The IT Nerd

When my MacBook Pro is set up at my desk, I use a dock to create a “1 cable solution” to charge and provide extra ports like USB ports and card reader ports. I do that because it’s a lot easier to access the dock’s ports rather than the ones on the MacBook Pro. And a dock often adds additional ports that I didn’t have before. With that background out of the way, I was intrigued by the OWC Thunderbolt Go Dock that OWC sent over for me to review. And after using it for the last few days, I can conclude that it is a dock that you should go out and buy if you want a dock that provides a load of functionality.

Let’s look at the dock:

The dock is 1.4″ x 9.5″ x 3.6″ and has some heft to it. But not so much heft that it would deter you from tossing it into a backpack to take it someplace. It’s made of aluminum which when in use gets warm to the touch. I point that out because I’ve tried docks that get outright hot to the touch which doesn’t exactly give me a good feeling as I wonder if the dock in question will die at some point because of the heat, or if it will have some other issue that would be a problem. I don’t have that feeling with this dock as clearly the heat is being managed well given that it is warm and not hot.

On one side you get a Thunderbolt 4 port that does 90W power delivery. You also get a Kensington slot to make sure that the dock doesn’t grow legs and walk away. This is the Thunderbolt 4 port that you use to connect to your laptop. In my case an M1 MacBook Pro. 90W of power delivery is a win because any laptop that requires a lot of power is going to be able to be charged quickly with this dock. Now if you look just above the Thunderbolt 4 port, there’s a hole there. That’s actually for a cable stabilizer that you can buy separately that makes sure that the Thunderbolt 4 port doesn’t disconnect by accident.

On the back you get two Thunderbolt 4 ports that do 15W of power delivery, a HDMI port with the ability to drive an 8K display at 60Hz, a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port which is handy if you have a network that supports that speed. Two USB-A 3.2 10 Gb/s ports that do 1.5A of power for bus-powered drives and device charging, and a plug for a power cable. Here’s why that power plug is cool. The power adapter that’s built into the dock. And that means no ugly power brick to deal with. It also means that you can use this dock worldwide. As in it covers 100~240V. And the plug itself is a 2 prong power cable. That’s important because if I want to travel with this dock, I simply have to figure out what cable I need for the country that I am going to and buy it off Amazon as a 2 prong power cable is very common and easy to find. Above each Thunderbolt 4 port are cable stabilizer ports.

On the front you get an  UHS-II SD card slot, a 1/8″ audio jack (it’s a combo port by the way), a USB 2.0 port and a USB-C 3.2 10Gb/s port. The other thing that I note is that there’s a fair amount of ventilation on this dock. Clearly that helps in terms of keeping it cool. Above the USB-C port is another cable stabilizer port.

I am going to flip over the dock to point out two things that I thought were cool. The first is that there are lights that tell you what’s going on from a power and Thunderbolt perspective are on the bottom. Because they’re on the bottom, it means that they will not light up a dark room. But will still be noticeable if you’re looking for them. People who work in dark rooms who don’t want the LED’s from their devices glowing all the time and bothering them rejoice!

To encourage you to RTFM, OWC has a sticker with a QR code that takes you to online versions of the manuals for the dock and a piece of software called Dock Ejector. More on the latter in a moment.

Also included in the box is a power cable and a Thunderbolt 4 cable. Both should be long enough for any use case that you might have. I should also note that the Thunderbolt 4 cable is a high quality cable that I would expect to last a long time.

So right off the bat, there’s a lot of good things here. Starting with the fact that it does 90W of power delivery to your laptop which means that you won’t be waiting for it to charge. And you have more than a healthy selection of ports to cover pretty much any use case. In terms of speed, from my testing you seem only to be limited to the speed of the devices that you connect to this dock to a point. For example, I connected an OWC Envoy SSD to do some testing with it and this is what I got:

If you compare these results to what I got when I reviewed it, having the OWC Envoy SSD connected to this dock results in roughly a 10% speed hit versus connecting it directly to my Mac. So while there is a a bit of a speed penalty, it’s a minor penalty that I am not going to lose any sleep over as you likely won’t notice it or care over the long term as this is still plenty fast.

OWC has a unique use case for this dock that allows you to use the Apple SuperDrive USB-A CD/DVD burner with this dock. Typically, docks don’t play nice with the Apple SuperDrive because of the power that they require. That usually means that you have to connect them directly to a Mac and that defeats the purpose of having a dock. To exploit this use case, you need to install a piece of software from OWC called OWC Dock Ejector. That does two things, it installs a driver that allows the SuperDive to run with this dock and consume more power, and it gives you a menu bar icon that allows you to eject discs easily. But to use this software, you need to change security modes on your Mac as per this YouTube video.

Now after watching this video, some of you might have an issue with this as lowering the security of anything is bad in 2024. So let’s go into the weeds for a bit to illustrate why this isn’t an issue.

Macs can have three possible security polices to choose from:

• Full Security: This is the default and safest boot policy, with no security downgrades permitted. Your Mac ensures that only actively signed versions of macOS can be installed. (Fun fact: On iOS, this is used to prevent downgrades to previous versions.)

• Reduced Security: Any compatible macOS version can be installed, as long as it was previously signed by Apple. You can also permit the following:
  • Allow third-party kernel extensions to run
  • Allow MDM (Mobile Device Management) to manage kernel extensions and software updates

• Permissive Security: This is the most dangerous level and is hidden for safety reasons. Any compatible operating system can be installed, such as custom macOS builds or Linux. You can also permit the following:
  • Allow third-party kernel extensions to run
  • Allow MDM (Mobile Device Management) to manage kernel extensions and software updates
  • Customize or disable System Integrity Protection

If you really want to go into the weeds on this, Apple has this document for Apple Silicon Macs, and this document for Intel Macs that can help you with that. But here’s where I’m going with this. Reduced Security which is what OWC needs you to set your Mac to in order to install Dock Ejector, or more specifically the driver that allows the SuperDrive to work with your Mac via the dock. And using Reduced Security could introduce a theoretical risk that you could get pwned by something because the security level is reduced from the default level that your Mac ships with. But the reality is that the chances of getting pwned in while you’re in this mode are somewhere between slim and none. I should also note that OWC’s driver is notarized by Apple. So it’s not some sort or rogue piece of software. And all of that is on top of the fact that anything else that runs in that mode has to be notarized by Apple. That in effect means that no rogue piece of code should be able to pwn your Mac.

Now having said all of that, I am going to go out on a limb and say that a few of you will still have a problem with this. Let me help you with that. I was able to hop onto a Zoom call with OWC and they explained two things to me:

1. The current driver that is part of Dock Ejector was was written in IOKit . Long story short, as macOS security tightened up around the kernel with every iteration of macOS, it forced OWC into a position where they had to ask users to do what I described above because this driver is a kernel driver which lives in layman’s terms in the core of the operating system.
2. There is an upcoming version of Dock Ejector that should ship by the end of the year that includes a driver that has been rewritten in DriverKit. By using DriverKit, the driver runs not in the kernel, but in the user space. Which means that you don’t have to do what I described above to install it. Or put another way, you can use this new version of Dock Ejector to get your SuperDrive working without having to do anything that affects what I will call your “perceived level of security”. That’s a total win as far as I am concerned.

Let me point out one more thing. What the above illustrates is that OWC is a top shelf company to deal with. I highlighted a concern to OWC about something that their product did. They hopped onto a Zoom call with me and gave me their side of the story. They were completely transparent and open and I walked away with the feeling that I could confidently recommend this dock to those who find this to be a non-issue, and to those who might have a concern as that concern has been fully addressed from where I sit. I’m pointing this out because I rarely get this level of response and transparency from a company whose products that I review. And I am someone who among other things reviews products for a living. So you would think that because of that, companies would want to talk to me. But that’s not the case. I’ve had situations where companies have blown me off in similar situations. OWC didn’t do that which suggests to me that if you buy one of these docks, which you should if you have a use case that this dock can address, you’re going to be taken care of over the long term.

Now with that out of the way, Dock Ejector has a handy feature where if you try to eject a volume that has a file open by an application for example, it will not only tell you that is the case, but it will tell you what application is keeping it open. Thus allowing you to take action as you will be presented with the option to force eject the volume. That’s very cool. And makes it totally worth running if you have this dock.

I will end this review by saying that I really like this dock and I highly recommend it. During my week of testing it, I found zero issues with it and it is solid. Not to mention that it is well designed and thought out to make sure that it appeals to the broadest set of users possible. And at a cost of $299.99 USD, this dock is an excellent value given what OWC has brought to the table feature wise. And if that Dock Ejector thing bothers you, when the new version ships I’ll update this review with a download link to that new version in order to address your unease. If you need a dock for your desk setup, there’s really no reason why the OWC Thunderbolt Go shouldn’t be your first choice.

UPDATE: Dock Ejector 2.0 has launched. More details here.

This entry was posted on September 30, 2024 at 9:00 am and is filed under Products with tags OWC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.