Apple is getting ready to announce a new "high-speed connection technology" soon, according to Cnet. Although its source didn't get into specifics, the site notes that the timing coincides with the time frame Intel laid out for the first Light Peak products to reach the market, and speculates that the new connector may come as part of an upcoming MacBook Pro refresh which is rumored to happen sometime in late February.
The Light Peak interconnect was initially supposed to use optical technology but has since moved back to copper cabling due to "practical realities" – basically price concerns. It would still be able to hit its target of 10Gbps speeds, though, which is double the theoretical maximum of USB 3.0 and more than adequate for the majority of user needs today.
Apple has been long rumored to be one of the main backers of Light Peak – alongside Sony – so its adoption is believed to be more a question of when rather than if. In any case, there's still no solid indication that we'll see the new connector on the rumored MacBook refresh, but when it happens Apple will supposedly use a different name for it.
Intel has been touting Light Peak as the next big thing in connector technology and a way to reduce the proliferation of ports on modern computers, by using a single interface to handle everything from network connectivity to data transfers and transmitting high definition video to external displays.