OWC has announced that its upcoming Thunderbolt Hub will be compatible with all Apple M1 and Intel Macs equipped with Thunderbolt 3 ports and running macOS Big Sur, offering users the ability to expand the number of available Thunderbolt ports.
The OWC Thunderbolt Hub connects to a host computer over a Thunderbolt 3/4 port and provides three additional Thunderbolt ports (which are also compatible with USB-C) and one USB-A port. Each of the three downstream Thunderbolt ports can host its own daisy chain of peripherals and support transport speeds of up to 40Gb/s, subject to the overall limit of 40 Gb/s for the connection from the host computer.
The upstream Thunderbolt port can provide up to 60 watts of power to the host computer, which would be enough for a MacBook Air or a 13-inch MacBook Pro, but wouldn't be able to fully support a 16-inch MacBook Pro. The downstream ports can provide up to 15 watts for bus-powered Thunderbolt peripherals.
The OWC Thunderbolt Hub is priced at $149.99 and is available for pre-order now ahead of an early December launch.
Sunday October 12, 2025 7:05 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to announce new products "this week," according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Apple's "Mac Your Calendars" teaser last October
In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said the products set to be updated this week include the iPad Pro, Vision Pro, and "likely" the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, with all three likely to receive a spec bump with Apple's next-generation M5 chip.
Gurman...
Saturday October 11, 2025 6:59 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple's software engineers are internally testing iOS 26.0.2, according to MacRumors logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions.
iOS 26.0.2 will likely be a minor update that addresses bugs and/or security vulnerabilities, but we do not know any specific details yet.
The update will likely be released within the next few weeks.
Last month, Apple released iOS...
Monday October 13, 2025 8:25 am PDT by Eric Slivka
Buried in its announcement about "F1: The Movie" making its streaming debut on December 12, Apple has also announced that Apple TV+ is being rebranded as simply Apple TV.
A single line near the end of the press release states "Apple TV+ is now simply Apple TV, with a vibrant new identity," though Apple's website has yet to be updated with any changes, so we're unsure on the details of the...
Saturday October 11, 2025 10:10 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are still nearly a year away, a handful of new features and changes have already been rumored for the devices.
Below, we have recapped some of the early iPhone 18 Pro rumors so far.
Smaller Dynamic Island
The standard iPhone 18, iPhone 18 Pro, and iPhone 18 Pro Max will be equipped with a slightly smaller Dynamic Island, but the devices will...
Friday October 10, 2025 5:57 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Update: the Naver account appears to be referencing a speculative post on X by Vadim Yuryev, dated October 6. The original article follows.
Apple will announce new products through a series of press releases beginning as soon as next week, according to a dubious claim posted on the Korean blog Naver.
The Naver blog account yeux1122, which aggregates rather than originates Apple...
Sunday October 12, 2025 9:24 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
After releasing AirPods Pro 3 last month, Apple is already working on the next AirPods Pro, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
It is unclear if the new AirPods Pro would be branded as AirPods Pro 4, or if they would be considered an updated version of AirPods Pro 3. Gurman did not take a position, opting to describe them as a "new version" of the "high-end in-ear buds."
AirPods Pro 2...
Sunday October 12, 2025 9:43 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple's second-generation smart glasses with an in-lens display may have two modes, depending on which device they are connected to.
Meta Ray-Bans without an in-lens display
In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said he was told a future version of Apple's smart glasses may be able to run a full version of the visionOS operating system when they are paired with a Mac, and...
Saturday October 11, 2025 9:06 am PDT by Eric Slivka
Apple has essentially discontinued Clips, its video-editing app designed to allow users to combine video clips, images, and photos with voice-based titles, music, filters, and graphics to create enhanced videos that can be shared on social media sites.
The app has been removed from the App Store, and a support document on Apple's site says that the app is no longer being updated and would no ...
Recent reports suggest that there are now no redesigned Apple Vision headsets in active development, with the company's focus pivoting decisively to smart glasses.
When Apple announced the Vision Pro in mid-2023, it described the device as the dawn of "spatial computing," a new paradigm that would eventually rival the iPhone in importance. With a $3,499 starting price, intricate design and...
I'd consider myself a pro user, and I've been using a MacBook Air M1 with 8-core GPU and 16GB of RAM and couldn't be happier. A product like this that can add more Thunderbolt ports is the cherry on top.
The description references Thunderbolt 3 and the images are labeled with Thunderbolt 4.
Because electrically there is no difference between TB3 and TB4. TB4 is more of a certification, it requires full TB3 feature set in the host, along with secure memory access which wasn't present in older host controllers. They added hub support, but apparently there wasn't anything preventing it before in the protocol.
TB4 spec says can support 2 4K displays. So new Apple Silicon M1s must be TB3. https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15902/Intel%20Thunderbolt%204%20Announcement%20Press%20Deck_070720-page-013.jpg
Thunderbolt v4 is a bit skewed toward Intel. Not too surprising. Their gen10 and gen11 U series processors with integrated TB controllers have a four DisplayPort v1.4 stream attached so meet the spec. ( also all get a clean switchedd x4 PCI-e v3 feed also) . But it is also more uniform. If it is a TBv4 system then it doesn't matter which port you choose it will always have a video signal present. ( so you don't have pull out your USB4 symbol decoder ring to find out which feature is on which port on which system. ). TBv4 is largely about not having to worry what part of the optional parts of the USB4 specification the system implementer skipped.
There was a recent posting the seemed to indicate that Apple's integrated TB controller has the baseline ability but just isn't fed the four streams from the internal iGPU. So the M1 comes up short probably based on having a limited iGPU. Insert a more capable iGPU into the Apple Silicon die and then Apple could get the TBv4 label ( if they bother to go through certification process ) .
USB4 is largely based on Thunderbolt, however, there are material differences in regards to implementation (signaling rates, power delivery, etc.). Thunderbolt 3 interoperability is optional, not required, for USB4 hosts and devices.
Thunderbolt 4 is USB4 with mandatory Thunderbolt 3 interoperability along with a bunch of other minimum requirements to achieve certification. The Thunderbolt/USB4 ports on the M1 Macs are Thunderbolt 4 as far as signaling and power delivery are concerned. They do not meet the minimum requirement for video output because the M1 can only provide the Thunderbolt/USB4 host router with a single display stream. So aside from not supporting at least 2 displays, the USB Type-C ports on M1 Macs are otherwise Thunderbolt 4 compliant. This is not a deficiency in Apple's implementation of Thunderbolt/USB4, but rather in the display engine for the M1's GPU. Either port can drive a display, but not both at the same time.
The reason why Thunderbolt has historically been strictly a daisy-chain topology is that Intel never produced a Thunderbolt controller with more than 2 ports. You can't build a bigger switch/hub with only 2-port switches. That all changed when Intel recently released the 4-port JHL8440 "Goshen Ridge" ('https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/189982/intel-jhl8440-thunderbolt-4-controller.html') controller. OWC's device appears to be first to market and very reasonably priced, but I'm sure more vendors will soon follow.
