Damn Apple..a fence sitter's dilemma

Here is how to plan for a timeless system.

Buy:

Fantastic Tube Preamp
Fantastic Tube Amp
Great Vinyl setup
High efficiency speakers

All you will ever have to upgrade is your SECONDARY source, be it a CD player, DAC, whatever, the other elements if they are good, will not be obsolete any time soon.

Apple has also introduced Airplay which is very cool. But again as long as the above list is good, you will never need radical system changes...

What is the rest of your system??

This article provides a good overview of the background and prospects for Thunderbolt. The bottom line: It will not be obsoleting anything in the foreseeable future.

Regards,
-- Al

It will be a while before Thunderbolt becomes a reality. For that matter it may not become any more widely used than Firewire. But then something will replace Thunderbolt after that. So you should probably just give up, since anything you buy will eventually become out of date. ;)

I'm sure I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this next part from Mini owners and Mac lovers. The Mac mini is a pretty limiting option (but is also cheap). I have done a lot of testing and a correctly optimized PC sounds better and more dynamic than a properly optimized mini. I suspect a big part of that is better player options. If it were my $ I'd look at a PC or an Apple desktop so that future upgrades can accommodate new technology.

Leskem, remainder of system (primary)

Sony SCD-1 modded
Van Alstine Ultra Dac
Hovland hp-100
Bel 1001 Mk. V x2 in mono
Meadowlark Blue Heron II floorstanders
Audience Au 24e IC's; Zu Mission speaker cable

Hesson11....As you saw later MBP is MacBook Pro.

Two further ??'s: Do the users think that changing a Mac Mini HD to SS hard drive is audibly beneficial? What format seems best to rip CD's at this time (Probably using Amarro or Pure Music with Itunes)?

Thanks for link, Almarg

Look at some other 'wars' which have been waged over tech.
VHS handily beat BETA and now both are in museums. CDs killed 8trk and cassette while eventually being seen to be at the end of THEIR life cycle. I suspect that like Vinyl, CD will always have some fans.

USB? FireWire? Maybe....but maybe the new protocol will NOT replace them. Sounds like the new protocol is aimed directly at HT integration.
Unless you worry about the video stuff, don't worry about it now. Support for the new connector? near ZERO and likely to stay that way for a couple years. I still have trouble finding FireWire stuff. The overwhelming majority of outboard drives are USB.

The real question? Why in the heck would anyone consider RAID? Even Raid 5 is obsolete as are all the rest. You might as well be looking for a SCCI drive! Get a couple outboard drives, do regular backups and keep one off-site. OR try online storage.