Now that Apple’s new 12-inch MacBook is out, the mad dash is on among peripheral makers to create fancy new accessories to match the fanless, USB Type-C-loaded laptop.
On Tuesday, LaCie announced an update to its Porsche Design Mobile Drive line. The Seagate-owned storage maker announced the portable hard drives will soon come with a USB Type-C connector. The new drives will be available in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities and are expected to go on sale before the end of June.
One thing the drives won’t have is USB 3.1—the blazing fast, next-gen version of USB that promises up to 10Gbps data transfer speeds. Instead, the drives will come with USB 3.0 interfaces and maximum transfer speeds of 100MB/s.
LaCie did not announce pricing for its new mobile drives, but current models sell for $70-$140 depending on capacity. The new LaCie drives with the Type C connector will also come with an adapter cable to make them compatible with older laptops running standard USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports.
The story behind the story: We were first expecting to see the USB Type C/3.1 revolution by the end of 2014, but that didn’t happen. Early 2015, however, has been a good period for Type C. At CES in January, the frustration-free reversible USB connector was a huge hit and MSI was showing off a gaming board loaded with USB 3.1 and a Type-C connector. Then in February, Asus released a USB 3.1 PCIE card with a Type-C connection. Now that Apple has also gone Type-C it probably won’t be long before we see more laptops rocking the same connector.
Author: Ian Paul, Contributor
Ian is an independent writer based in Israel who has never met a tech subject he didn't like. He primarily covers Windows, PC and gaming hardware, video and music streaming services, social networks, and browsers. When he's not covering the news he's working on how-to tips for PC users, or tuning his eGPU setup.