by Why would you need an extra Thunderbolt cable? Lots of reasons. For example, did you know you can connect a Thunderbolt MacBook Air to an iMac with Thunderbolt, and press Command-F2 on the iMac’s keyboard, and you’re instantly using its display as an external monitor for the Air? And as more and more Thunderbolt hard drives and RAIDs hit the market, they don’t always come with a cable. StarTech offers quality cables at 0.5 meters, 1m, 2m (all $48.99), and 3m ($89.99), while Apple’s own Thunderbolt cable only comes in 0.5m ($29, www.apple.com) and 2m ($39).
Either option works fine. Apple’s cables only come in white, and with a sturdy thickness that makes them feel like they’ll last, but they don’t want to coil nicely when it’s time to store them away. StarTech’s gave us exactly the same performance when testing an external Thunderbolt drive with QuickBench, and performed beautifully when putting a Mac in Target Disk Mode or transferring files directly from one Mac to the other. The StarTech cables are black, they’re soft and flexible, but they still feel like they’ll hold up.
