What is very important to note here is that these are theoretical values of the standards.

When you are working with digital photos whose file sizes are in the hundreds of megabytes and video files in the tens of gigabytes a faster file transfer speed is always a welcome improvement!įirst up I think its important to have a rudimentary understanding of the other interface speeds out there:

Mac compatible ports and their own drivers for Mac OSX. Understanding the benefits of the USB 3.0 standard to creative professionals, CalDigit did the smart thing and created their own solutions. In which case what are Apple waiting for ? Only they know. Some say that Apple are waiting for the Light Peak standard to become available, but whilst Light Peak may be the new Firewire, it seems foolish to think that all general computer peripherals will not simply switch from USB 2 to USB 3, as the ports are backwards compatible which is much easier for consumers to deal with. Yes even the new $5000 12-core Mac Pro does not come with a USB 3.0 port. PC desktop computers is not such a problem as third party PCI cards are available but Apple have yet to integrate USB 3.0 drivers into their operating system or offer the ports on any of their hardware. The problem is though that computer manufacturers have so far been much slower in adopting the standard on their desktop and laptop machines. External drive manufacturers are slowly making the switch and mainstream players like LaCie and Western Digital all have USB 3.0 drives available now.

I have been patiently waiting for the much newer USB 3.0 standard to filter down into the marketplace. On top of this they simultaneously released a Mac compatible PCI USB 3.0 cards as well as an Expresscard USB 3.0 adapter for Mac laptops with expresscard slots. A couple of months ago storage solution specialists CalDigit announced a new addition to their external drive lineup, the USB 3.0 packing AV Drive. On top of a need for reliable storage space I’m always looking for a way to speed up my workflow and hence spend less time in front of the monitor. With digital camera manufacturers pushing megapixel and file sizes higher and higher, and HD video becoming the norm, we are constantly in need of more hard drives. Let’s face it, we all spend more time at our computers than we want to these days.

Usb 3 card for mac pro 2010