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.
Top Rated Comments
Apple - 3mm thin
See the difference?
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.
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....
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.