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LaCie on Tuesday announced the Porsche Design Mobile Drive as the world's first external hard drive with a built-in USB-C port. The LaCie Mobile Drive features a reversible cable that supports Apple's latest MacBook with USB-C technology, delivering data transfer speeds up to 100 MB/s for quickly transferring photos, videos and other files or backing up with Time Machine.
"The LaCie™ Mobile Drive features a USB-C port — the user-friendly connector of the future. This new technology makes the LaCie Mobile Drive incredibly easy to connect, since both ends of the cable are identical and the connector is reversible. As a result, there is no need to worry about which end goes to which device or about plugging it in upside down."
The LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive is made with a 3 mm-thick solid aluminum enclosure designed to match the look of Apple's latest MacBook and other anodized aluminum products. The external hard drive will be available next quarter in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, and also includes an adapter with standard USB 3.0 (Type-A) or USB 2.0 ports for backwards compatibility with older Macs or USB-equipped devices.
Pricing information was not disclosed.
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(View all)Apple - 3mm thin
See the difference?
i'd like to know which of you is correct. why would a drive and the charger connect to the adapter at the same time if they couldn't function together? am i missing something about your setup?
This drive in this article has a USB-C connector. The rMB is charged via its USB-C port. The adapter adds one USB (old style) plug, one HDMI plug, and passes through USB-C (it does not add another USB-C). So, with or without the adapter, there is only one USB-C port to use, and two things that logically make sense to use at the same time: external storage and charging.Put another way, here is my attempt at a diagram:
Without an adapter:
[rMB USB-C]---[Charger]
or
[rMB USB-C]---[LaCie USB-C drive]
can't connect both.
With an adapter:
|---[USB-A]
[rMB USB-C]---[Adapter]---[HDMI]
|---[USB-C]---[Charger]
or
|---[USB-A]
[rMB USB-C]---[Adapter]---[HDMI]
|---[USB-C]---[LaCie USB-C drive]
can't connect both.
Damn. You know your cables sir.
Just someone who reads specs in his spare time...May I ask what is it you do for a living?
Check out usb.org (http://usb.org), anandtech.com (http://anandtech.com), and arstechnica.com (http://arstechnica.com)
Lots of interesting info. Industry related, not exclusive to Apple.
Let's take the Mac off charge to backup or transfer data....
LaCie's page for this drive states that they include a USB-C<--->USB-A cable with the drive, so with Apple's $79 dongle, you plug the charger into the USB-C port and the LaCie Drive into the USB-A port. Presumably the USB-A port gets enough power to run the drive.
|---[USB-A]---[LaCie USB-C drive]
[rMB USB-C]---[Adapter|---[HDMI]
|---[USB-C]---[Charger]
That would work, I suppose. Still seems pretty silly though. Also, it seems that simply using a regular USB 3.0 drive would accomplish the same thing, but with 1 less adapter.
I don't mind USB-C, I think it's great. I just think it's stupid to include only 1 port because of the charging issue. I would have zero complaints if the MBA had 2 USB-C ports. That way people could always charge and use one peripheral without requiring any adapters. Alternatively, the $80 adapter should have 2 USB-C ports for the same reason.