Apple Reducing Thunderbolt Pricing, Adds A Shorter $29 Version

Due to the backlash from avid consumers, Apple has decided to reduce the price of its 2 meter long Thunderbolt cable down from the original set price of $49, to $39. In addition, Apple released a shorter 0.5 meter Thunderbolt cable for $29, which is better suitable for use with external Thunderbolt hard drives and other portable peripherals. High-speed Thunderbolt cables are considerably more expensive than Apple's USB and Lightning cables because they require more processing power using high-quality copper cabling, and a total of four different processing chips on either end.

Seagate Acquires LaCie For $186 Million

If you have recently looked into Thunderbolt connectivity, then you might have come across the blazingly fast speeds that LaCie’s Thunderbolt Series Hard Drives promises. Being one of the few companies to have produced Thunderbolt capable products, LaCie caught the attention of a lot of major computer geeks, as well as Seagate, one of the largest data storage manufacturers today. They recently acquired the French storage company for a reported $186 million. Mixing LaCie’s premium storage products with Seagate’s massive customer base, we should be looking forward to some major releases from Seagate.

Macbook Airs To Come With Retina Display

Following up on yesterday’s MacBook Pro rumors, 9to5mac reports that the next generation MacBook Airs will include Retina Displays. The current tapered design of the MacBook Air will not be seeing any imminent upgrades. Without any external upgrades, Apple looks to focus on the internals of the MacBook Air lineup instead. According to various supply chain sources, Apple plans to implement the newly released Ivy Bridge processors and improved graphics; these upgrades will greatly improve performance and be able to support the high-pixel-density Retina Displays.

It appears that Apple is planning to slowly revamp their entire product line with Retina Displays. While this news is very exciting, it is unrealistic to hypothesize on a launch date for their Air line up. It is common for Apple to slowly announce each of their new products; we will have to wait and see what happens at this year's WWDC. 

Seagate Releases GoFlex Thunderbolt Adapter, Adds Thunderbolt To Any 2.5" Drive

Seagate has recently released a Thunderbolt adapter for its GoFlex series of portable external hard drives that is as big as an external hard drive on its own. The GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter works with all GoFlex drives adding a super fast Thunderbolt port with transfer speeds of up to 10GBps. Also, the GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter requires no external power to run and is compatible with any 2.5" SATA drive including SSD drives which will yield the fastest capable transfer speeds. Seagate's GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter is the most expensive interface adapter available for the GoFlex system at $99.99 and doesn't even include the necessary Thunderbolt cable which costs $50 alone. 

Thunderbolt Display Spills Its Guts For You To See

iFixit always prove to be very helpful when it comes to taking apart your electronic gadgets to fix them up or just for fun peeking around. This time iFixit posted up their teardown of the Apple Thunderbolt Display to reveal some very interesting guts you would never have thought to find in a display. Head over to the teardown page for the full procedure filled with useful information and detailed step-by-step teardown of Apple's 27" Thunderbolt Display.

Magma ExpressBox 3T Offers 3 External PCI Express Slots

 Magma has announced the ExpressBox 3T which is there latest product for expanding PCI Express slots externally. With this being one of the first Thunderbolt PCIe expansion slots with up to 10Gbps. You will be able to daisy chain not 1 or 2 Thunderbolt devices together but up to 6. It is geared toward video capture and editing, broadcast video, pro audio, communications, data acquisition but can be used for much more. Magma will start accepting preorder in 4Q(October 1st to the end of the year) with a price slightly under $1,000. If you are interested you can sign up on the company website to get more information. 

Apple Releases New 2011 MacBook Air With Backlit Keyboard, Thunderbolt

Some rumors were true while others were far from it. As expected, Apple has released a refreshed line of ultraportables today. Starting with the new 2011 11" MacBook Air starting at $999 (that's how much a 27" LED Cinema Display costs btw), it now packs Intel's new Sandy Bridge processor, the 1.6Ghz dual-core Intel Core i5 with an optional 1.8Ghz dual-core Intel Core i7 upgrade, 64GB SSD, 2GB of memory and Intel HD Graphics 3000. The new 2011 13" MacBook Air starts at $1,299, packs Intel's 1.7Ghz dual-core Intel Core i5 128GB SSD, Intel HD Graphics 3000 and comes standard with 4GB of memory.

But that's not all, both 11" and 13" 2011 MacBook Airs now have full backlit keyboards - A much requested hardware feature since Apple removed it from the 2010 MacBook Airs, Thunderbolt ports and they come with OS X Lion installed and ready to serve. Head on over to the source link for the full customization options.