering a new market. In a new market where the first mover's product failed, it's not always easy to ascertain whether the failure was due to a shortcoming in the product or whether demand simply does not exist for even a decent product. Some firms will try to take advantage of the opportunity to create a product for which there will be demand; others will simply decide that market conditions aren't right, that the cost of creating this new product isn't worth it, and invest elsewhere; still others might decide to invest in more research before proceeding and thereby delaying their product.

A first mover (and even the first-mover after a failed product) stands to gain large advantages in the market if its innovation works, but it also bears the largest risk. Many more conservative businesses will be content to sit back and free-ride off the coattails of an entrepreneur who was willing to take that risk.

You point to the iPad as an example, but part of the genius of Steve Jobs is precisely because he was able to enter a market that many people thought was dead and take advantage of an opportunity that no one else could. Such examples are so notable because they are more often the exception than the rule. If every business was able to do so, then such an accomplishment would be a lot less impressive.

In TB's case, there will almost certainly be companies willing to produce peripherals for the new standard even if the LaCie drive flops. However, at the margin, a flop could also drive smaller companies less able to bear the risk of entering the new market to look elsewhere. If it raises the cost of entering the new market, then that may not be a desirable result for competition as a whole. Or it may be exactly what the new market needs. Who knows?

 

You didn't actually answer my question, I just wanted to know why you felt FW800 was inelegant?

 

A few reasons really:

1. Bandwidth/Suboptimal daisy chaining. Simply can't run all the peripherals in a daisy chain I want to attach to without loss of performance, even if each peripheral is separately powered.

2. The FW800 cables, specifically the end connectors that interface with the port, always felt cheap to me. The connection to the port never feels quite right (and I've tried this on several different FW800 connections over different machines). It's very easy to wiggle or knock the cable while it's plugged in. Maybe this is because every FW800 peripheral I've bought always came with the cable, which I imagine wouldn't be of as high quality as a separately-bought one. Compare this to the interface of all of Apple's other connectors (mini-display, magsafe, tb etc) and it's a bit lacking.

3. Random negative impressions. I've owned a number of FW external drives and other devices over the years since I find USB to be too slow, and I always felt that when connected via FW, the devices tend to run into more errors (corrupt data, random shutdowns, having to be reset, etc.). Nothing I could point to with any statistical certainty of course, but they left a negative impression in my mind. These problems may very well be due to poor design on the devices rather than the interface, but my options for buying peripherals were limited since most devices didn't include an interface for FW800.