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.
Friday December 12, 2025 10:56 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Macworld's Filipe Espósito today revealed a handful of features that Apple is allegedly planning for iOS 26.4, iOS 27, and even iOS 28.
The report said the features are referenced within the code for a leaked internal build of iOS 26 that is not meant to be seen by the public. However, it appears that Espósito and/or his sources managed to gain access to it, providing us with a sneak peek...
Monday December 15, 2025 3:05 pm PST by Juli Clover
Software from an iPhone prototype running an early build of iOS 26 leaked last week, giving us a glimpse at future Apple devices and iOS features. We recapped device codenames in our prior article, and now we have a list of some of the most notable feature flags that were found in the software code.
In some cases, it's obvious what the feature flags are referring to, while some are more...
Monday December 15, 2025 2:05 pm PST by Juli Clover
Last week, details about unreleased Apple devices and future iOS features were shared by Macworld. This week, we learned where the information came from, plus we have more findings from the leak.
As it turns out, an Apple prototype device running an early build of iOS 26 was sold, and the person who bought it shared the software. The OS has a version number of 23A5234w, and the first...
The first foldable iPhone will feature a series of design and hardware firsts for Apple, according to details shared by the Weibo leaker known as Digital Chat Station.
According to a new post, via machine translation, Apple is developing what the leaker describes as a "wide foldable" device, a term used to refer to a horizontally oriented, book-style foldable with a large internal display....
Monday December 15, 2025 4:23 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple is testing iOS 26.3, the next version of iOS 26 that will launch around January. Since iOS 26.3's testing is happening over the holidays, it is a smaller update with fewer features than we've seen in prior betas.
We've rounded up what's new so far, and we'll add to our list with subsequent betas if we come across any other features.
Transfer to Android
Apple is making it simpler...
Friday December 12, 2025 10:10 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released iOS 26.2, the second major update to the iOS 26 operating system that came out in September, iOS 26.2 comes a little over a month after iOS 26.1 launched. iOS 26.2 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 >...
Thursday December 11, 2025 8:49 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple seeded the second iOS 26.2 Release Candidate to developers earlier this week, meaning the update will be released to the general public very soon.
Apple confirmed iOS 26.2 would be released in December, but it did not provide a specific date. We expect the update to be released by early next week.
iOS 26.2 includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, such as a new...
Monday December 15, 2025 7:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple released the AirPods Max on December 15, 2020, meaning the over-ear headphones launched five years ago today. While the AirPods Max were updated with a USB-C port and new color options last year, followed by support for lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio this year, the headphones lack some of the features that have been introduced for newer generations of the regular AirPods and the ...
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.
