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.
Monday November 3, 2025 5:54 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Following more than a month of beta testing, Apple released iOS 26.1 on Monday, November 3. The update includes a handful of new features and changes, including the ability to adjust the look of Liquid Glass and more.
Below, we outline iOS 26.1's key new features.
Liquid Glass Toggle
iOS 26.1 lets you choose your preferred look for Liquid Glass.
In the Settings app, under Display...
Wednesday November 5, 2025 11:57 am PST by Juli Clover
The smarter, more capable version of Siri that Apple is developing will be powered by Google Gemini, reports Bloomberg. Apple will pay Google approximately $1 billion per year for a 1.2 trillion parameter artificial intelligence model that was developed by Google.
For context, parameters are a measure of how a model understands and responds to queries. More parameters generally means more...
Thursday November 6, 2025 11:12 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today updated its trade-in values for select iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models. Trade-ins can be completed on Apple's website, or at an Apple Store.
The charts below provide an overview of Apple's current and previous trade-in values in the U.S., according to its website. Maximum values for most devices either decreased or saw no change, but the iPad Air received a slight bump.
...
Apple is planning to launch at least 15 new products in 2026, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman outlined what to expect from Apple in 2026 in the latest edition of his "Power On" newsletter. He said the company is heading "into one of its most pivotal years in recent memory," with the rollout of major new Apple Intelligence features, intense regulatory pressure on the App Store,...
Monday November 3, 2025 1:11 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released iOS 26.1, the first major update to the iOS 26 operating system that came out in September, iOS 26.1 comes over a month after iOS 26 launched. iOS 26.1 is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and later, as well as the second-generation iPhone SE.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones over-the-air by going to Settings > General >...
Thursday November 6, 2025 2:45 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple is promoting the new Liquid Glass design in iOS 26, showing off the ways that third-party developers are embracing the aesthetic in their apps. On its developer website, Apple is featuring a visual gallery that demonstrates how "teams of all sizes" are creating Liquid Glass experiences.
The gallery features examples of Liquid Glass in apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. Apple...
We're officially in the month of Black Friday, which will take place on Friday, November 28 in 2025. As always, this will be 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 ...
Thursday November 6, 2025 4:37 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple in iOS 26.2 will disable automatic Wi-Fi network syncing between iPhone and Apple Watch in the European Union to comply with the bloc's regulations, suggests a new report.
Normally, when an iPhone connects to a new Wi-Fi network, it automatically shares the network credentials with the paired Apple Watch. This allows the watch to connect to the same network independently – for...
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.
