Give to Caesar what is Caesar's. And Apple do its part. Leaving aside whether their computers are expensive or cheap, good or nefarious, I think we all agree on one thing: the miniaturization that apply iteration after iteration in its catalog of products is one of his greatest achievements. At the technical level are great, and are able to minimize the size of the components to levels before the presentations that we thought were unattainable. At least for now.
The latest MacBook Air follows this logic. One of the finest portable market, the lighter and with a price, I must say, is more or less decent for a team of good features. It was recently discovered that since Apple used a controller (a chip) which is half the size used in other previous teams. Thunderbolt speak controller and compared to the previous model used in the MacBook Pro and iMac.
The most concrete speak of Light and Eagle Ridge Ridge. Two names that a priori do not say anything but developments are the names of the drivers used by Apple Thunderbolt. Light for the first versions and Eagle in the last MacBook Air. The differences between them are mainly two: First, the size is half in favor of the Eagle, and second, smaller but also allows only a DisplayPort connection instead of two (ie, a single external monitor instead two). Both maintain the bidirectional bandwidth of Thunderbolt, which I remember is 10 Gbps in each direction.
This information, which would be of little worth to street users, we can use it as a curiosity in the world of technology. In one year Apple and Intel have developed a product whose size is halved. Will we have the next year a new driver Thunderbolt be the fourth? Possibly, yes. This is why many love technology.
