In many ways, the biggest change -- one that most users may not need or use right away -- is the adoption of for connecting peripherals. Think of Thunderbolt as a super-high-speed data transfer technology that most people haven't yet figured out how they'd use.

Thunderbolt is sort of like USB on steroids (it's as much as 20 times faster than USB 2.0, 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and more than twice as fast as ) because it delivers 10Gbit/sec throughput in both directions. That's serious data transfer speed. And on top of that, you can daisy chain several peripherals to the same port, meaning you can plug in a RAID array, a digital video camera and a high-resolution display and use them all at the same time without losing any throughput. If you're working with high-definition video in the field, this is a big deal.

Note: Thunderbolt is based on DisplayPort technology, meaning an external screen that uses the Mini DisplayPort can plug right in. But you'll need an adapter for other displays.

I like the way the in describing Thunderbolt: "A Thunderbolt port's 10Gbps data transfer rates are enough to dump an entire DVD's worth of data in seconds, or back up a full terabyte drive in a few minutes ... AND drive an LCD display at high resolution at the same time, while you're chatting on a Thunderbolt high-definition Web cam at 1080 resolution -- and still have bandwidth to spare on just ONE of it's DUAL-CHANNEL capabilities. Mind-blowing to say the least."