Thunderbolt Daisy Chain Apple Display

Do all thunderbolt ports support the minidisplay adapter?

The current Apple 27" display works on the thunderbolt/minidisplay port on a MBP. Thunderbolt supports daisy chaining, but will the other thunderbolt ports be the same so my minidisplay connection will fit?

I.e. If i connect something like the LaCie Thunderbolt drive to the MBP thunderbolt port, and then connect the current model of the Apple 27" display to the drive would the display work?

 

I think that is entirely dependent on the devices in the daisy chain.

I remember when USB was first introduced, there was all this talk about the dozens of devices you could "daisy-chain" off a single port. However, you can probably count on one hand the number of devices themselves that had integral support to act as a daisy-chain in that link. In fact, the only thing that comes to mind right away is USB keyboards, with their extra port for adding a mouse. Even then, some keyboards downgraded the interface.

In your example, you would probably have to inquire to LaCie as to whether or not you could place your display downstream of the drive, and whether display-port functions are passed through.

It is more likely however that Apple will incorporate a usable daisy-chain port on the displays that have Thunderbolt input to incorporate display and thunderbolt.

 

That would require me to buy a new display, which might make Apple happy, but me not so much.

 

Well, Thunderbolt (as it currently stands) uses the same physical interface (ie port design) as minidisplay port. The whole idea behind Thunderbolt would be allowing consumers to daisy chain their devices. This means that when you go home and dock your MBP, you would only have to plug in the power and a single Thunderbolt connection. The Thunderbolt cord would then go to an external hard drive, that would be daisy chained to an external display, that would be daisy chained to something else, and so on. You would be able to do "everything" through one port.

I believe part of the Thunderbolt implementation requires that manufacturers allow for daisy chain configurations but I could be wrong. We won't truly know anything until more accessories start coming out. However, as it stands, what you want to do should hold up. You should be able to connect an external hard drive via Thunderbolt and have that daisy chained to a minidisplay port monitor since the Thunderbolt specifications allow for the transport of audio and video information as well as data in both directions. Of course that audio and video will eat into the 10Gbps bandwidth but that won't be an issue.

 

There will be many devices that will terminate a daisy-chain, and still be "compliant", therefore I don't see how it's a requirement. Compact flash drives (thumb drives) and cameras are just two examples of devices that I'm sure won't have a second port. Then again, maybe there will be string of "loopholes", like calling them "temporary/mobile" devices that won't be daisy-chainable. Still, it would terminate the interface when used.

The end result is that we will still need hubs and docks if you want to have all your devices connected to one computer.

 

I don't see how a daisy chain setup is better than a hub anyway. The wiring would just as easily become a mess, and removing a non-terminating component would require multiple disconnecting and reconnecting AND would take all the downstream devices offline temporarily, which could cause all sorts of issues. Why would you want to do it this way? I don't see the point of the hype.

Unplugging anything upstream of the monitor will take your monitor offline. Now you can't see. What if you are trying to do a big copy operation on an external hard drive, which could take a long time (that's the big selling point!). Now you cannot connect or disconnect any device upstream of your external drive until it's done. It may not be that big of a compromise, but we *already* have hubs that can handle this, and this appears to be mostly a step backwards from my perspective without any benefit.

Compare that to SSD drives, for example, where we have a step back in storage capacity, but a variety of other benefits. That makes sense. Daisy chain does not.

 

There are no thunderbolt hubs out on the market in the near future though. Until they come out, we're stuck with daisy chaining.