[maunaloa]

But the TB drivers in the OS were Lenovo specific, and probably Lenovo model specific. TB uses PCIe lanes just like SATA, AVB, USB, DisplayPort, etc., and TB is managed by the Platform Hub Controller (except Haswell chips can reserve a few lanes, called NVMe (aka NVMHCI), that would otherwise be used for PCIe by the PHC). Haswell CPUs use NVMe for direct SSD communication (no PHC delay).... called an M.2 port. TB is essentially DP plus power. Same mini-DP connector, in fact. In that model of laptop, Lenovo wrote proprietary glue code so the PHC talks TB, just as the PHC can also talk DP or USB over PCIe lanes.

Physically, an M.2 card is mated with a SATA Express (SATAe, not eSATA) connector. The SATAe connector can also deliver regular PCIe lanes in addition to NVMe lanes. Which lanes are used depends upon the mobo design and how the card is "keyed" (slotted).

Want a faster OS and PT? Load them on an M.2 card ... so long as you have Win 8.1. IIRC NVMe was introduced in Win 8.1. IDK Apple status on NVMe.