Popular Mac accessory makers CalDigit and OWC have today announced new all-in-one Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 cables, promising maximum data and power transfer over a single cable, as well as full compatibility with older USB devices.
Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 is the latest connectivity specification present in the newest Macs and high-end external hardware, offering performance up to 40Gb/s, making it ideal for eGPUs, SSDs, external displays, and more.
CalDigit and OWC's new Thunderbolt 4 cables feature maximum power and data transfer capability. The cables deliver power up to 100W, making them appropriate for docking stations or monitors that can supply power, and support external displays with resolutions up to 8K.
Many previous generations of longer Thunderbolt cables lacked compatibility with USB-C devices, resulting in reduced transfer speeds, but both of the new CalDigit and OWC cables are fully compatible with USB-C. This also guarantees full compatibility with both Thunderbolt and USB-C monitors, the best possible performance for USB-C devices, and the ability to connect USB-C devices to Thunderbolt ports, giving users a large amount of versatility from a single cable.
The CalDigit cable is available in a length of 2m and the OWC cable is available in 0.8m only. CalDigit also supports its new cable with a two-year warranty, while OWC's features a three-year warranty.
The OWC 0.8m Thunderbolt 4 and USB-C Cable is available now for $27.99 on MacSales.com, while the CalDigit 2m Thunderbolt 4 and USB-C Cable is available on the CalDigit website for $79.99.
Saturday March 1, 2025 11:00 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 19 is still around three months away from being unveiled, but there are plenty of rumors about the upcoming update.
Below, we recap iOS 19 rumors so far.
Redesigned Camera App
A leak earlier this year allegedly revealed a redesigned Camera app coming with iOS 19.
On his YouTube channel Front Page Tech in January, Jon Prosser shared a video showing what the new Camera app will...
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In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 18.4 will be released in April.
From the Apple News+ Food announcement:Coming with iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, Apple News+ subscribers will have access to Apple News+ Food, a new section that will feature tens of thousands of recipes — as well as stories about restaurants, healthy eating, kitchen essentials, and more — from the...
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Apple is expected to embrace a new camera system design for some models in its upcoming iPhone 17 series, and the latest purported CAD images don't deviate from what we have been hearing lately about Apple's new lineup. If you do not like the sound of an iPhone with a Google Pixel-style camera bar, look away now.
Seasoned leaker Sonny Dickson shared the following images in a post on X...
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iOS 18.4 was supposed to bring new Apple Intelligence Siri features, but Apple ended up needing to pull those capabilities from the update to continue testing. There are fewer new Apple Intelligence additions now, but there are still some new features that will make the update worth installing when it comes out in April.
Priority Notifications
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With the iPhone 16e now in the hands of customers, Apple reportedly plans to move on to its next product announcement in the coming days.
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Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Apple offered a line of Wi-Fi routers that it referred to as AirPort base stations. There was a standard AirPort Express, a higher-end AirPort Extreme with more advanced networking features, and an AirPort Time Capsule that doubled as an external storage drive for backing up a Mac with Time Machine.
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According to a post on X today from a leaker known as Kosutami, Apple plans to launch AirPods Pro 3 in May or June this year.
The leaker also claimed that an AirTag 2 will launch around the same time.
Kosutami is best known as a collector of prototype Apple hardware, but they have occasionally shared accurate information about Apple's future product plans. For example, they accurately...
I think Cable Matters beat both OWC and CalDigit to market with a 2m certified TB4/USB4 cable?
I bought one from Amazon and can confirm it's certified, and works at full speed with both Thunderbolt and non-TB USB 3.1 devices. Previously, only the Apple Thunderbolt 3 "Pro" 2m cable @ $129 supported full speed USB 3.1 functionality at a 2m length.
I authored the lone review on Amazon for the Cable Matters version: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084Z65YJQ/
All it just seems like yesterday when I was connecting a SCSI connector to a Mac system with a 1.25 megabytes ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabytes') per second transfer rate with a DB-25 connector. That was screaming :)
Is there any reason TB3 can't be upgraded for USB 4? They're the same connector, same speed, etc. What is the primary hardware difference?
USB4 is a tunneling protocol based on Thunderbolt, but the two are not the same. USB4 can tunnel the USB protocol in addition to PCI Express and DisplayPort. USB4 also uses slightly different signaling rates and encoding schemes (10 or 20 GT/s vs 10.3125 and 20.625 GT/s). The bottom line is that USB4 devices will only work with Thunderbolt 3 devices if they optionally include support for the USB Type-C Thunderbolt 3 Alternate Mode. Thunderbolt 4 is USB4 with full support for Thunderbolt 3 interoperability.
Any passive full-featured USB Type-C cable up to 0.8 m should support all current protocols. Longer cables require active circuitry to handle the faster signaling rates. The retimer/redriver chips that they use have traditionally only supported specific protocols (e.g. the signaling rates used by Thunderbolt). Thunderbolt 4 cables can handle both USB4 (10 or 20 GT/s) and USB3 (5 or 10 GT/s) as well as the Thunderbolt 3 (10.3125 or 20.625 GT/s) and DisplayPort (1.62, 2.7, 5.4 or 8.1 GT/s) alternate modes.
The smart ones? 1999. Since NASA lost its $125-million Mars Climate Orbiter because spacecraft engineers failed to convert from English to metric measurements when exchanging vital data before the craft was launched.
