Thunderbolt cable

hoada wrote:

Yes, I do a fair amount of photo editing with large files and some video editing in Premier and Final Cut so I need the computing power but I also crave the portability of the MBA. So what I'm considering is to get a small MBA for travel, and just use it in Target Mode with my existing MBP

I don't think that's going to work, since the MacBook Air has no FireWire port and no Thunderbolt port, the only two interfaces you can do Target Disk Mode with (today, anyway, since early Macs could do it through SCSI). It only has a USB 2 port, but I don't think USB works with Target Disk Mode. Also, there is no interface on the MacBook Air that might give you the data transfer speed you want. Even the MBA's extra-cost wired Ethernet adapter is only 100 megabits per second, not the Gigabit Ethernet all other Macs have.

The MacBook Pros all have FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet which are both more appropriate for Premiere/Final Cut levels of data transfer.

I don't like to shut everything down to go into Target Disk Mode so instead I leave my MBP on and turn on File Sharing so I can access my MacBook Pro files from my desktop Mac through Gigabit Ethernet, which has a speed comparable to FireWire 800 (on paper GigE = 1000 megabits/sec, FW800 = 800 megabits/sec).

Please aware of this article http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3775

Yes, this is all pretty confusing as the machine's generations are not moving at the same pace... For example:

1) My mid-2009 MBP15 will output video to my late 2009 iMac via a special display cable which looks like but is not a Thunderbolt cable... However said cable will not carry sound, only video

2) The MBP will display to my TV via a display-port to HDMI cable, but not audio. Later versions of the MBP do transmit sound too

3) My MBP can be/receive target mode through its Firewire 800 port

4) But my new MacBook Air (on order) cannot do any of this because the adapters are not yet for sale (why Apple, given the standardisation of all your models around the Thunderbolt interface?) so no Firewire, no fast Ethernet and no target mode. I am not even sure what will happen when I connect the MB Air to the iMac or to a TV... We shall see

All in all, this is a mess😠 and totally uncalled for too.

(and why do we have to wait for 9 months for TB peripherals to appear; don't understand what the bottleneck is)

...(and why do we have to wait for 9 months for TB peripherals to appear; don't understand what the bottleneck is)

Ask the companies that are taking so long to produce them. I'm sure Apple isn't any happier about it than you are.