Michael,
“. . . USB didn’t bring anything new to the Mac . . .”
You must have been asleep! (And I must have been asleep when they came out with those ADB scanners you refer to! I think SCSI was the hot ticket there, but probably more for ubiquity reasons.) RE USB/ADB, don’t you remember the cost of cables, the lack of (dependable) hot swapping, etc.? ADB was great in it’s time, but it was a bit long in the tooth and had no chance of entering broad use.
Compared to Firewire, USB was lame and broken, but compared to ADB, USB was fricking revolutionary.

Totally agree that LightPeak will make docking easier and better. As a plus it could allow small devices and laptops to have total connectivity to any device while enabling a mush smaller form factor, and power requirement (or room for more battery power.)
Another thing I see as interesting with multi-core processors, GCD, and related technologies that have recently emerged, is the possibility of seamless sharing of resources. Essentially instant syncing, sharing or offloading of computing resources, automatic behind the scenes plug and play XGrid functionality, constant topping off of batteries without thinking about it (is suitable power is built into the cable,) etc. Perhaps something like the new tablet and an iPhone (only one with a monthly data contract) could work together and deliver acceptable functionality of a desktop?

And yeah, Light Peak would be nice as a docking solution too… but that might be asking too much, as Apple doesn’t seem to care for the concept of docking apparently for the last 10 years… but that could be because it involves a port that most consumers wouldn’t use. Here, there might be no such trade-off. On the other hand, Apple store employees don’t really need to move their Macbooks around (they use Macbooks mainly to save space), so that particular analogy doesn’t make sense here, since they don’t really need a docking station. But I’m sure your point is otherwise a valid complaint among road warriors and business users who are constantly on the go that would like to use Apple laptops (though I would suspect with that kind of travel, they’d want the Macbook Air).

Anyway, I’m excited to see Apple is breathing new life into interconnects, because I was going to be disappointed if Firewire died without a successor… it just seems like a good technology that got abandoned and USB ate its lunch. And now Light Peak will probably succeed it, since it can run Firewire protocols and others for cheap :)

But look at the Macbooks used at the Genius Bar in the Apple Stores: they’re swamped with a gaggle of cables coming out the side. The Macbook needs some kind of docking port, but do they really need a gigantic, proprietary connector?

Enter “Light Peak”. It’s the docking port of the 21st century. If I can route all external I/O (video, network, USB, FireWire, audio, etc.) through this one tiny standardized port, then it opens up the field. Docks could be used across laptop models, and available from different sources for different purposes. It would be relatively cheap to implement on many more laptops, with little space/weight penalty.

Where is the outrage from the Wintel crowd over the “lock in” they must suffer over these single-sourced docking stations? Apple has repeatedly shown a desire to push the envelope of advanced and open hardware connectors (MagSafe being the notable exception). This sounds exactly like something Apple would do, and I hope they do it.

“Please remember what a revolution USB has brought to us….we think it is normal we can connect anything…to our computer just using a simple cable”

As a long time Mac user USB didn’t bring anything new to the Mac, other than an increase in speed over ADB. Apple’s ADB was released ten years prior to USB and allowed us to connect all those things you mentioned (other than external storage). There were all the standard input devices, but because it was a serial protocol, it also allowed the connection of printers, scanners and even modems.

The use of SCSI on those same systems back then also gave Mac users another method to connect multiple various devices to our computers. SCSI supported mostly higher bandwidth devices; printers, scanners, hard drives, etc. And could have up to 7 devices daisy chained on one bus.

And actually, the original idea behind FireWire was to bring all those ports down to one. Everything ADB did plus high speed for storage and eventually networking. Unfortunately it proved to be a bit too expensive to add FireWire into cheap peripherals and with the introduction of USB on the iMac, Apple figured it would be better suited for mass adoption and left FireWire relegated to higher end devices.

Given these prior interests by Apple to consolidate ports and cables on their computers over the years, I can believe that Apple was involved in the development of this Light Peak technology.

Where would this port be most beneficial in early 2010? A couple things come to mind:

-Added to “all” laptops and release a monitor with all the “current” ports built in (as others have mentioned). Making it a one connection “docking station” which Apple doesn’t offer right now. Okay a two connection since one would want power to a laptop as well.

- The high end where that bandwidth and speed translates into time and money. PowerMacs and Xserve?

Cheers,
Argosy

I buy chips from and deal with the same suppliers that Apple uses each day. I am not under NDA. I can speak. And, what I have to say is that Apple is (a) aimed at transitioning to USB 3.0 by Q2 2010 across the board, and (b) aimed at transitioning to DisplayPort v1.2 by Q3 2010 across the board. And, there is zero motion occurring based on this pointless non-standard optical I/O that essentially subverts much of the globally accepted USB roadmap.

I’m just a grunt who builds electronics goods, so have no knowledge of the higher level political sagas ongoing in the industry — about what Steve and Paul might have discussed over yogurt martinis. But, I assert, and leave to your inimitable analytic skills to verify, that this whole tale (Apple’s rapid adoption) is pure poppycock.

Could a monitor become the digital hub for everything else? An accompanying small box linked through optical fibers the size of a hair follicles could be small and still contain adapters for legacy ports.