Improved USB Performance on MacBook Pro

Our reviews consistently show that speed of USB drives could reach about 35MB/s in Windows environment. For some unique product like the Buffalo Turbo USB line-up, we even saw read rate going as fast as 40MB/s. On the Macs, it's another story. Speed - even for the same drive - would drop by 50% to about half that of FireWire 400. Perhaps Apple always has FireWire as an option for storage; the company never really optimized driver for USB bulk transfer. This is all changed in the latest MacBook Pro series.

The latest batch of benchmark shows USB 2.0 can hit 35MB/s during both read and write operations. However, that's the MacBook Pro, but since Apple chooses the first southbridge for the 13" MacBook, we should see the same performance gain on the consumer oriented laptop as well. That should address some concerns from users that USB isn't fast enough for DV imports.