Thunderbolt adapters for FW800, Gigabit Ethernet announced
updated 11:45 pm EDT, Mon June 11, 2012
Ethernet adapter out now, FW800 arriving later
In addition to the other higher-profile offerings at Apple's Worldwide Developer's conference today, the company announced two new adapter cables for all Thunderbolt-equipped Macs. Shipping today is the Gigabit Ethernet Thunderbolt cable, and the Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter cable arrives later this summer.
The release of the adapters is driven by the new Retina display MacBook Pro and its lack of legacy ports. However, tonight's software update provides a patch to previously-shipped Thunderbolt-equipped Macintosh models to support the Gigabit Ethernet adapter.
No declaration of compatibility with the Windows Thunderbolt implementation, as seen on some new motherboards, has been made. The Gigabit Ethernet Thunderbolt adapter is available now, and retails for $29. The Firewire 800 adapter will be ready later this summer, but but pricing has not yet been announced.
Junior Member
Joined: Jul 2009
Well, that's nice, but...
Will we see a USB 3 adapter any time soon? Apple has been shipping Thunderbolt for a while now, but none of those models can connect to USB 3 devices, and that's where the cheap external storage is right now.