BLACKMAGIC MULTIDOCK ALTERNATIVE PRO
BLACKMAGIC MULTIDOCK ALTERNATIVE MAC

That’s whyĪpple’s redesigned 2016 15” MacBook Pro arrived with four tiny USB Type-C connectors and cables to send non-USB data. Possible is a unique “Alternative Mode” design spec that enables

USB Type-C connector, including USB 3.1 (“up to” 10 Gbps),ĭisplayPort and Thunderbolt 3 itself (40 Gbps, if cable is under 19

Instead be any I/O standard over the smaller, reversible, versatile Technology refuse to stand still, and while SSDs continue to evolveĪnd conquer, Thunderbolt 2 is no longer leading-edge. In other words, my world has more than caught up with Blackmagic Design’s prescient MultiDock concept. The only spinning disks I buy these days are lumbering 5400 rpm large-volume drives for near-term archival storage. With Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve I edit and grade using additional sets of SSDs in a fast RAID 0 configuration. I routinely record 4K RAW files to the eight SSDs I use as media for my Convergent Design Odyssey 7Q+ monitor/recorder. Everything Changes as SSDs Ruleįive years after the debut of MultiDock 2, I live and work in a world of 2.5-inch SSDs. By NAB 2014, MultiDock had acquired Thunderbolt 2 too, as well as a new name, MultiDock 2.

BLACKMAGIC MULTIDOCK ALTERNATIVE MAC

Then later that year Apple introduced the trashcan Mac Pro with its six Thunderbolt 2 ports. What’s more, at the very same NAB 2013 where BMD introduced MultiDock, Intel announced Thunderbolt 2, which doubled Thunderbolt’s throughput by merging the original two 10 Gbps bidirectional channels into a single 20 Gbps channel. The second key feature of the original MultiDock was a pair of Thunderbolt ports at the rear, the speed of which left my USB 3.0 in the dust. Those littler 2.5-inch spinning drives that mounted in MultiDock were cute, but they were slower, the stuff of laptops, while 2.5-inch solid-state SSDs were out-of-reach and crazy-expensive.Ģ013 also happened to be Thunderbolt’s breakout year. I had just invested in a desktop dock with a “blazing” USB 3.0 connection, to accommodate two 3.5-inch 7200 rpm SATA drives, and was still getting used to working with “bare” hard drives. When Blackmagic Design introduced the original MultiDock at NAB 2013 - a compact, rackmount chassis with four open slots to insert 2.5-inch SATA drives like little cassettes - I thought of it as a clever novelty, nothing I could ever actually need. Feature image: Funny these days how fast a MultiDock 10G fills up.

Blackmagic multidock alternative