“Our concern that widespread adoption of USB 3 might leave Thunderbolt out in the cold now looks even more likely as the USB 3.1 – aka Superspeed USB – specification has been announced,” Ben Lovejoy writes for 9to5Mac. “This allows USB transfers of up to 10Gbps, the same speed as the original Thunderbolt standard.”
“Thunderbolt is technically superior to USB 3 – combining PCIe, DisplayPort and power signals into a single cable – and the recently announced Thunderbolt 2 version (which will debut in the new Mac Pro) doubles throughput to a blistering 20Gbps,” Lovejoy writes. “And Thunderbolt can deliver that bandwidth to more than one device at a time.”
Lovejoy writes, “But technical superiority alone is no guarantee of success, as the history of Betamax or Firewire demonstrates.”
Read more in the full article here.