Larry O’Connor of OWC Talks Tech

June 22, 2019 Gear, Technology 00:44:40 0 Comments

Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO of OWC (Other World Computing) talks tech with Host Cirina Catania—covering Tim Cook’s address to the graduating class at Stanford, his thoughts on “giving back,” the new expandable MacPro, eGPU’s and Helios, Envoy 3 SSD’s, Thunderbolt and cautionary tales about low-grade USB’s.

In This Episode

  • 0:16 – Cirina introduces CEO and founder of OWC, Larry O’Connor, who is very involved in the tech and creative world.
  • 4:42 – Larry explains why giving back is important to him and his company, OWC.
  • 11:26 – Larry excitedly talks about the new Mac Pro and the differences and superior features to its predecessors. 
  • 15:44 – Larry discusses the Xeon processor, how it works, and how it is better from other computer processors.
  • 21:04 – Larry talks more about modern graphic processing units (GPUs) and how they are more efficient and faster in computers today. 
  • 26:07 – Larry explains the difference between USB C and Thunderbolt 3. He reviews which is superior and faster.
  • 36:04 – Larry talks about the new products and technologies that excite him and the new solutions they will offer people.
  • 43:41 – Cirina and Larry encourage people to check out OWC’s website to learn more about Other World Computing and its products.

Jump to Links and Resources

Transcript

I have on the line Larry O’Connor. He is the CEO and founder of one of my favorite companies, Other World Computing. And I say that for many reasons, not just because we are so grateful to them for sponsoring the OWC RADiO, but because they are so involved on many levels in the tech world, in the creative world, and anyone who uses, produces, works with media and needs, just needs technology to back them up. So Larry, thank you from all of us. And thanks for taking the time to do this. I have a ton of questions for you today.

Cool, yeah, well, this is always fun. I enjoy being here. So thanks, again it’s a pleasure.

So I know you’ve been swamped, and you have not had a chance to even see Tim Cook’s address to the Stanford Commencement. But I wanted to just give you a few quotes and see if they resonate with you and get your reactions to them because he talked about builders. When I think of Tim Cook and the folks at Apple and companies like that, I always think about you and OWC because what you are doing is for the future. It’s for the present too, but it’s also for the future, and you’re giving back so much. So, it says here, he talks about, and a lot of the press have been covering the fact that he talked about the crisis and chaos. But what he did say, “The blind faith has been shaken a bit.” He says here, “Crisis has tampered optimism. Consequences have challenged idealism, and reality has shaken blind faith. But then it goes on to say, for good reasons, that big dreams live here, as to the genius and passion for making them real. In an age of cynicism, this place still believes that the human capacity to solve problems is boundless.” And I wanted to get your reaction to that.

The human capacity to solve problems is still boundless even in an age of cynicism. Click To Tweet

100%. I mean, progress doesn’t come without consequence. And every step forward, you know, there are new challenges that have to be solved. I know they’re referring to many things that are going on with different tech companies that have perhaps forgotten their original mission that started and are still based in Silicon Valley. But you know, ultimately there’s a lot of good, and it’s like every generation has got to deal with the consequences and perhaps the abuse of, say the temptation of, you know, misusing, I don’t know how to say it- next great leap.

Yeah, he goes on to say.

Yeah, brilliant words.

I think the speech will go into history as one of our generations’ best, to be honest with you. He brought up so many issues, but he did them so eloquently, and as such a gentleman, I appreciated it. He talked about all the mental effort that it takes to build something. He said, “What’s true then is true now. Don’t waste your time living someone else’s life. Don’t try to emulate the people who came before you to the exclusion of everything else. Contorting into a shape that doesn’t fit takes too much mental effort. Effort that should be dedicated to creating and building. You’ll waste precious time trying to rewire your every thought. And in the meantime, you won’t be fooling anybody. Graduates, the fact is, when your time comes, and it will, you’ll never be ready.” And then he goes on, in the end, to say, “and always remember, you can’t take it with you, you’re going to have to pass it on.” I was very moved by that. What do you think?

You can’t argue with those words. I mean, they’re timeless and respective of reality. 

Absolutely. And you know, I thought about you immediately, Larry, because my experience with you and the company over the last many years has been that you always live in the present for the people who have your products. You have great customer service, and I don’t want to sound like an advertisement for OWC. That’s not why I’m saying this. I’m saying this because there are people like Tim Cook, and people like you and others in the tech community who spend their whole lives building products for other people. And you always talk about giving back, talk about OWC, and giving back.

You know, it’s interesting. I go outside of OWC and talk to folks and explain some of the things that we do. And some people are astonished and presses that it came from the heart. I mean, it’s almost like common sense. You do what you can, where you can, how you can—certainly giving back. We believe that we have the ability and the understanding to help wherever it may be. Practically give back in all sorts of different ways. We create products because it makes a difference for people who need them and that it benefits them. It could be environmental, it could be anything. But it’s just fundamental that we maximize all those resources, giving people the best opportunities to make the biggest difference they can in the world. Now, we don’t make solar panels or wind turbines, but that technology enabled us to be less impactful, to be able to do more, and reduce our own footprint in the world. We extend the life of these computers because these systems should last forever. They can last for, not quite forever, but for a very long time. And it’s really cool that people can be productively doing something versus the non-friendly and certainly not efficient option of ending up disassembled or worse and got to stay in a landfill.

OWC’s goal is to maximize our resources and give people the best opportunities to make the biggest difference they can in the world. Click To Tweet

You know I love your DIY videos about how to upgrade your computers. I’ve done it before, based on what I’ve learned from OWC. I had an old laptop that lasted for years and years, and it’s still going, it’s a 2011. And I put some new drives in it with your videos, with the help of your videos. And now I’m teaching other people how to do it. It was great. But you’re right, those things can last a lot longer than, you know, planned obsolescence of the 50s doesn’t always have to come true, does it?

No it shouldn’t, and you know what, I had some conversations with people. I started looking at things a little bit differently. You look at prior generations, I talk to people in their 50s 60s 70s And there’s a large percentage of the population of 30 40 50 year-olds who have great abundance today. Our biggest issue with abundance is using it correctly. But compared to when the population was half the size it is today, the resources were endless. And if you walk into the grocery store today, in the commercial world with all the advertisements, and marketing and lobbies, and everything else going on that, this consumer society, which again, I’m not by any means saying that it is fundamentally wrong, but the way it’s marketed, there’s still the illusion that there’s an endless supply of everything. They make it seem that the resources that make this stuff, whether it be freshwater energy out the impact of air quality, everything else that we depend on, the fisheries, you name it, are boundless and that’s not quite the case. 

But now a lot of folks are in denial of what we’re facing going forward. They come from a time when there really were boundless resources. Today, we still have plenty of abundance. But if we don’t manage it right, if we don’t pay attention and take the steps today, to make sure those resources are used efficiently, tomorrow becomes a lot more difficult. But it is really hard getting through the folks who grew up during the days when you didn’t have to think about any of this stuff. And still, I go to the grocery store, these things that people talk about as being threats to the system, why are they still available in the store? Why can I still walk in and buy them like I’ve always bought them if they’re really at risk or creating risk? It’s interesting. But I give a lot of immediate look at Tim Cook’s class. The current generations get it. Honestly, I’m not too concerned for the future because folks like yourself, folks in the younger generations, I do think they’re more cognizant that this ship is turning very very quickly. We just need to make sure that time is given to those that are actually building the future and not those who no longer a building for tomorrow. I mean they deserve credit for everything that they built. Now it’s the next generation that will get things hopefully in alignment for the future to come. But every generation has this challenge and it’s up to every generation to surpass it. And we got to create new technologies, create new advancements and the bottomline is like everything else making sure that is applied in the best way possible. And the best things in the world get turned into things that they weren’t originally intended for. But we’re still better off having most of those advancements. I kind of ramble on and switch around here.

man holding grains of rice
We still have plenty of abundance in our lives. But if we don’t manage it right, or pay attention and take the steps today, tomorrow can become a lot more difficult.

I have a lot of faith in not just the new generations, but the way that the baby boomers and that generation have been evolving and the things that you’ve done for all of these generations, I really do think that we’re very lucky right now to have the things that we have. And I look around at the productions that I’m involved in and what I have that I need to use on the tech side to tell my stories, and I see a marriage there. I mean, I think we’re all in the same tribe. And I look around when we go to events like NAB or IBC, or NAM, and people gathered together because they care about the stories they’re telling. But they need companies like the other hardware companies, the software companies, you know, the tech creators, they need that. So it’s kind of exciting. But you know, I know that you were really excited about the new Mac Pro, because of quite a few reasons. And I want to make sure because you’ve got some new products too, so I don’t even know what to talk about first. What do you want to talk about first, your reaction to the new Mac Pro?

I have to look at Apple’s new hardware.

Do it!

When Apple introduced a new Mac Mini late last year it provided that glimmer of hope for the future. A new hope was born. You know they took away the Mac Mini in 2014. I mean, they had two directions, they go with that. And they could have turned it into basically an Apple TV type device with even less functionality. Or they could give us some horsepower and get people back a little bit of control over how they configure what they can do today and still have some flexibility for the future. Apple went in and integrated direction in that machine. It’s a product that’s been around for about a decade, actually over a decade now because we had it for the previous Mac Mini design as well. And the mini stack, we had, from a time perspective, we had, over a year’s supply of the product. It really slowed down after Apple abandoned the Mac Mini. And when the new one came out, all of a sudden that over a year supply was gone. And now less than two months, we actually got behind the curve on it because all of a sudden, there was a machine that people were buying and of course they have storage for it. But the main point was, I don’t think that previous mini was all that great. Certainly not to the broad base that the previous mini appealed to and Apple brought a good part of that back. That’s incredibly powerful. That can even be with extra devices even being brought up to compete with an iMac Pro which is really impressive. But getting to the great new Mac Pro. Certainly, Apple was definitely listening when they went that direction with the Mac Mini. And Apple certainly had, for the most part, lived up to high expectations with what that new Mac Pro was going to deliver. When they introduced it at WWDC, it was either going to be a great machine or going to be something that closed the door on the pro world. 

What is it, starting at about 5600? Something like that? I mean, for a pro machine, I think that’s competitive, don’t you? Do you compare it to other platforms, or not?

I don’t disagree with comparing it to other platforms. There’s certainly truth in that. The only issue that Apple kind of created for themselves, and we see how that plays out, is because we didn’t have a real pro machine in terms of what the pros needed for the last few years. Others say silver models are comparing it to the horsepower that can build Hackintosh. It pays for the dream machines you’ve used which to me, you’re competing with a world that now is gotten used to, they aren’t necessarily buying a Dell there. They may be buying something that they put together. These are the different companies to put decent server grade machines together on the PC side. So, all in all, I’m looking forward to seeing the CNET machine come out. One thing that Apple delivers is stability and overall integration and reliability that nobody else matches. I’m not saying that the price isn’t fair for the machine, but perhaps they could have- this one looks like a cheese grater. I mean, you could probably actually grate cheese with it. And it’s interesting. People either love the design or hate design. I’m relatively new to that stuff I’m big on the function in a pro machine.

Yeah, I agree. I care more about what’s inside. Let them worry about the design. I am more worried about what’s inside. What can you tell people exactly what Xeon Processors are? What is it? How is it different?

The Xeon Processor, compared to the standard, at the end of the day for your raw horsepower, depending on what you’re doing, there’s not a lot of difference. So you can have slightly less performance. I guess there’s more towing power for more complex tasks that are multi-threaded. And I had to say, take advantage of the parallel processes. The Xeon Processors are more robust, more reliable, have more air handling capability, and the bottom line is, heat’s not going to be something that’s going to bring that processor down. It’s a higher grade processor. To a certain degree, and this is not a direct analogy, because Thunderbolt is not enterprise, but it’s like comparing Thunderbolt to USB. 

USB is great for plenty of things and USB and Thunderbolt perform very similar in terms of raw performance. But Thunderbolt is head and shoulders above USB when it comes to overall reliability, stability, and user experience. And then at enterprise level, at application level, the amount of horsepower and Torque Towing Power Xeon does. I mean, that’s a server grade 24/7, mission critical level processor versus a consumer processor, which the standard i7s i9s are. But that doesn’t mean that they’re any less capable. It just means in terms of a heavy, ongoing workflow, certainly things that have more threads, they’re cooler under pressure, I guess would be one way to put it.

Well, I’m sitting here on a desk with an iMac and a big 27-inch monitor and it feels like the heat is on. So, I think about the heat that Xeon generates and it’s better with heat. That’s a good thing, right? Or am I talking about something completely different, I’m trying to understand what’s under the hood here.

The heat that the iMac radiates is mainly because of the design of the iMac. But in the case of the iMac just because of this design, you end up with heat build-up. You feel that heat venting because the temperature rises. There’s different levels of cooling going on. The MacPro definitely has superior cooling versus an iMac. Ultimately, if you’re in a room, both consume the same heat but the heat that is right in front of you at the ventilation point now will be lower. Talking about all sorts of different things. Apple already demonstrated with some of the things they showed up on stage. It’ll have more to give versus being pushed to the red line.

I love the fact that it can have up to 1.5 terabytes of RAM, which it’s going to need if it’s running all of those threads. Right?

There would definitely be ways to take advantage of that memory, which is pretty darn cool. We’re looking forward to be able to load that sucker up with OWC memory. We’re also really excited about having PCI slots, those expansion bays, and we’ve already got a significant number of product designs and solutions that would be, should be hopefully if all goes the way it’s going right now. That’d be ready when that machines ready.

That’s awesome. So talk to me.

And then we have a machine that we can expand now.

Yeah, I think we all have wanted expandable max for a long time. I’m really excited about it at these last ones. I’ve talked to you a couple of times and heard the disappointment in your voice when we were talking about the fact that some of these products couldn’t be expanded now. And now we’ve got something that can be, I think everybody’s saving up their pennies for these machines and certainly the enterprise, the corporations that work in the gaming industry, for example, are going to be jumping all over this thing. I don’t know that there’s anything comparable out there, right?

From a hardware level and reliability, there really isn’t. When you put the hardware and the software together, Apple, honestly still can’t be beat. Again, their price tag, it is what it is. But all things being said, they’ll pay for themselves.

two iMacs on a desk
You don’t need to think hard about your hardware; you want the hardware to just be there.

Yeah. Talk to me about what OWC is doing to handle the demand on 8k, 1000k. It’s getting a little ridiculous. I was looking at the Mercury Helios, the eGPU that you have and, wondering if you would talk to us again about that and tell us if there’s anything developed in that area, since we spoke last.

I don’t remember it coverted or not. But the multi GPU capability is being brought into the equation for whatever software apps, Adobe for the Creative Suite and Premiere have brought that into action. And that means that with a single GPU you might have taken just to make up a number and not remaking it up. So I think it is relatively similar to the real world, maybe took 90 seconds, even with a new modern single GPU. but when you can use both GPUs and split up that load, it’s gaining efficiencies from that Multi-GPU. So it might take 90 seconds. It can be knocked down to somewhere between 18 and 24 seconds. Huge, huge, huge, improvement and benefit. And all these other machines, it is really selected. We can connect, when something changes and a new cutter comes out, new advancement in GPUs comes into play, you can simply plug in our Helios. I didn’t get our Helios put in today, you know, that right GPU into the Helios today. A year from now, two years from now, three years from now, everything else is cranking good, but something’s changed and the world turns your video requirements, GPU requirements, pull the card out of the Helios that’s in there now, put a brand new GPU in. And now you’re up to date with GPUs because if we had upgradeable GPUs and all these systems for the last five, six years, I think there’d be a lot less. 

But you probably have substantially fewer system sales just on the basis that more than anything else. Now GPU demands have changed less, a lot more so than the processor. So, now we got the MacPro and you know, with a slot so you know, there won’t be, the limitation of what it came with is, is it inside and that’s a whole different level. But for iMac Pro and Mac Mini, MacBook Pros, all the systems, they’re no longer obsolete just because the GPU is no longer able to meet what today’s demands. Process is great, it’s just that the Codec needs a faster GPU. Just swap the GPU or add a Helios if you haven’t already done so. But I think I’m still hoping Apple gets around supporting Nvidia in addition to AMD. That would be a huge game changer for a lot of folks. That’s one of the biggest feedbacks we get, actually having proper Nvidia support back on the Mac.

And you know, it’s interesting. It’s not a vanity thing with us. Speed is not about pushing on the pedal and breaking the speed limit. It’s because we have work to do. And time is money. And efficiency is money. And where are all of us, from the largest companies on down to the one-person-shop working alone in an apartment. We are all against the wall with budgeting, and with time constraints, and with crew constraints and so, anything that makes us more efficient, and hardware you can trust. That’s the other thing because it’s just nerve racking. I had a long conversation today, with a person running a media department at a university, and they had gotten some equipment from a company that will remain nameless. Brand new drives populating everything and the drive started to go before they even started loading media on them. That’s crazy. So you know, you’re talking speed, you’re talking also security with these. You didn’t mention it but I believe that there’s some security issues that you’ve handled with some of this or are you just cognizant of it? How’s all that working with security?

All of our products? encryption security?

Yeah.

Yes, we certainly are cognizant of it and our products support it. And even the new software raid will enable full encryption capability, so definitely all over that. I still argue that the best security is controlling your data, controlling access to your data. Now as opposed to too heavy of encryption, it would basic encryption and like the little lock codes on their devices and obviously when they put that device down for six months and somebody hasn’t kept track of what the key is and suddenly whatever data was being protected by that encryption is now, it’s locked away forever. But in any event, security is important to pay for the environment, I mean there’s places for absolutely everything.

There’s so much questions going through my head cause I’m limited. I know I have limited time and I want to make sure we cover as much as possible. You tweeted out and this is just a very small thing, but I’m curious about the difference between USB-C and Thunderbolt 3, because a lot of people think it’s the same kind of connection and it’s really not. It’s completely different and the speeds are different, right?

It was surprising to me that it just got so close. It’s not surprising now but it was first brought to me that you asked somebody if they have an SSD or hard drive, that they’ll say yes to both questions and not realize that they’re two different types of technology. But the SSD hard drives, in terms of speed, certainly in a boot drive, type-C and Thunderbolt 3, Intel made a huge mistake in my humble opinion of marketing. Initially doing marketing of Thunderbolt 3 is that the USB-C does everything. And today, a lot of people, even some folks that are really huge, I mean are tough in terms of the DIT space and how they think everything goes but they’re buying from the right places cause they’re buying from us. But one of these guys came to me and said, “Hey, those 10G USB-C adapters that you got, awesome! They’re working perfect.” And they had to replace an old Thunderbolt 2, they’re trying to adapt with an Apple adapter that wasn’t working. It wasn’t our stuff but my first response is “what USB-C tinge your adapters, I don’t have a USB-C.”

No, there’s Thunderbolt 3!

So there’s Thunderbolt 3. I said, “Where’s Thunderbolt 3? We need Thunderbolt 3.” And a USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 were the same thing. And that’s a problem because you go on Amazon everybody says Thunderbolt 3 is compatible and people consider it the opposite life is Advil Ibuprofen? They’re the same things. It’s the same stuff in a different shell and no, this is not generic versus real Thunderbolt. These are two different interfaces, two entirely different levels, two entirely different interface protocols for that matter. They happen to share the same connection. But no, they’re different in that, it’s important to know I mean, USB is still USB. Thunderbolt is still that hasn’t shoulders above. USB is an interface with overhead that effectively is attached on and as a go between the processor and your device. PCIe gives that direct path. I say a Thunderbolt 3 is basically a PCIe lane or PCIe lanes is like plugging a card inside your computer, two very different things going on there.

So, the argument about speed. Some people were saying the other day on a forum I was on, that USB-C was faster than Thunderbolt 3. And I wanted to disagree but I didn’t want to create an argument but, that’s not been my experience. Am I wrong or right?

You’re 100% right. 3.1 Gen 2 is currently the fastest implementation of USB over type. That’s limited to 10GB. Thunderbolt 3 is 40GB. Now, there’s overhead in Thunderbolt 3 because part of that is incorrect. Let me be more accurate there. There’s allocation in that Thunderbolt 3 connection for display, but 12GB of that is provided for supporting display. So you have 40GB, enough to drive a 5K display, even an 8k display now. Plus you’ve got 28GB available for data.

So you have 2.8 times the bandwidth for data on Thunderbolt 3 than you have on USB-C. And USB-C has some display interface capabilities as well but that’s all sucked into 10GB so for a performance point today, there is no comparison between USB 3.1 Gen 2 over type C, and Thunderbolt 3. And then the next implementation of USB will move that up to 20GB throughput for USB. But you’re still effectively half the bandwidth of what you get on Thunderbolt. Intel is accurately saying it’s a USB-C that does everything, because with Thunderbolt, you can have a display going, all the static on, you can have the equivalent multiple USB-C devices you know, through a single Thunderbolt chain versus a single-ended USB product. But it’s the confusion of people thinking Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C are interchangeable. I mean, technically, they’re interchangeable. 

Sorry to get so wordy on this but people need to know if it’s Thunderbolt, it’s much faster, potentially. Now there are cases where just because of the product, the interface is faster. But if you’re connecting something that’s not going to take advantage of the interface, you’re not getting the benefit of speed, but what you are getting is less overhead, lower latency, and ultimately a more reliable interface that’s really plugging straight into your data and have more responsive than what you get with the USB. And some of it doesn’t matter in the real world. Other things are definitely measurable and have an impact to applications that people use. 

Even if you get the same raw bandwidth benchmark out of something for just what the throughput might be, the real world on Thunderbolt typically exceeds, even where you’re not hitting the top of the ceiling of what the interface can do. You still get a benefit with Thunderbolt and the other huge thing about Thunderbolt, everything that’s Thunderbolt is certified. It does not get the ship as a Thunderbolt product unless both Apple. Well, if you’re Apple compatible, it has to be Apple. If you’re just doing windows, it’s just Intel. But if you’re marketing for, if you’re offering your product to, on the, in the Apple world, it’s got to be both Intel and Apple certified and pass their testing, their lab testing before it can be released and shipped into the market. Plus power devices, you know, you have to be certified not just with the actual drive there’s going to be inside of those devices which is why by the way you cannot buy a Thunderbolt product that is bust powered, you know without a drive coming inside of it. 

But not only does the drive have to be certified, we want to do a new firmware revision, we’ve done some adjustments, we’ve got a next rev, we may have done a year of testing qualification before we can update and start shipping with our new just a firmware revision. You know the drive is inside one of these bust powered devices. The new driver, the new firmware has got to go into certification. These variants on the Thunderbolt side is certified and guaranteed you know, of course consistency, there’s a, it’s something that again, if a new iOS update comes out and and causes a conflict with a Thunderbolt device typically is responsibility to Intel and or the manufacturer, to make sure that you know, whatever is come up gets fixed. Because once certified, it needs to be supported. If there’s a firmware update issue, Intel’s chipset on that device ensures that everything continues to flow and operate correctly. 

Things get delayed sometimes, simply because there’s going to be a major evolution that’s important for that product to work, right? And not be a bottleneck, not be something that has to be accommodated to the detriment of other devices down the road. So a current product might come out a little bit later to make sure that it’s got all the right stuff so that again, that everybody in the entire ecosystem is all good.

USB-C, USB in general, change all the time. And we comply with certifications, we don’t just throw chipsets in a box. When you buy a USB device from us, you can count on it. They supported and are compatible and working the way it’s supposed to work. But ultimately in the world out there, a lot of USB stuff, it’s very tough to count on USB in general. Because there’s no real regulation, regulation is the wrong word but there’s no certification over it. There’s nothing out there that gives you any kind of assurance other than the brand that you trust, and the experience you have and who you’re working with. That you can count on just because it says it’s USB-C, that you’re going to get the experience with that device. 

Now on the Thunderbolt side, the actual release of a device is supposed to do for interface point of view that gets, that there’s a high level of certification. There’s heavy testing done by Intel and you pay Apple and Intel to effectively tell the world and give you approval that you can ship that configuration of your bust power solution to the world on external products that are powered by the AC. That’s where we still have a significant differentiation because even though everything about products for the most part has passed certification doesn’t mean that all base products are built equal but, the next level on top of that is what’s put inside those solutions. And how those are qualified, tested and prepared and the drives you put inside a solution, the cards you put inside a solution, the things you put in that don’t have to be certified as part of the Thunderbolt device. You know, that’s another differentiation and that, but that helps measures they helped. I mean, that’s certainly an area where we’ve also, we also do things to be heads and shoulders above the competition.

I was wondering if I can ask you a quick question. Well, while I was watching “The Dub Dub” we call it, everything is tied around Thunderbolt 3 and you know, Thunderbolt 4 has already been announced. I was wondering what that’s going to do on the back end for companies like Apple and companies like OWC that are going to have to change and bring in new products or am I wrong about that? I just had a fleeting thought about that. Like all this millions of dollars in research and the back end that goes into, putting out a product like this and then if Thunderbolt comes out, well it already has. Isn’t it been announced?

USB4 has been announced, There’s always gonna be things moving I mean, with PCIe 4 comes out and Raw 4 come out or double from 40 gigabits to 80 gigabits, but Raw 4 is compatible I mean, they were backwards and forwards compatible for the most part on these interfaces. So it’s, it’s yes, we will be moving to a new chipset but the fundamentals and design fortunately don’t change. I mean, there’s a lot from Thunderbolt 1, the Thunderbolt 2. Yeah, there’s some actually I guess, actually with each and every step I mean, it’s the certain degree it becomes a little bit easier because we have the experience and I mean, we’ve been doing this for since the dawn of Thunderbolt. Actually a funny thing I love talking about it, with Thunderbolt was called “Light Peak” before it even became Thunderbolt. It was actually one of the first demos that Intel released to the product. 

You know, we actually smile because we looked at the enclosure they put it in, you know, it wasn’t nearly, certainly wasn’t our light feet board, but it was the use when they retrofitted one of our chassis with their Light Peak.

I love it.

They were some of the very first Thunderbolt demos. At the end of the day, technology is always changing and we just have to keep rolling with the change but even we went from Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3, and it was stupid we watch companies out there promising Thunderbolt 3, we got Thunderbolt 3 or 40 gigabits for so much faster than Thunderbolt 2 and be the same Drive A with a Thunderbolt 3 interface design and well the drives didn’t get any faster you know 4 drives connected via Thunderbolt 2 is really aren’t any faster when they’re connected via Thunderbolt 3 because the spinning drives are the limit. So, when we get to Thunderbolt 4, certainly that’s the fun there we’ll be able to do more with SSD. Takes a lot of hard drives to tap out Thunderbolt 3 today. When Thunderbolt 4 is there, I mean we’re going to be more of a, even more of a flash world. And I’m excited to, I’m excited for the solutions will be the plug in externally when that technology comes to bear. It’s really incredible what technology and in every, every time it advances you know, I know people push it to the next level I mean video quality, it goes up and down the demands. I know what you’re going to capture when you’re shooting video, you’ll jump. I mean in storage for shooting I do believe by and large is kept up.

If you have time for one more question, you have a new Envoy that you’re releasing, right? That just carry out?

Yeah, we have our Envoy. No, we have our Pro EX Thunderbolt 3 which you know, that is absolute tops and performance across the board. It’s quite frankly, it’s unbelievably inexpensive for Thunderbolt. Now the next piece of that we have a USB type-C a USB-C version, you know 10 gigabits coming out. That’s actually, I shouldn’t say coming out, it’s just now the beginning of the ship. You know that product is reliable, you can trust it. It’s an OWC USB product, but it’s up to about 1000 megabytes a second actually about 980 mega-second sustained, it’ll plug into Blackmagic cameras so it’s, now that support the USB type-C which is slick for a lot of people, plugs into anything with Thunderbolt 3 or USB type-C but, extremely fast up to 2 terabytes of quiet rugged SSD that will fit the palm of your hand and on top of everything else, it’s dustproof and it’s also safer water is how to say is I guess, I don’t know the best way of putting it but it’s, you can up to a meter water for 30 minutes it’ll, it survives without any issues, so.

Wow.

That monsoon you walked into Oregon, prefer you dropped it in the fountains, some motor water where you can recover it without reasonable difficulty. It’s built to take the elements,  we’re really excited about the product. It’s amazing how much SSD, how much flash, cost has come down, and how we’ve been able to maintain performance. And I, gosh, if they have tumors that I have, I do have a minute for this and really want to go out there. Flash has come down. Now when you look at a new comparing flash, and one of the big drivers and prices for recently has been, they happen to have a quad layer flash. 3D has come along, you know, has come a long ways. And everything we built today now uses a combination of SLC and TLC. And I don’t want to get overly technical, but you know, there’s a cheap flash that I mean, there’s a next generation now adds another layer. But the consequence of the additional layer, the price is extremely aggressive, but the performance is really poor and the durability is substantially reduced. Whereas, this TLC stuff is, with the SLC at least by design, for it to maintain performance end to end on drives, you know, keep things cranking QLC typically is great for reads. But any kind of right load, they’re on, it doesn’t have a lot of right durability for you can burn this flash out a lot quicker than previous generations. The other huge thing is, after a relatively small amount of rise, typically less than 1, 2% of the drive capacity, you go from a drive that might be bursting at crazy speeds that fill powders or, you know peak rights and be creeds, to speeds that can be slower than a hard drive. Now, any SSD with rare exception is going to be faster than a hard drive for high IO operations. Because the hard drive can drop to less than a megabyte per second, when you really put a bunch of small, high volume calls, when you get the, hard drives are typically today 500, 700 IOPS versus SSD can handle, you know, 60 70 over a 100,000 depending upon the drive. So when you get that hasn’t really mattered so much until your dealing with small files, mainly, especially database driven calls. But on a, this QLC drives as well you know, they built, they’ll maintain the 100-meg’s a second. You know with IOPS, with high IOPS the a small file calls, if you’re doing video, if you’re doing an audio, if you’re doing things that are streaming your data where you need to maintain a high actual pure data rate, you know, you make, you get that in burst, and then you actually can drop into a situation where those drives are, again, half, you know, a third of the speed of the, of some of these hard drives. Yeah again, the offering from a hard drive, you don’t even notice the difference. But if you’re doing something in the professional world, you very quickly realize the you know, why that drive was cheap. And you got to really look at something you get a lift beneath the hood or, or again, whether it’s hopefully still to be seen, but whomever it may be, just make sure you know the brand that you’re buying and you know, what they’re selling. So you’re not disappointed.

boy on computer using vr headset
Progress doesn’t come without consequences. And every step forward, there are new challenges to solve.

It’s really hard. We don’t know what’s under the hood a lot of times, you know? We’re going on what we’re told on the box, and a lot of us don’t know what’s under the hood. So you do have to be careful where you get it. Larry, I thank you so much for your time. Is there anything else we didn’t cover that you might want to bring up?

This is the turn to sign this off, I’m sure there’d be 20 things I learned. I’m sure we can do this again in a couple weeks. But you know, ultimately, we’re professionals, you know, we understand professionals, and it’s you know, we just want to see that everybody has you know, whatever the solutions be, wherever they may be, whether we contribute or somebody else has already got a great solution. Just want to see creatives able to create and do so with as little effort as possible, other than the creative process because that’s, that’s actually enough. You don’t need to be thinking, don’t want to be thinking hard about your hardware, you want the hardware just to be there. You know, keep it up with you if you have not been staying ahead and yeah, we’re glad to be a part of that.

You’re the foundation for everything we do. Thank you for that. And thanks for taking the time to do this, it’s always nice talking with you. That was Larry O’Connor, the CEO and founder of Other World Computing, OWC. You can find out more, you want to tell us where people can go to learn more about your products?

Yeah, you can learn about everything in the Other World Computing universe at OWC.com.

OWC.com. And thank you so much Larry, appreciate it. We’ll talk again very soon and everybody listening, you know what I tell you, get up off your chair and go do something wonderful today. Have a great day. This is Cirina Catania, signing off.

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Checklist

  1. Understand that you’re a constant work in progress. Growth doesn’t come without consequences. Every step forward has new challenges you have to solve.
  2. Always give back to people. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture; there are a lot of ways to give back and help your community.
  3. Recognize technology grants you the ability to leave an impact on the world. One major impact is reducing your carbon footprint.
  4. Living in a very abundant world, learn how to efficiently manage and maximize your resources for future generations to come. 
  5. Instead of buying a new computer or gadget every season, extend the life of your machine by taking good care of it and upgrading your specs overtime. 
  6. Research before you buy or upgrade your computer. The brand and price don’t really matter, what matters is how efficiently the computer meets your needs.
  7. Use an external hard drive or cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, etc.) to manage your computer’s hard drive space. This is one step to ensure your computer will not slow down. This is also great for backing-up for your data.
  8. Upgrade your computer’s RAM to instantly boost its performance. This is the easiest, most accessible, and least expensive way to upgrade your computer.
  9. Upgrade your computer’s processor for speed and performance. This step in upgrading your computer is not easy and should be approached with caution. Keep in mind performance improvements like a faster processor may be negligible without sufficient RAM. 
  10. Visit OWC’s website to learn more about Other World Computing and its products.

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