New Macbook Pro can't walk and chew gum at same time (watch wifi and USB = fail) | Hacker News Reader

New Macbook Pro can't walk and chew gum at same time (watch wifi and USB = fail)

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64 pointsjhack21 comments

I wonder if this is caused by running everything over the same bus.

Graphics is internally PCIe, which is what thunderbolt basically is, which is also routed through USB-C ports. And WiFi is probably an internal USB device. They probably don't have a separate controller for each port, so the throughput is limited. I wouldn't think video capture saturates the bandwidth already, but it probably messes with the timing enough that the WiFi driver gets confused.

If it is really that, and not a mere software problem, then it should also show up when e.g. mixing external monitors and USB devices, or in other combinations. If that is the case, this would be really nasty.

Edit: someone on twitter says it is probably RF interference https://twitter.com/jcenters/status/794273083469139968

White paper:

USB 3.0* Radio Frequency Interference Impact on 2.4 GHz Wireless Devices (Intel, April 2012)

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...

Just looking at all those dongles he has to use makes me sad. Apple makes wonderful hardware but what a hassle to not have an HDMI cable and regular USB.

So Apple expects me to use a dongle for HDMI, a dongle for USB and a dongle for ethernet. A bridge too far.

No, Apple feels it's pretty crappy you have to use dongles for everything, but it's crappier if you still have display-only ports like HDMI six years in the future.

This USB-C conversion might be world-ending for people who haven't lived through things like this before. There was a time when notebooks had PS/2 keyboard ports, when they had parallel ports for printing. These have all died, but the conversion was always awkward and painful.

Have a USB computer but a parallel printer? Converter. Have a VGA display but a DVI notebook? Converter. Have an HDMI port but a DVI display? Converter.

The future Apple's trying to force here is where Thunderbolt and USB are ubiquitous and these converters fade into history.

Have a VGA display but a DVI notebook? Converter. Have an HDMI port but a DVI display? Converter.

Have an HDMI port, but the monitor the client gives you has only a VGA port? In 2016? I didn't look up the model number, but there's no way that monitor is more than a few years old. And it's not some cheap no-name; it's a Dell or HP (not at the office to check, but it's name brand). I didn't know such things were still made. The last time I recall seeing a VGA-only monitor was like twelve years ago.

My point, and a rebuttal to the sibling comment, is that offering legacy ports just drags this out further. If you have to use a dongle, you'll for damned sure make sure the next monitor you buy doesn't require a dongle.

Whereas maintaining a legacy USB port, as requested by the sibling, means I don't have to put USB-C ports on my device because everyone still has a legacy USB port, and I can save a few bucks. And thus here we are in 2016 with me looking at the back of a monitor while thinking, "VGA can't be the only port on this thing".

> If you have to use a dongle, you'll for damned sure make sure the next monitor you buy doesn't require a dongle.

I have to use a dongle. I don't care if the next one requires it or not, because I already have it.

When I bought the original Mac Mini, it had DVI output at a time most people still had VGA monitors. A DVI-to-VGA adapter was provided in the box.

More recently, a new Sapphire GPU came with DVI and DisplayPort outputs. An HDMI adapter was provided in the box.

There's nothing wrong with USB-C. But right now most of us do not have anything compatible with it. My monitors and TV are all DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort. Every peripheral is USB-A. Adaptors for the common cases supported by their previous year's products (USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet) could have been provided by default to make for a much easier time. It's not like they didn't have precedent for making this just work for their customers in the past.

Have a USB computer but a parallel printer? Converter. Have a VGA display but a DVI notebook? Converter. Have an HDMI port but a DVI display? Converter.

My monitor and TV (Dell UltraSharp and Samsung respectively) each have a bazillion types of inputs. Except USB C, of course. The laptop's only job is to have one standard one. It's going to be a while before USB C to X cables are 'standard.'

Parallel printer? That, on the other hand, is relegated to the dustbins of history long ago.

Apple's defenders are painting skeptics as a bunch of Luddites. I can see the argument for USB-C, fine. Two items will be here forever, though: tiny, innocently thin card readers for people who do photos+video, ethernet port for just about anyone who sits in an office. I don't know about you, but I'm sitting at the same desk all day, I choose my Ethernet connection over the wifi one all day, every day. (Well, M-F).

I am old. I remember PS/2 ports, printer ports, 5 1/4" drives, etc. I remember people complaining when the iMac didn't have a floppy. Trust me, this is different. I use HDMI and the common form factor USB every day. It's hard to know what is bad about them. Yes some guy on hacker news can tell you something bad about them, but to the average consumer they are great.

It is true that Apple has forced users to accept some upgrades that were good in the long run. But this is Apple forcing users to give up on many connector types that are extremely common and useful without a compelling benefit.

Proprietary ports clearly benefit the customer.

Yes, exactly. Just plug USB-C into a hub that has the connectors that are popular this year. When new ports come out, replace the $20-40 hub.

What about having at least one classical usb port?

What about giving at least one dongle when buying a machine at 1700$?

Whoosh.

I can't believe the didn't _at least_ include a few USB-C to USB-A adapters. They're probably a couple cents each to produce.

I worked with one of the inventors of WiFi and he always cursed Apple's implementation of the spec and how he could get WiFi to fail in specific circumstances with his mac, when other devices where fine.

Of the 3 macs I've owned, I've always had WiFi issues - more so than my other machines.

This 'might' be related to whatever their underlying implementation is - sorry I don't know more details.

The Broadcom chips they use break if they receive any WMM (WiFi QoS) packets. I had to blacklist my MacBook Pro from receiving WMM-tagged packets on my router just to get its WiFi working. (Every other device I own works fine with WMM.)

My first uneducated guess is RF interference. Thinking back to even my first iBook my mac laptops always seemed to have worse wifi reception than my windows laptops.

I'd add WiFi to the list of wireless technologies Apple is too incompetent to implement properly in their laptops along with RF and Bluetooth, but it was already on the list for a few years now. These are the kinds of problems I wouldn't expect a cheap netbook to have, let alone an extremely overpriced, pseudo-pro Apple product. It's finally obvious to everyone (I hope) that Apple's engineering and product design has fallen to shit. I'm sure they will continue to make profits selling their current mediocre and future garbage products, but it's clear to me that Apple always was and probably forever will be Steve Jobs' company. It might survive without him, but it will probably never thrive again, just like it never managed to thrive without him in the past. They had a great ten year run in the laptop field and for that I'm grateful to Apple, but it's clearly been time to move on for a few years now (just based on the declining quality of their software, software which they were never good at writing outside of OS X up to a few years ago). RIP.

It looks to be a driver problem to me...

Shitty third party USB-C adapter throwing off all kinds of RF.

Use AirPlay to your Apple TV. I can do that with my 2013 MBP. The power is the only port I use. I use wifi and Bluetooth instead of ports, dongles & cables, I'm not unusual. Get over it - there are more important problems.

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