It's easy to argue the differences between conventional PCs and Macs until one is blue in the face; that's not news. What is news, however, is that there are fundamental hardware differences between the two platforms—in this case, a PC is the only place you're going to find the next-generation USB 3.0 connection for the given moment. Apple isn't interested.

That's straight from the horse's mouth himself, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in response to an emailed question from potential Apple purchaser Tom Kruk: Why can't one order a Mac with USB 3.0?

"We don't see USB 3 taking off at this time. No support from Intel, for example," replied Jobs.

To be fair, however, Intel might very well be able to run an end-around on USB 3.0 with the company's Light Peak technology—optical cabling that can support transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps, or twice the data rate of USB 3.0. And though you wouldn't be able to actually power any devices using the link, you'd be able to daisy chain multiple external products to your system at once using a single cable.

"Optical as a technology is coming, and it's coming very fast," said Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's photonics lab, in a July interview.

The company hopes to be able to push Light Peak into the mainstream come early next year. For more information, be sure to check out Extreme Tech's look at Light Peak and PCMag.com's own look at its potential 50 Gbps successor.