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Comment by chrisabrams | Hacker News Reader

Steve and the unified vision is gone.

While on winter holidays my fiance pointed out to me:

- She just got a new Macbook Pro from her new job, which has only USB C ports

- She just got a new iPhone 7 from her new job, which is only a Lightning port

She cannot connect her phone to her computer to charge without a dongle. EDIT: a Lightning to USB C cable does exist now. That is still equivalent to a dongle in my opinion, as the consumer still has to buy it and it is a cable that won't be used for anything else.

She has to carry two sets of headphones, one for her computer, and one for her phone.

The unified vision at Apple is gone.

View on HN

Unified vision was nice. What interested me first in the Apple ecosystem was its use by high-end pros. Photographers, creatives, filmmakers. Then they announced MacOS X, built upon NeXT/BSD, and the mac pro products.

Now Microsoft has dedicated products for high-end creatives (Surface studio won't sell but still shows interest in pros), Linux Bash shell in windows 10. Meanwhile Apple wants pros to use a 9" tablet instead of a laptop.

> Now Microsoft has dedicated products for high-end creatives (Surface studio won't sell but still shows interest in pros)

Every single professional who uses the Surface Studio practically has an orgasm.

If Microsoft keeps support up for it long enough that the CAD program developers are willing to take the plunge on the new features and integrate them into their programs, it will completely displace Apple with the high-end professionals.

The question is whether Microsoft will keep pumping money into the line long enough to get the application developers on board. They've been burned several times.

> They've been burned several times.

I see a fundamental shift has taken place at Microsoft under Satya's direction. Open-sourcing the core technologies that act as the foundation for Microsoft is a huge deal. Surface Studio uncompromisingly for pros (a big problem for MS hardware in the past is that they try to hedge their bets- try to jam stuff in there for everyone).

When you think about how quickly this has changed, it looks like Satya has a clear vision for MS, and pros are part of that vision. When's the last time you've seen a 'visionary' Microsoft (that didn't involved delusional thinking)?

That's what I thought too about Satya's tenure. I had heard great things about win10, and then I saw the ads and freemium paywall ware that lines the standard install of win10.

Hard pass.

+1 and I agree and I personally run linux on my desktop, but I will say that if you buy your laptop from microsoft directly at least they do a good job of making sure that the only crapware pre-loaded is from microsoft, even if otherwise the same model laptop you'd get from any other store that comes with crapware from anyone willing to pay a few bucks. (or few cents?, what does a pre-install from the big vendors go for these days?)

Welcome to what Windows has been on non-pro consumer hardware for decades.

The difference is now Microsoft is providing the crapware, the crapware isn't malicious (like say, Superfish was), and it's not that difficult for power users to disable it or tuck it out of the way.

I love Windows 10 (at least, as much as my love for Windows goes), yes MS made some moves towards treating it a bit like Google and Apple treat their mobile OSes, but not horridly large steps.

> I see a fundamental shift has taken place at Microsoft under Satya's direction.

I haven't seen it yet, but it's still early days.

You cite some examples, examples that are real, eye-catching, but for me not substantive. The fundamental shift I'm looking for is a true shift in customer focus. Microsoft's big customer is enterprise I/T, who is not the end user for much of the tech. Azure seems designed to help State Farm (to pick an F500 at random) add some of that new cloud stuff to their Windows ecosystem. A good business decision, but in the age of AWS and even google services, it's simply incremental.

I could be unfair in saying "not substantive" to the open source initiatives, simply because it's such a huge philosophical shift (to a small part of their business, at least so far). Otherwise, I'm not seeing it yet.

But it takes a very long time to steer a big ship like Microsoft or Apple.

The surface studio isn't entirely uncompromising - it comes with a really unimpressive GPU for the type of monitor it's pushing and the type of people it's marketed to. On the plus side, egpus should work with it.

I do agree though the Surface Studio gets my interest in a way that iMacs haven't since the iMac G4. It seemed like after the G4 they just kept phoning it in with yet another pizza box iMac.

I would say the initial release of the Intel iMac is the last time an Apple desktop release excited me. Seeing those impossibly thin aluminum bezels with huge purple nebulae onscreen really felt a little bit like the future.

I think it has huge potential outside of CAD. Anything that deals with complex flows of data/material would benefit from such an interface.

If 2017 turns out to be the year the VR starts to hit the main stream, which it could be, it will be interesting to see what Apple's response will be.

I highly doubt it will be. And this is coming from an owner of a GTX 1080 and HTC Vive. There are some really awesome games and experiences, but there is nothing that I really want to keep going back to. No Rocket League or Minecraft (Well, there is vivecraft, but minecraft in VR just isn't that much more appealing to me than the vanilla game.) PSVR might get some stuff but for now it seems like most large companies are just putting their toes in the water by giving out small tech demos.

VR needs a couple of things, and they aren't going to happen in less than a year. First and most importantly, cheaper and better hardware. Daydream is nice, but at most it is good for 360 video and some cheap games. Get some head tracking in there somehow and then it becomes interesting. Also, it needs something like the oculus touch controllers or vive controllers so you can actually use your hands for things.

Secondly, an actual killer app. Some kind of game that only works in VR. Something that you want to keep coming back to.

Lastly - simplicity. Daydream is simple but too limited. The vive has all the features but setting up lighthouses is a pain unless you can permanently mount them. Also being tethered to your computer sucks (A solution for that is on the way, but it will only add to the cost.) Headsets are still bulky and uncomfortable to wear for long periods.

My point I guess is that Apple's typical timing with things would put them entering the market in 2018 at the earliest. This is like the early Windows Phone/PalmOS days before the iPhone (But I doubt Apple will be the one releasing the "iPhone" of VR.)

Tech Journalist Robert Scoble seems to be super certain that the next iPhone this year will be AR/VR and blow everyone away, he apparently has credible sources. Personally i don't buy it at all and can't wait for everyone to tell him "i told you so"

Maybe. Of course killer apps don't have to spring full formed as launch titles. Visicalc arrived two and a half years after the launch of the Apple II. I don't think we can count out people coming up with something remarkable in 2017 given that there are platforms from Facebook, Google, Steam and Sony.

As for myself, even without a killer app, VR has gotten me saving memories as photo spheres, in addition to pictures and videos.

VR has a massive hurdle to get over. You can't expect people to drop $600 on a headset _and_ (at least) $1k on a machine that can run it.

Costs will come down, but 2017 won't be the year. I expect VR to grow, but only in the gaming market.

I know I'm probably a minority of HN users and other tech enthusiasts on this issue, but I'm totally uninterested in VR. I've tried it a few times and my general impression was, "Neat." That's a far cry from an impression like, "OMG this is the most amazing thing ever!" which is what I was kind of expecting to think.

I'm more interested in AR, personally. But it's hard for me to articulate why exactly because honestly I don't have much experience with it yet. It just seems more interesting to me. I'd really like to get a Hololens to start experimenting with, but can't really justify the cost of it right now.

(disclosure: I work for Microsoft, which makes Hololens. Not meaning to promote it, these are my personal opinions)

You're not alone.

I work at an AEC firm. We give money and some privilege to 2-3 people at work to experiment with VR. It's interesting to some degree but, beyond being a marketing tool, I don't really see it being useful as a professional tool any time soon.

These things are hard to call though, like anything in future tech (or the future in general). They consider it revolutionary new tech whereas I'm on the side of "shiny new toy" and "wait and see" but the powers that be have no issue spending the money on it while I see some of core competencies and actual training for the future being ignored (transitions to BIM and training in better 3D modeling programs).

Not my company or money though.

I want to buy a VR headset but I currently cannot justify it due to the cost+use of the device.

I, and I think enough other people, already have a $1k+ PC for the huge amount of non-VR games it gives access to.

But the big catch for me is that there just doesn't seem to be enough content that will work with and (more importantly) be enhanced by a VR experience. I simply don't have the cash-on-hand to justify spending ~$800 to make Elite Dangerous slightly more immersive. But if a good VR headset was more in the $200 range (like the very similarly limited hotas I bought for the same reason) I would probably jump.

It does seem like this year may bring the cost of the devices down low enough that more devs and more audience can get on board and bring it in to the main stream because it is very nearly there already.

Not according to Microsoft, VR is going to be a big push for them this year. Granted a lot can go wrong, but they are addressing all the points you just listed:

* Headset Pricing: Major OEMs will be releasing headsets starting at $300 [0]

* Lowering system specs for VR [1]

* Not just a gaming focus: Windows 10 creators update puts an emphasis on 3D and Mixed-Reality, including a 'holographic' interface [2]

[0] http://1reddrop.com/2017/01/06/microsoft-announces-299-windo... [1] http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2016/12/08/microsoft-unveils... [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/upcoming-features

I have actually been able to play around with a Hololens (AR vs VR but close enough) and it is extremely cool.

It honestly feels like only minor improvements in size/speed/usability will make it massively useful in normal life very soon.

I think Microsoft is 2-3 years too early (or maybe that's the plan?). The technology just isn't there yet. Headesets need to double the resolutions on the displays and increase the frame rate by 50%.

Agreed, I find the current resolution on VR headsets a huge letdown. Actually made worse by the fact that everything else I have these days is retina, 4K, etc so at a very high resolution.

VR could find use in other market segments that existing technologies are insufficient for at a scale that make it affordable.

Take theaters for example. They have been looking for a market for years but since people have screens and streaming at home they don't tend to go as much. However they could find a new life by purchasing VR headsets in bulk and selling livestreams of plays/musicals/operas, and possibly sports games as well. These will always be experiences better seen live, but VR would be a significant step above television.

That way someone could enjoy VR at a very low cost, and possibly spur them to buy a headset themselves, when the price is right.

You don't need a $1K machine for VR. Example:

GTX 970 = $155: http://ebay.com/itm/371833128329

GTX 980 = $235: http://ebay.com/itm/291993305929

Gaming PC with GTX 970 = $540: http://ebay.com/itm/112250177638

Gaming PC with GTX 1070 = $690: http://ebay.com/itm/222369412011

I think ebay is the last place I'd buy pretty much anything. Especially when the price discrepancy between those listings and fully legit stores is so different. Just a personal observation.

Buy from the sellers with good reviews and lots of reviews, and you will be fine. And if you pay with PayPal, eBay guarantees to return your money if something goes wrong.

Enter Google Daydream. Only need $650 phone (much cheaper ones were just announced that support it I think) and a $80 headset. And most importantly they are building it correctly so that many/most high end VR games will also run on Daydream.

I have a computer that can run vr (i7-6700k + 1080) enough disposable income to afford a headset and I'm still not interested. There just hasn't been anything released for vr that doesn't seem like a gimmick.

Have you played one yet? I thought the same thing, argued with people, etc. Played at a friends house and ordered one the next day.

VR in 2017 will be 90+% about gaming, and Apple has never really cared about gaming. I doubt they'll start caring now all of a sudden.

They make billions off gaming...

Fair enough. They've never cared about the sort of gaming commonly done on the sort of computers that will be able to do VR in 2017. When we get to the point where the iPad/iPhone can do high quality VR then I'll re-evaluate my statement.

VR is all about immersive experiences. Apple always cares about experiences.

And my thoughts are that Apple cannot bring the same Stevie vision of simplicity and use to VR, which is why they will never care about it.

I'm not sure about that. It seems to me that VR is ripe for a high-end offering that is vertically integrated and quality assured. The VR landscape is already a bit fragmented and it probably won't get less so.

They'll have to stick better graphics cards in their computers, but that's doable.

Probably their biggest challenge would be coming up with a headset that is "Apple-y", given that the design issues involved in creating them right now still create something fundamentally klunky. (VR is starting to take off not because anyone's figured out how to make it not klunky, but because it transitioned from intolerably klunky to tolerably klunky. Along with the latency improvements.)

I'm not saying they're going to do it. But they could.

How? Everyone suddenly realizes they have been closet gamer for many years and comes out for VR?

It will be a year when VR hype scales back. Not the first time and not the last one.

Yea. Google is taking amazing steps to kill it in this market with Daydream. I have it and for the price (diff vs non high end phone) and $80 headset is it perfect.

What's hitting the market? Didn't hear anything.

Windows 10 Creators Update along with a slew of headsets from major PC vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) starting at $300.

The problem I see is that VR would be great with dual 2K screens and 120+hz , but we don't have the GPUS to push that many pixels today (in any remotely affordable way...maybe quad TitanX would work).

Cheaper, lower-quality VR headsets will leave a bad impression on consumers. I don't think that's the direction we should be going. I'd rather see HTC and Oculus release higher-res, faster refresh rate HMDs, but I doubt they'd do that with no single GPU able to run those today.

When you get to scale, you can start doing things like manufacturing displays with higher PPI near where the lenses are centered. That way you have the same number of total physical pixels but a higher resolution contributing to the image.

You can further reduce the computational costs by using foveated rendering(http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/johnsny/papers...). You can use low-latency eye-tracking to spend more time rendering the portions of the frame that the user is actively looking at.

I think the combo of falling gpu prices, and clever hardware design means we will probably see headsets with effectively higher and higher resolutions sooner rather than later.

That's going to be difficult given how often and how fast eyes move and how sensitive they are.

You'd need a new lens design for that really. Right now the lenses that are used aren't really good if you start looking to the side too much. When I get going in VR I generally just look with my head instead of my eyes to avoid those lens issues like chromatic aboration.

a slew of headsets from major PC vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) starting at $300.

Wonder if that will help or hinder VR. Personally I think the Vive is just about the bare minimum needed for VR to barely be acceptable. If peoples first impression of VR is something less than that I doubt they'll be impressed enough to actually use VR for more than 15 minutes over the first 2 weeks after purchase.

Surface Studio is actually selling at 2x what Microsoft anticipated it selling for, so it seems to be a bigger market than one would think.

The quality of the current line of surfaces is pretty good. A few friends who have needed a replacement computer/laptop but need to use Windows for work have opted for the Surface. Gives them nice portability and they don't really need an iPad (or can't afford a laptop and iPad).

> Linux Bash shell in windows 10

Despite their "this is all about the developer" statements, making Windows Subsystem for Linux unable to co-exist with VMware and other virtualization tools was a deal-breaker for me.

WSL PM here. No virtualization software is required to use Bash on Windows.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subs...

Can you expand on this? Are you saying I can't run VMware while Windows Subsystem for Linux is running? I wasn't aware of such a limitation (because I don't use vmware etc.), but would like to know more.

Heyo, PM for WSL here. Neither VMware, HyperV or any other VM software is required to use Bash on Windows.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subs...

I believe it's based upon hyper-v, which typically precludes using other VM software on the same machine. Docker toolbox for Windows 10 has the same issues.

No, WSL does not require hyper-v. It is a totally separate system from hyper-v and does not rely on virtualization of any kind. You can use WSL alongside any other VM software.

I don't know much but the bash on windows thing was a completely separate thing from vm's.

Actually, I might be wrong. I thought it required Hyper-V, since it ran an Ubuntu under the covers, and that assumption might incorrect.

Specifically, it's enabling Hyper-V which makes Windows incompatible with VMware. The incompatibility results in more issues than just those with the bash shell. The big one for me is Docker for Windows:

https://forums.docker.com/t/docker-for-windows-w-vmware-inst...

I think I will just try it out and revert back if there's an issue, since I can't find clear documentation about it being incompatible. So I assume I'm wrong.

I can let you know if you like.

It does run an ubuntu/GNU userspace, but not ubuntu Linux. WSL is a Linux ABI layer for Windows so no virtualisation is needed. It's more like WINE.

I would say it "gets better": I have the 12" MacBook. I only have a USB-C port. I have an iPhone. I need a USB-C cable to connect my MacBook to my iPhone. So far, so good!

But, I only have one USB-C port. I also want to charge my laptop. So I have a ludicrous dongle from Apple that lets me plug HDMI, USB, and power (over USB-C) at one time.

But, the USB port on the dongle is USB-A, and I need to use the USB-C port to charge, so I would have to use a USB-A cable to connect my iPhone if I am using that dongle.

Yes: I could always use the dongle and the USB-A cable. But that dongle is so annoying to bother with that I actually carry around all three: two cables and the dongle.

I hear this argument a lot but for some reason i never plug my iPhone into my laptop for charging, mainly because its a lot slower than using an outlet. 95% of the time i charge it at night and that's fine for the day. In the rare cases where i need to charge on the go i use an outlet or a small powerbank i always have with me.

I do not understand your comment as I almost never plug my iPhone into my laptop for charging: I plug my iPhone into my laptop as USB is a much faster and more stable transfer conduit than bluetooth (for tethering) and is essentially required for doing most development work.

Ah ok, i didn't think about the mobile developer usecase, thats a valid point. Tethering works fine for me via Bluetooth but i don't use it very often, so that might be valid too. But then a simple USB-C -> Lightning cable will solve your issues right ?

But then we come back to the premise, as you are literally just stopping at the end if my first paragraph: that works until I need to charge my phone and tether or develop at the same time, something of particular importance as there is no way to connect the phone over USB without it draining the battery of the computer into the phone.

Maybe the understanding gap here is that you don't really use your laptop very much? I use my laptop constantly. I am a developer (as are probably most people on this website), and I own a fancy laptop so I can be mobile: not thinking about the use case of a mobile developer is very strange in the context of a conversation about mobile computers in a large group of developers.

(To be clear, to avoid even more miscommunication: despite the relatively small warts in this setup which seem to violate the standard design process of Apple, I like this computer and purposefully chose it with complete knowledge of what cables it would require. I wish it had a second USB-C port instead of the headphone jack, even though that would cause me to carry around another adapter, as the adapter usage would be less, but I appreciate this was essentialy their beta of USB-C and was not where and when they wanted to start the headphone war.)

I use my laptop for work and private 10-12 hours a day and am a developer myself, i just don't develop mobile apps, mostly backend services with python/go/php so i actually hardly connect my phone to the Laptop.

Sorry i actually did not reread your original comment when replying and was assuming this was about the Macbook Pro... If you only have one port there is indeed only the usb-c hub solution which can be annoying.

I have a 13000mah charger unit with 2.1A out for my Samsung phone etc. Quite neat design; why not just get one of these if you're going to be carrying so much stuff around anyway? Could use it as a bit of spare power for the 12" as well.

I don't understand how that helps: that just replaces the power supply. So now I have my laptop charging from the power brick over USB-C and I still need the dongle to attach the phone at the same time as I charge my laptop. (I am guessing you meant to charge the phone; but not only wasn't the premise--the laptop is the device that is going to need to charge, particularly when you are using the phone over USB--it doesn't come up often as the power block for the laptop is just a 29W USB-C charger, so when it doesn't make sense to charge the phone from the laptop as if the laptop were a battery pack I can plug it directly into the wall.)

Yep I meant to charge the phone; my thoughts were if you are going to be carrying extra stuff to charge the phone then might as well carry parts that extend overall battery life. (And I was thinking of away from wall usage scenarios.)

Wow. Now that is hell.

Here's my personal conjecture based on owning most products in the Apple lineup and trying to predict the future a bit.

So far as I can tell the idea is Lightning ports for devices which require charging, and USB ports for devices which require data transfer.

All cables designed to provide power utilize a USB A connector - this is the majority of Lightning cables. In their current lineup this can be used to charge an iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and Air Pods case.

I recognize a lot of users still use the Lightning cable to transfer data to/from the phone to/from a computer. I'm betting Apple views these users as the current edge case.

Given that - it seems only a matter of time until an iPhone which has no ports, similar to the Apple Watch.

I imagine they'd rather not deal with USB-C on their devices at all - given the madness behind the different power capabilities of cables that seem to plague the specification. But they also recognize that is the future of general-use cables and are embracing it accordingly.

Given the lack of ability to charge any Apple peripheral directly from the newest Macbook (12" or Pro) models I suspect the internal rule is that devices with batteries aren't considered charging sources.

I'm personally excited to see the directions Apple keeps moving towards. I think it'll end up a more unified future than we've had yet. But I'm also ready to be wrong. I'll try to look back on this in a few years and see how we are.

> Given that - it seems only a matter of time until an iPhone which has no ports, similar to the Apple Watch.

Unless we invent seriously good wireless charging, I just can't see that happening. There's too many cases where having your phone "docked" just doesn't work.

Personally, I usually fall asleep with my phone laying on the bed next to me playing YouTube/Netflix/etc. No way to do that if it has to be resting on a pad like the Watch.

And what about cars and navigation? Can't throw your phone in your cup holder and pull up Maps anymore. You either need a new car with wireless charging or need to strap some sort of wireless charging pad to the back, which defeats the entire purpose of wireless charging.

The Apple Watch doesn't use a pad charger - it uses a magnetic puck which attaches fairly firmly* to the device. Right now the puck is fairly large and thick, but I can hope that in the next 5 years Apple can manage to reduce its size a bit and provide an interface for it which works with the iPhone.

Given that general design I imagine sleeping with the phone next to you in bed or in a cup holder shouldn't be much different than it is now - if anything the rotational flexibility provided by the magnetic puck charger would be advantageous in both situations.

Jony Ive has a thing for reducing devices to their core-most functionality. It's a design trait picked up from the likes of Deiter Rams. One of the easiest ways to reduce a device is to reduce or eliminate points of ingress. An iPhone which has no port for charging and the updated speakers from the Series 2 Apple Watch designed for waterproofing would be more ideal.

* Firm enough that you can pick up and move the watch about using only the puck as leverage.

> Jony Ive has a thing for reducing devices to their core-most functionality. It's a design trait picked up from the likes of Deiter Rams.

Ive likes to associate himself with Rams, and people like to throw around the "as little design as possible" meme, but Ive and Rams are really very different in their execution of that idea, which counts for a lot. Ive is much more willing to challenge convention in his reductions, which sometimes pays off, but sometimes it means his products are a pain in the ass for the user to figure out when they ship. This can't be said of Rams.

They would have to switch back to a non metal back to do wireless charging. I doubt they'd do plastic on their main models and glass seemed to give them a lot of trouble with shattering the last time they did it so I'm not sure they'll do it.

>Lightning ports for devices which require charging, and USB ports for devices which require data transfer

Except the new macbooks use USB C for charging, and one of the things Apple emphasized when they switched from 30-pin to lightning was the increased data rate. There's no consistency. This is just another case of everyone moving toward a standard (micro-usb and now usb-c) and Apple ignoring it, except this time Apple doesn't have any excuse.

I believe Lightning was added to the iPhone (and the headphone jack removed) only for the purpose of waterproofing the device. But that's just off the top of my head.

I doubt it, S7 has both, headphone jack and an micro USB port, and it is still waterproof.

I don't follow how this is an example of what you conclude.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we never been able to connect iPhone's to computers without a special cable.

It's baffling, but not new.

Sure 30-pin and Lightning to USB-A cables are both "special." But in the past users have been able to connect the phone to the current MacBook lineup out of the box. Now users of the current MacBook lineup have to buy a new Lightning to USB Type-C cable as it is not included. It is certainly an example of disunity among their product lineup.

Thank you, this is exactly what I meant.

>the unified vision is gone.

I disagree, their unified vision is a wireless one. But you could say they rushed it at the expense of the consumer.

And yet they don't offer wireless charging.

Who offers true wireless charging ? I have the so-called Samsung Galaxy wireless charging, which is no different than just plugging in. I don't even bother

I used to use wireless charging every day with my old Nexus 5, I loved it! I had a wireless charging puck at work where I would sit my phone on whenever I was at my desk, it was so easy that I could do whatever I wanted with my phone whenever and not worry about battery, ever (I also rarely needed to charge when I got home). I'm now using a Oneplus 2 phone and miss the wireless charging feature every time I need to plug in a cable, if I can, my next phone will support wireless charging again, I miss it so much.

Didn't Apple recently stop developing their wireless routers?

That's why the very first thing I mention is Steve.

Good luck charging your phone wirelessly

I've done it with about 5 dollars worth of hardware (total for both Qi emitter and receiver), and it was a bit fiddly to place the encased phone on the charger in the right place, but no luck was actually required.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100-Original-QI-Wireless-Cha...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Qi-Wireless-Charger-Receiver...

> 5 dollars worth of hardware

But how many dollars worth of experience, education, and attentiveness?

The irony is that say she has a macbook pro and a google pixel phone, its trivial to plug the pixel phone into the usb c port on the mac book pro without any dongles, using the cable that came with your phone.

That the new MacBookPro doesn't at least ship with two dongles (for USB and Lightning) is pure arrogance from Apple.

That MacBookPro 13" without touchbar comes with just two USB-C and an old-school audio port (gone in iPhone7) is just stupid, as one USB-C port is used to charge the notebook.

Steve Jobs vision and his personal testing of products is missing. He would have prevented such things leaving the factory.

Beside that little ports and touchbar fiasco, the MacBookPro is a good notebook. (though I wished Intel would get their act together and finally release a chipset for 32GB RAM)

> The unified vision at Apple is gone.

My theory is that something happened and Apple felt it was forced to release the new MBP 6 months or maybe 1 year before the whole line was ready.

Microsoft Surface happened and was being more Apple than Apple.

Is there no Lightning to USB C cable?

Buy an iphone. Buy a macbook. Now try to connect the two. That's what he meant. It's possible with additional accessories, but that's not the point.

But most people aren't buying an iPhone 7 and a MacBook at the same time, and Apple only had one laptop with USB-C ports until a month after the iPhone's release.

An iPhone 7 buyer is far more likely to find a USB-A port to plug into. Your idea would be to make the masses buy a dongle, instead of the minority who own brand new laptops.

I think you're missing the point that it's fundamentally un-Apple-like to have two new products that out-of-the-box can't connect with each other.

That might be OP's point, but that ignores the fact that Apple would likely dealing with a much worse PR disaster when millions of users can't plug their phone into literally anything they own without first buying a USB-A cable.

Seems like you don't know apple. They have always favored fancy features and out of box experience with other apple products over out of the box backwards compatibility.

It's really not usual at all especially for devices that are not required to be connected to each other or span different generations of Macs.

The AirPort has never come with an Ethernet cable

The iPod never shipped with both FireWire and USB to 30 pin cables

The ThunderBolt Display was incompatible with Macs without ThunderBolt ports

The 30" Cinema display was only compatible with the Mac Pro when it launched and later required adapters (not included) to be used on other Macs

The original iPhone's recessed headphone jack required an adapter to use older iPod headphones

The first generation of Apple USB mice/keyboards did not come with an ADB adapter

Why can't Apple ship both a USB-A and USB-C cable? In the early 2000s, Apple bundled both a USB and a Firewire cable in the packaging with a new iPod, presumably to facilitate exactly the sort of transition they're confronting now.

Well, this seems to be a trend. Buying a new power adaptor for new macbook:

* Buy adapter. * Buy extension cord. * Buy USB-C cable.

Those aren't packaged together anymore so now you get 3 separate boxes full of packaging just for a power adaptor. It feels wasteful... not to mention annoying if the apple sales person forgets to tell you you need to buy USB-C separately! And the correct one at that.

Reminds me of using an iMac 20 years ago...

As per previous comments, _very_ recently one came out. It was not out with the initial rollout of the devices.

What? Apple's shipped in March, and third party cables have been available since at least May, 2015. IIRC there was ~a month between release of the USB-C MacBook and the first such cables, but they were available for over a year before the MacBookPro shipped.

The headset jack issues on the iPhone 7 make me more angry about a product I own than anything I can recall in recent memory.

Utterly frustrating.

Wow, I love this being trotted out every single time.

Unless the latest macbook and the latest phone are released at exactly the same time, this was always going to happen.

They could have added 2 cables, which is a huge waste since most people only need one.

Or they could have kept a shitty USB-A port on the macbook, which is not progressive enough for Apple.

Or you put a USBC-Thunderbolt cable in the new macbooks box

> She cannot connect her phone to her computer to charge without a dongle.

Is it still a valid point once USB-C to Lightning Cable is out?

http://www.apple.com/us/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-ligh...

Didn't some market study show that almost nobody plugs their phone into their computer anymore?

At least i can't remember the last time I did.

Does Apple include that cable with either the iPhone or the MacBook though? I consider it to be unreasonable to expect consumers to fork over more money to connect two devices from the same company to one another.

You don't, though, iPhones will sync with the macbook over wifi: the only real problem is that the iPhone won't charge without the usb -> lightning cable or a power adapter.

No, the current expectation is the consumer to buy it :/

The point is people don't want to carry a bag of dongles with them everyday.

Especially the Pro model consumers. It's fine for reduced ports on an Air or MacBook, you're going to make sacrifices for portability. For a flagship laptop consumers expect options.

Meh, I have exactly the same problem with Nexus 6p. I need one USB-C/USB-A cable for data transfer, another USB-C/USB-C for fast charging from the power brick that came with the phone, but back again to USB-C/USB-A to charge from the car. And don't get me started about the lack of good car charges that that support USB 3.1 PD.

It seem some friction to be inevitable when new physical connector is introduced.

Most of those cables are "stationary" though (quotes because your car moves). And a stationary cable isn't that much hassle or friction.

I have a cable that never moves from my bedside, it plugs my Pixel C-to-C into the brick. I have C-to-A cables at my desk at work and at home, neither moves. Your car's C-to-A cable (presumably) doesn't leave your car.

The move to C on the host end is something that hasn't happened recently (not since A took off >10 years ago), but the move to C on the device-end is comparable to the move to the original 30-pin i-device cable, Mini/Micro-USB, or Lightning. It's obnoxious but inevitable.

But don't worry, in 5 years it'll be ubiquitous, like USB-A is now! You'll see it on planes, busses, hotel room USB outlets...all those places which now have USB-A with 500ma charging which are now obsolete. The hotel alarm clocks with 30-pin connectors are especially hilarious to me, since they're "new" but already obsolete. It's still not reasonable in 2017 to travel and forget your charger, and it'll get worse (again) before getting better.

Exactly like the FireWire ports on my older macs.

It wouldn't make any sense to provide a Lightning/USB-C cable instead of Lightning/USB-A.

Far more people own laptops with USB-A ports, and far more people never even plug their phones into anything besides their wall charger.

The iPhone isn't just for Mac users.

They could've provided one cable with an adapter.

USB type-c to type-a doesn't require an active dongle.

I purchased and received my new 15" MBP over the holidays as well (already have the new iPhone 7) and it blew my mind that the MBP had the old headphone jack.

If a Lightning to USB-C cable (which has existed for a while now) is a dongle then what is the USB-A equivalent ? How do you think people have been charging their iPhones to date ? And you realise you still need a "dongle" if Apple used USB-C on the iPhone ?

And why does your girlfriend need two sets of headphones when there is an included 3.5mm adapter with the iPhone ?

So many questions. Because literally nothing you wrote seems to make much sense.

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