Following yesterday’s excitement of Apple releasing their new $49 Thunderbolt cable, selling the first 3rd-party Thunderbolt devices in the Apple Online Store, and issuing a Thunderbolt-related update for all enabled Macs, Apple has now issued three support document for using Thunderbolt on your Mac.
The three documents cover how to get the best performance from Thunderbolt on your Mac, how to use Thunderbolt with Boot Camp and Windows 7, and on how to use the new Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt 2M cable that they released yesterday. Here’s what you need to know:
Getting the best performance from Thunderbolt: This document merely guides you to make sure you have all the latest updates for your Mac before trying to use Thunderbolt. It also suggests that, if you reinstall your computer, you should update it first before reconnecting your Thunderbolt devices.
Using Thunderbolt with Boot Camp and Windows 7: This document says that Windows 7 won’t recognize Thunderbolt devices unless you connect them and turn them on prior to booting – Windows doesn’t support plug and play with Thunderbolt.
Also, Target Display Mode won’t work under Windows on iMacs, and sleep mode is disabled in Windows 7 if a Thunderbolt device is plugged in. Further, you must restart Windows if you disconnect your Thunderbolt device before you can plug it in again, as well as having to restart your computer to wake from hibernation. The final blow? Under Windows, your PCI Express cards will not be recognized by plug and play on MacBook Pros unless you first disconnect or eject any Thunderbolt devices.
About Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt cable (2 m) – This document describes the proper way of inserting the Thunderbolt connector, and reminds you that the maximum bandwidth of the cable is 10Gbps, but that some devices might not support usage of the full 10Gbps of bandwidth.
Apple also kindly reminds us that, while a Thunderbolt cable will fit in Mini DisplayPort connections, those connections won’t work for Thunderbolt devices unless your Mac is enabled with Thunderbolt technology (Currently, only the 2011 MacBook Pro and the 2011 iMacs have this functionality).
There’s a bit more in the actual documents, so click the links above to get the full scoop!
