Makes no difference

Hello,

As the drives will be limited by their write speeds to probably around 30-40MB/s and read speeds of probably around 100MB/s (SATA) (real world stats, not distorted manufacture figures), it makes no difference at all what the interface is capable of.

Exactly

That's perfectly correct. In the real world, there is no practical difference in performance for current hardware. But now the Windows bleaters will have to shut up about this 'problem'.

re ac 13:05

it's just this: in the real world you will see no practical difference with current hardware before and after applying the firmware update... but you will see Windows bleaters moaning about how slow Apple hardware is _even though they have never actually so much as touched a Mac_. Now that the firmware patch is available, they don't have a reason to bleat anymore. As AC 13:05 demonstrates, they'll bleat anyway, but they're Windows bleaters, that's expected... and now they have no support for their position.

The firmware update served two purposes:

1 if, in the future, actual real-world hardware could make use of the full theoretical bandwidth available to SATA II, then the by then elderly MBPs would be able to use those drives, too. By that time there will be newer, faster, more powerful machines, and those who need speed will be using them, so the people actually using the old machines probably won't bother upgrade anyway, so the point will be moot.

2 it denies Windows bleaters easy propaganda points.

Reason (2) is by far the most important.

Shame there is no eSATA too

To attach high speed RAID arrays to edit HD video.

Even my 250quid Toshiba NB100 has dual purpose USB 2.0/eSATA ports.

@Eric Hood

PCI-X has disappeared? You better call my vendors who are sill selling cards for it, and main-boards with it....

or was the suppose to be ironic?

Hmmm...

The troll is strong in this one...

Hmmm

Maybe I've misunderstood some of the comments but I'll risk looking like an idiot.

The drives Apple sells won't be able to take advantage of this, true. But that's not true of some third-party drives.

Solid-State Drives are MUCH faster and in fact will max out a SATA-II bus without breaking a sweat. That's why the SATA-III spec is coming out ahead of schedule; they hadn't anticipated the speed increase so soon. It would be a shame to put an SSD into your Mac and only get an incremental speed increase, negating at least half the reason for buying it in the first place. (The other part being that it's not subject to the same kinds of failures that rotating discs are. OK, you also get lower power draw, so maybe it's only 1/3rd. Still, the actual fraction depends on your own priorities.) You may not be able to get the full bandwidth it's capable of, but at least you'll now get double what you got with a stock drive. Plus of course zero seek time, mechanical immunity, and lower power draw.

P.S. Thanks, El Reg, for the new icons.