Yep, you’ve got it – with Big Sur, your Thunderbolt 3 Mac is now (essentially) a “Thunderbolt 4” computer! Consider it an early Christmas gift from Apple. With this week’s release of macOS 11.1, all Thunderbolt 3 Macs now support hubbing. However, we have some big news to report… We can verify that pre-Thunderbolt 3 Mac models do not support hubbing, and additional ports on these Macs will operate only for USB 3 and up to 10Gb/s (USB 3.1g2 aka USB 3.2). One of the most exciting advances in Thunderbolt technology is that the 4th generation allows for “hubbing” – connecting up to four Thunderbolt devices through one port. However, the operative word here is “work.” Pre-Thunderbolt 3 devices will still need to use Apple’s Thunderbolt 2 Thunderbolt 3 adapter, so don’t expect the external drive you have connected to your 2013 MacBookPro to suddenly attain speeds of 40Gb/s from its 20Gb/s Thunderbolt 2 port. Regardless of what Mac you are using, if it can run macOS 11, it will support all generations of Thunderbolt devices. After extensive testing, we can now verify that all of your Thunderbolt devices will work with Big Sur.
