One thing about Thunderbolt, it's actually Intel's baby rather than Apple's, Apple was just the first to make it the sole interface to a piece of hardware (Thunderbolt display). I guess the reason we don't see music hardware folks jumping right on Thunderbolt is that for the most part there is nothing about streaming audio that would, in theory be improved by it. Everything from USB 2 on up should be able to handle streaming audio well enough. God knows my firewire audio interface does, the Ultranova works beautifully over USB, so assuming competent developers, there should be no reason the Virus can't utilize USB properly.
Also since Thunderbolt has not had a real reason to be needed on the PC yet, not all PCs have it. So, as an interface choice, a hardware manufacturer has to look at a market where the PC still has 90-ish percent of the consumer market compared to Macs (admittedly probably different numbers if we limited that to the consumer music production population but that's tougher to measure).
I looked briefly at Apollo interfaces (opted out of that one because of the high cost of the hardware itself and apparently to really utilize them you have to really modify your workflow to do things the UAD way using their methods and plugins), but decided not to because Thunderbolt was really only supported on Mac and I couldn't stomach paying so much for an audio interface that tethers me to any platform, particularly Apple with their track record.
What would be nice is if the Virus and any hardware synth that offers integration could find it in their heart to make the interface to computer a swappable option card. That of course has a dramatic effect on the cost to develop, test and produce, which would ultimately be passed on to the consumer whether they needed the option of more than one connectivity type, but it would sure provide some peace of mind (even if the placebo effect) on purchase of a hardware investment like a $3,000 synth.
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