Apple had much more involvement with this tech besides being an early adopter. You can bet it was Apple that pushed integrating it with mini display port once it was clear the first iteration would be over copper. In fact, Intel states there was Apple technical collaboration on their own page.

This sounds really promising for the possibility of a new MBP in my home sometime next year. I'd really love to see two Thunderbolt connectors able to drive two external displays (one each is fine), when docked I can actually use two identical screens.

It's just too bad the whole home won't be wired for Thunderbolt. With every system sporting a base SSD, this would make for some truly amazing NAS devices.