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Comment by robotresearcher | Hacker News Reader

Thunderbolt is a multiplexed port. Typically, you plug it into your big screen. The external keyboard, mouse and speakers are attached to the big screen. Now your MBP charges from that cable too.

No need to tell me that your use case is slightly different. You can't please everybody.

Edit: I just discovered that the LG screen Apple is selling as a proposed match for their new laptops does NOT have legacy ports on the back, but just more USB-C ports. This seems very dumb. I don't want three $39 dongles on the back of my screen.

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Yeah so now you have to carry some sort of multi-adapter in addition to your ultra clean laptop.

> It also doesn't have a floppy drive or an IBM serial port.

So how long do you think until cameras stop requiring a SD card? How long until most peripherals go to USB-C? Any way you slice it, for the next 3-5 years people are going to need to carry around a dongle (or dongles) with their Macbook. Not the worst thing in the world, but certainly doesn't make the user's life appreciably better.

Edit: removed sarcastic response to a comment about a different use-case. Too late to delete.

Sure you can't please everybody. But you can certainly displease most of the people who buy your products.

Not saying the ports is a dealbreaker, just that it makes things more inconvenient for probably the majority of users, with little offsetting benefit.

Adapters and dongles are pretty much unavoidable these days. There are simply too many semi-modern ports still in use for each type to be included on a laptop to cover everyone's needs. It makes sense to move towards modern ports that provide more functionality and better backwards compatibility via adapters. In that sense I'd argue they do make people's lives better because it's a solution to almost every potential problem. Back in the USB2 era it was simply impossible to connect many devices to a laptop. Now we have multi-function ports that can accommodate multiple external PCI-E enclosures.

What's unavoidable about the basic requirement of a USB3 port and SD card? How about HDMI/DP at least? I take it this is a sign every Thunderbolt device is totally dead in the water now? It's not about including a port for every single type, it's about including at least SOME kind of port. It's one thing to make a leap like Thunderbolt 1 and then Thunderbolt 2 and Lightning etc. have been, then it's another to say it's all USB-C now (with no real transition!) and expect anyone to believe you when you say it's REALLY THE LAST PORT THIS TIME GUYS TRUST US. Would it really have ruined the laptop to include a single USB3 port?

I just bought their latest phone offering. If I also pick up their latest and greatest MBP, I won't be able to charge the phone with it unless I buy a dongle. I want to buy a nice pair of thunderbolt headphones, this won't work with the MBP. I don't know what the hell they're thinking. Nothing "just works".

Yeah you can. put a USB port on it.

Why waste space with an inferior port? A USB Type A port is useful for backwards-compatibility, but lacks the speed or the Thunderbolt support of USB-C.

Speed doesnt matter when I connect a mouse and a keyboard

You see, that's where you're wrong...

    Insert USB connector
    Ooops, must be wrong orientation
    Insert USB connector upside down
    Nope, that was right the first time
    Insert USB connector correctly

USB C solves this very real time-wasting problem! =)

Except that now you have to buy all new peripherals...

Or you can buy a single USB hub.

And now you have yet another thing to carry around with you. Making the laptop thinner sure made things more convenient...

Because the inferior ports are used by almost everyone? If I just want to plug my laptop into a projector it doesn't matter that I have a technically superior port that I can't use.

Imagine they added a couple USB-C ports in place of the little used Thunderbolt ports and then waited a year to see the usage frequency... I bet the HDMI and USB-A ports would be used a ton more than USB-C.

I'm in no way defending Apple's decision here - I think having no standard USB ports is stupid - but this is kind of Apple's thing.

Apple knows you'll use the standard ports if they give them to you. And that's exactly why they've taken them away. Because it forces users to actually make the switch to something (they think is) better.

I know this, but since they haven't fully committed themselves to USB-C yet so this move feels early. It's insane that you can't plug an iPhone into your brand new MacBook Pro without another trip to the store for a dongle (they aren't shipping a dongle in the MBP box).

Agreed, they could do with some more cohesiveness here.

Exactly.

MacBook laptops have headphone jacks and USB-c connections but no lightning input ports. If I wanted to use my EarPods with the lightning end on my Macbook I'm screwed. Nor can I use the headphone jack or the USB-C ports on the Macbook with my iPhone.

The lack of integration here between Apple's own products is alarming and indicates that a high level someone is asleep at the wheel.

It's worrying. Apple didn't want to drop Lightning from the iPhone, because it would mean losing control over iOS accessories. But now their iOS and Mac products have incompatible connectors, which can't be easily fixed. I mean, they could go for USB-C on the iPhone 7S, but they just told everyone to switch to Lightning headphones. And Lightning, which is essentially a glorified USB 2.0 port, is a waste of space to add to the next MacBook.

What a mess.

One potential solution: ship iPhones with a Lightning-to-USB-C cable with a connected USB-C to USB Type-A adaptor in the box.

This would please everyone, but it'd be expensive.

Because it's still the port that nearly everything uses. USB-C is great and fast but I still have to replace all my cords and chargers because my new phone has USB-C and nothing else I own does. It's the same for a laptop, if everything I have expects USB-A USB-C for all it's great features is a hassle.

When a client gives you documents on a thumb drive when they meet you at the airport 30 mins before your flight, and you sit on the flight for 6 hours with your useless laptop that can't read the contents of the drive, then maybe you'll understand why having the most popular connector currently in existence on your new laptop might be useful.

Just like I don't want a Leatherman® with just a knife blade on it, even if it is slightly larger I want my laptop to have all of the connectors I'm likely to run into over the next N years so that I don't need to carry a separate bag just for the dongles.

Waste space? My current Macbook Pro has 8 ports. The new pro mac pro has 5 ports. The non-pro mac pro has 3 ports. Surely we can fit a HDMI and a usb...

Oh wait, they had to make this thing thinner. Because thinner is more useful, right.

But now you get the silly extra-low-travel keyboard as well, like typing on a table.

All these choices, they don't make any sense.

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