By Graham K. Rogers

I had a look in one of the Apple retailers in western Bangkok this afternoon. I was hunting for Thunderbolt cables and was surprised to find that although all manner of Lightning connectors are in good supply, there was nothing for Thunderbolt. There were however several computers on display that have Thunderbolt ports, so these cables will be needed quite soon.

I get round this with an Apple Thunderbolt-Firewire adapter which works fine, although when I first used this, OS X demanded that I set it up as a network interface and opened System Preferences > Network for me.

Over near the counter of this iStudio store (The Mall, Tha Phra) was a cinema display. I thought it was an iMac initially, until I saw how thick it was. Then I looked closer, the label was for a Mac Pro and for split-second wondered if this were the new one. Of course not. Users in the USA are not able to get their hands on these yet.

Just to the right of the Cinema Display was one of the last aluminium Mac Pro models. These are not shown in the Apple Online Store for Thailand: that has the new model, with its (now) February delivery date.

These older ones are still available and in several configurations. One of these may be useful to someone who wants a powerful computer, with some limits of course.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.