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.
Thursday November 27, 2025 1:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's online store is going down for a few hours on a rolling country-by-country basis right now, but do not get your hopes up for new products.
Apple takes its online store down for a few hours ahead of Black Friday every year to tease/prepare for its annual gift card offer with the purchase of select products. The store already went down and came back online in Australia and New Zealand, ...
Tuesday November 25, 2025 7:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple recently teamed up with Japanese fashion brand ISSEY MIYAKE to create the iPhone Pocket, a limited-edition knitted accessory designed to carry an iPhone. However, it is now completely sold out in all countries where it was released.
iPhone Pocket became available to order on Apple's online store starting Friday, November 14, in the United States, France, China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, ...
Tuesday November 25, 2025 7:09 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple's first foldable iPhone is expected to launch alongside the iPhone 18 Pro models in fall 2026, and it's shaping up to include three standout features that could set it apart from the competition.
The book-style foldable will reportedly feature an industry-first 24-megapixel under-display camera built into the inner display, according to a recent JP Morgan equity research report. That...
We've been focusing on deals on physical products over the past few weeks, but Black Friday is also a great time of year to purchase a streaming membership. Some of the biggest services have great discounts for new and select returning members this week, including Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a...
We've been focusing on deals on physical products over the past few weeks, but Black Friday is also a great time of year to purchase a streaming membership. Some of the biggest services have great discounts for new and select returning members this week, including Apple TV, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When...
Black Friday is here, and as always this is the best time of the year to shop for great deals, including popular Apple products like AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch, and more. In this article, the majority of the discounts will be found on Amazon.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which...
Singapore has ordered Apple to block or filter messages on iMessage that impersonate government agencies, requiring the company to implement new anti-spoofing protections by December as part of efforts to curb rising online scams, the Straits Times reports.
Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that it had issued an Implementation Directive to Apple under the Online Criminal Harms...
Friday November 28, 2025 7:33 am PST by Joe Rossignol
While all Macs are now powered by Apple's custom-designed chips, a new rumor claims that Apple may rekindle its partnership with Intel, albeit in a new and limited way.
Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today said Intel is expected to begin shipping Apple's lowest-end M-series chip as early as mid-2027.
Kuo said Apple plans to utilize Intel's 18A process, which is the "earliest...
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.
