The Thunderbolt Display, which was originally at the same time as the new MacBook Air, should be most attractive to owners of , bringing some seriously fast I/O connections to Apple's smallest laptop. Never before has the MacBook Air been able to use gigabit ethernet or FireWire 800 external devices. Before the Thunderbolt Display, connecting a MacBook Air to a wired LAN required an optional USB-to-ethernet connector, and external drives were limited to pokey USB 2.0 transfer speeds.

The 2011 MacBook Air uses the Eagle Peak Thunderbolt controller, which offers two 10Gbps bidirectional Thunderbolt channels and supports one DisplayPort connection.

To test the new features, we connected the MagSafe and Thunderbolt connectors from the Thunderbolt Display to a new 13-inch MacBook Air. We connected to our LAN using the display's ethernet connector. The connection showed right up in our Network system preferences.

(Image Caption: The ethernet connection on the Thunderbolt Display appears in the Network system preference as Display Ethernet.)