I feel like Apple is betting the farm on Thunderbolt being the future, and I don't see that future materializing. How many Thunderbolt peripherals have y'all even seen in real life that weren't the Apple external monitor or a mini displayport display adapter? I feel like this is even less prevalent than Firewire was back in the 1394 glory days (it was/still is an excellent bus for running audio, due in no small part to the fact that it's not USB; separate controller, doesn't crash if your USB bus gets wonky, etc.).
They're not "betting the farm" on it: they're locked into Thunderbolt because Intel sold them an end-to-end platform, from CPU to chipset to everything in between. That "everything in between" includes Thunderbolt; it's the reason you haven't seen the latest USB on a Mac in forever. Even in spite of a dearth of options, Thunderbolt was the only way to go on a Mac because Intel said so.
"it's the reason you haven't seen the latest USB on a Mac in forever."
Do I misunderstand what you mean by this? USB3 is rolling out on Macs and available on most of them today. (I think the Mac Pro is the only one currently lacking it.)
Right, you can get it on the very latest Macs, most of which are just rolling out now and none of which have been out for more than a year. USB 3 is old at this point; most manufacturers started shipping devices and computers with USB 3 ports in 2009. But because Intel didn't adopt USB3 until their Panther Point reference platform in 2012, Apple really didn't have much of a choice.
(Intel really, really wanted people to use Thunderbolt, even though there weren't any Thunderbolt devices available.)
It took four years from when the standard was finalized for Macs to finally start shipping with USB 3.
