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Comment by aleem | Hacker News Reader

Apple has squandered a lot of its goodwill. It reminds me of my relationship with Microsoft products. As long as they were shipping, they were making money in the short term because people were coerced to buy in.

For 5 damn years the Air didn't get a Retina display. Right now, I can't buy 2.8Ghz Macbook Pro unless I get the TouchBar. I can't buy an Air unless I settle for much lower specs.

The dongles and USB-C are a mess. The 2-meters-at-most charging cables are a downgrade which will mean shorter battery life due to lesser plugging in. The lack of Magsafe is a downgrade, they removed a feature. The lack of any port variety which my 2013 Macbook Air did exceedingly well is a major downgrade. Consumers must carry a variety of dongles because the laptops don't offer a variety of ports.

Profits are fine as long as they don't lead to perverse behavior. Apple needs to stop playing these fucking games and ship some pragmatism.

The Apple of Cook is reminiscent of the Microsoft of Ballmer. He is totally out of touch with the product -- the very thing that Jobs inculcated.

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See, I use a retina MBP touchbar and really don't agree. Apple has made some missteps but it's still the best pro laptop for my uses. Over two years with one replaced keyboard (because I spilled wine on it!) and no sticking keys.

USB-C is awesome. I can reuse all my 3rd party and Apple adapters for my USB-C peripherals, including tablets and the Nintendo Switch. In retrospect, Magsafe wasn't that great (comes off too easily). Moving back to older USB ports really would make no sense. They're obsolete. If you have older peripherals, get the dongles. We've been using dongles since the VGA/DVI days or Serial/USB days, so I really don't get the problem with them. Life moves on.

I have a need for HDMI and VGA and Mini DisplayPort and old USB... not to mention lightning. MUCH rather would have a single standard of multi-port w/ dongles than a mess of fixed ports.

Also, on what planet did anyone have a Magsafe cord over 2m? It was fixed to the adapter. The 2m usb-c cable is removable, add it with the 1m (edit: 2m!) power cable and it is a further reach than any prior Mac laptop adapter I've had, though I suppose third party ones exist.

You cant keep everyone happy and I personally love having 4 USB-c ports, with any one of them supporting power to the mac adapter (with any 3rd party cable).

I have an external UCB-C 1TB M.2 and last night it transferred an entire 50gb directory of movies in <1-2 minutes to my MacBook Pro.

Amazon sells USB-A to USB-C converters that’s the size of a tip of an old USB-A and they work great. I have 4 of them and use them less and less as more of my external products are USB-C. The 3rd party parts market always responds in kind, just don't be a first year adopter and you'll be fine.

https://www.amazon.com/Syntech-Adapter-Thunderbolt-Compatibl...

I have used a converter like the one you are linking to, but they damage easily, instead I recommend one with a bit of wire, like the ones Anker sells: https://www.anker.com/products/variant/powerline-usbc-to-usb... (they are also available on Amazon).

USB-C has lots of advantages, but it took 2-3 dark years before we started seeing commonly available peripherals that take advantage of the built-in protocols such as driver-less USB-C Ethernet adapters. I think USB-C on the iPad Pro and various phones has done more to turn USB-C into a viable standard than putting it on the laptops, since pros would obviously prefer existing and new Thunderbolt devices to USB-C devices. They could have moved iPhone/iPad to USB-C and used the MFI program to encourage USB-C for three years there, while adding USB-C support in a backwards-compatible way to their existing laptops. I would have been happy if they simply left me an HDMI port. As much as I want AirPlay everywhere, it's only in 2019 that we can buy a TV with AirPlay and make truly wireless/dongle-less Mac connections possible, which was the dream with Miracast on Windows/Android and the reality for many years with Chromecast.

Also, Magsafe might have come off easily, but every time it did, I went "oh, that is a nice feature!" I never once complained that I couldn't charge my laptop with it, the battery would die before the magsafe adapter would. Plus, why did Apple remove functionality from their power cords, forcing you to buy all the cables for the power cord separately? There were so many downgrades to the MacBook Pro, I wonder why I stuck with it... (Frankly, Windows was just that bad at the time. It's since improved, so maybe that'll light a fire under Apple a bit.)

I found the Magsafe adapter cords would fray, corrode, and blacken pretty easily, becoming a fire hazard. Every Macbook I owned, I would need at least one replacement over a 3 year period.

The amount of time taken to re-plugin it in vs. times it saved my laptop from flying, really it was an overrated feature. USB-C comes out easily enough.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Magsafe. But I don't understand the passion for it, it had flaws and was a (nifty) minor feature.

Apple is known for touting things that it ships like they’re the next sliced bread, and then promptly forgetting them or even saying the opposite:

MagSafe: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2WknqkDzLTQ

Phones for single hand operation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O99m7lebirE

Mac App Store: https://www.macworld.com/article/1160331/WWDC_mac_app_store....

Steve Jobs used to constantly claim that Mac’s RISC processors were much faster than Intel, until the day Mac adopted Intel, then without blinking he said they are now much faster and never looked back.

That is salesmanship on a large scale. I thought Steve Jobs was the king of spin (ie convincing people of bullshit) until I saw Donald Trump run for President, and realized that you unlock a whole other level when you do this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4f_oxZqD6wQ

Well the G3 when it shipped it was pretty competitive if not faster, the G4 still was pretty good in some benchmarks but the Intel / AMD post Athlon fight broke loose by then so by the time Apple switched to the Core architecture they were pretty far behind in performance unless you were using 2 or 3 hand picked Photoshop filters all day.

I wonder if you had a counterfeit Magsafe adapter? They commonly get shipped with used Macbooks, and get quite a bit hotter than their genuine counterparts.

I have personally preferred the Magsafe adapters ever since I had a USB-C powered Macbook slide off my bed by accident. It didn't fall far, but it landed right on the power cable and damaged both the USB port and the cable.

Understandably, Macbooks are not designed to withstand any sort of drops, but I'm positive that the Magsafe of my 2015 MBP would have popped out, and the body of the PC would have been fine.

I never had any cords fray ever on any product I ever owned.

Except for basically every single Apple product I ever got that had one of those stupid white cords no matter how gently I treated it. I've never bought anything Apple related from somewhere other than Apple and have been buying Apple products since the first iPod with the physical moveable wheel.

I think within the last few years they finally changed how they made the cords. My replacement Apple brick for my Macbook pro still looks filthy after a couple years of use, but has surprisingly not started fraying.

Almost half of my Apple cords are frayed, in the same spot, right next to their poor excuse for strain relief. Apple has a chronic problem with proper strain relief, and seem unwilling to fix it. Every other cord manufacturer on Earth has solved this problem with designs like this: [1]. Why Apple won't follow suit is beyond me. Maybe the appearance of it offends the sensitivities of one of their ID artists.

1: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31Jg9AjCdOL...

> I found the Magsafe adapter cords would fray, corrode, and blacken pretty easily, becoming a fire hazard.

Why do you attribute fraying and/or blackening of the cable to the connector at the end?

Probably because it happened at where the connector joined.

I, too, miss magsafe. I, too, believe that the newer USB-C cables are better engineered, and like the fact that I can replace the cable separately from the adapter if there's ever a problem with it.

> "Why do you attribute fraying and/or blackening of the cable to the connector at the end?"

It was at the point where the cable meets the connector that the fraying problem occurred. I suspect that because of the nature of MagSafe, many people tended to pull on the cable to remove it rather than actually grip the connector, which contributed to the problem.

But the real flaw with MagSafe (other than it being proprietary) was that the cable was permanently attached to the power brick. At least with USB-C, if the cable fails, you can just replace the cable - not the entire power supply!

I'm not comparing platonic ideals of connectors, I'm talking about the actual physical product that shipped. Magsafe was a proprietary connector attached to a fixed, non-removable cable. That cable had noted flaws.

Whereas USB-C is a standard connector on a removable cable.

>I found the Magsafe adapter cords would fray, corrode, and blacken pretty easily, becoming a fire hazard. Every Macbook I owned, I would need at least one replacement over a 3 year period.

That wasn't a fundamental problem with the MagSafe connector, but yet another symptom of Apple's detrimental obsession with aesthetics. The cable (like all Apple cables in recent years) had inadequate strain relief. Apple knew this, but decided that frayed and burned cables were preferable to an ugly strain relief boot. The problems with Apple cables are easily prevented with a few inches of electrical tape or a couple of pieces of heatshrink tubing to provide a satisfactory level of strain relief.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/why-a...

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201600

> I found the Magsafe adapter cords would fray, corrode, and blacken pretty easily, becoming a fire hazard. Every Macbook I owned, I would need at least one replacement over a 3 year period.

My Magsafe power supply is a decade old, and except for being dirty has no problems.

You've repeated it a couple of times in this thread, and this doesn't hold up.

1. The cord is standard plastic sheathing: how does that fray?

2. Are you in a damp atmosphere for it to corrode?

3. You don't qualify what "blackening" is. Do you mean become dirty, or burnt?

1. See sibling posters. The plastic sheathing would split, and eventually splay. Electrical tape was the solution many used.

2. North America?

3. Burnt, i.e. the cable would turn brown at the edges connecting to the power supply or the Magsafe adapter.

I'm glad your power supply still works. This situation is sort of like the new MBP Keyboard: I've never had a problem with it, but many have. With the older power supplies, I've gone through at least three replacements over 10 years of MagSafe, not counting the new ones I received with new laptops. Much less expensive and time consuming than the keyboard so not as big a deal.

My point is that the Magsafe power adapters weren't this shining beacon of perfect design. They had flaws in practice, and USB-C has so far corrected those flaws (and introduced its own tradeoffs).

A lot of people made the same argument when Jobs removed the cd drive from laptops. It seemed like an issue at the time given most software was still installed from CDs. After a two year dark period where you had to use an external cd drive, most people didn’t miss it.

The first USB-C MacBook came out four years ago. I've just taken a look at Amazon: the top hits for keyboards are USB-A, the top hits for projectors use HDMI, the top hits for 4K screens have HDMI and DisplayPort ports. Apple's portable devices all ship with USB-A charging cables. Do USB-C thumbdrives even exist?

Yes, some transitions in the past worked really well. That doesn't mean that other transitions are automatically going to be a success.

ThunderBolt 3 is successful as a successor to the niche port that was ThunderBolt 2: for eGPUs, docking stations, some displays. USB-C seems to be doing okay in replacing Micro-USB. But HDMI, USB, and (for what they do) SD cards and Ethernet seem like they're almost in the same categories as wall sockets by now.

The top hit for laptop in a windows machine, so what?

I remember being so worried about dongles and got extra. But then I found it better to just replace the cable to the printer and not have a dongle. Now they sit in a drawer unused.

> The top hit for laptop in a windows machine, so what?

It doesn't say anything about whether Windows is good or bad, but it means that no widescale transition away from Windows has happened.

>Do USB-C thumbdrives even exist?

The only hits I find on google are for a few sandisk drives with terrible amazon reviews reporting they're slow and get searing hot in the drive after only a few seconds of use. I'm kind of surprised sandisk would release that, one reviewer even reports theirs smoking after being inserted into a recent MBP. I'm also a bit surprised nobody has produced a working drive yet? Maybe there's so little demand for thumb drives these days it's just not worth the r&d to accomodate the standard with adequate cooling.

There were 2 versions of the Magsafe connector.

The bulky one on my 2007 MacBook had a much stronger magnet that the thinner one on my 2012 MacBook Pro.

People were annoyed when the thinner one got introduced because, indeed, they come off too easily.

It was another functional regression sacrificed on the altar of thinness.

I believe this was also an attempt to address the fraying problem and make the MagSafe cables/connectors last longer. By decreasing the tension needed to release it, it would reduce stress on the cable.

I get the warm and fuzzy feeling USB-C gives nerds, cause of the open standard and interoperability, and cause it only takes one attempt to actually plug it in; but I just cannot fathom how Apple replaced Magsafe with USB-C.

Magsafe was one of those magical Apple features from the mid 2000s that just delight and work incredibly well and almost seem like science fiction. It's not like they had shitty power adapters and USB-C was an upgrade. It was the Hofmeister Kink of Apple computers, and they got rid of it. I just do not understand at all.

Magsafe adapters had quality issues. My company is all-Mac (3000 employees now), and you'd not believe the turnover of Magsafe power adapters frayed, blackened, corroding.

Exactly. USB C is so much better. Charging on either side and only replacing the cable and not the whole adapter if there is a connection issue.

You can have a MagSafe low voltage cable that is also removable from the adapter.

You don't understand because you haven't shifted your mindset about Apple correctly. As a former Apple fan I was the same way.

Apple under Tim Cook is motivated by shareholder value, not usability or design leadership, as they were under Steve Jobs.

They got rid of Magsafe and the rest of the useful ports and added USB-C not because of the warm and fuzzy feeling it gives nerds, but because it streamlines factory production and makes the laptop thinner.

At some point Cook decided to shift their decision making from being driven by the power user's needs to being driven by the shareholder and average consumer (which is motivated more by marketing flourishes like thinner laptops and the Touch Bar than usability). Shareholders would likely applaud that.

The point is that Apple is more Microsoft than Apple these days and we should shift our expectations as such.

> They got rid of Magsafe and the rest of the useful ports and added USB-C not because of the warm and fuzzy feeling it gives nerds, but because it streamlines factory production and makes the laptop thinner.

A “former apple fan” should surely remember the hand-wringing over the iMac USB switch too. And Lightning?

Apple has always pushed almost-there technologies with benefits over legacy tech, this isn’t about “shareholder value”.

Sure, I remember ... The disabling of Flash and removal of CD drives, ethernet ports and headphone jacks are good examples too. I still have the dongles I bought for my Powerbook.

But up until now it hasn't been a unilateral replacement of all ports with just one type. The dongle I bought was an adapter for one port and one use-case. I didn't have to buy a new adapter for every peripheral I owned.

Ultimately if Apple had included a portable docking-station-like adapter that had HDMI and a few USB-not-C ports along with the laptop purchase I would be OK.

Except for the “make things thinner part”, there was the same complaint about the original iMac when they got rid of all of their ports and went USB all the way. The Macs before then had serial, ADB, and SCSI - and of course the floppy.

They got rid of magsafe because it's a lot less useful in a world of 8+ hour battery life. I generally don't plug in my laptop except for at my desk and/or at night.

> They're obsolete.

That is simply false.

The biggest mice and keyboard manufacturers still ship with USB-A cables.

Even Apple itself ships its mice and keyboards with USB-A cables.

Apple doesn’t sell any wired mice or keyboards AFAICT.

The wireless keyboards and touchpads have a Lightning-to-USB-A cord, which can be plugged into the computer directly. Primarily for charging, but if you charge off the computer it'll use the wire instead of Bluetooth for typing.

Do you know of any PC keyboards/mice that do this? I want to be able to do things in the BIOS so having a Bluetooth keyboard that charges and is functional over a mini USB adaptor would be really useful. Same with a mouse, Bluetooth is not always great but a mouse that did both wired and wireless would be neat.

Even if this is only used once every six months when something goes wrong it would be nice to have. I prefer to use the same keyboard/mouse combo for all machines. Just having that full flexibility helps.

I don't know about keyboards, but my wireless Logitech mice that charge over USB can be used plugged while charging.

All of them? At least every BT keyboard/mouse that I have used does this.

But the cable they provide to charge those is USB-A not USB-C.

Obsolete was an exaggeration. "In sunset", perhaps?

PS/2 mice and keyboards shipped for many years after USB. I expect USB-A will be around for a long time even though most of us will have moved on to USB-C.

The vast majority of USB accessories are still USB-A. Big manufacturers still use USB-A for everything. For example Logitech still has no USB-C mice or keyboard AFAIK.

The truth is that USB-C has seen a very slow adoption outside the mobile world.

If USB-C adoption surpasses USB-A in a couple more years it will make sense to call it "in sunset", but IMO that doesn't make much sense today.

I mostly agree -- I finally ordered a new rMBP last week -- but the most damning loss on the new laptops is the SD slot. I'll miss that A LOT.

Not saying it wasn't useful for you, but I've literally never once used my SD Card reader. Having the option for putting it in would be nice for customers like you, but I'm happy it's not there for my laptop.

Yeah it totally depends on your workflow. If you do a lot of photography (I do Drone photography) you need an SD-Card reader to get the raw images off of your drone. I have a dongle so it's no big deal, but I would love to have a micro-sd card slot in my MBP. It's the only dongle I use regularly.

I get how you could not see it as useful, but I'm baffled by going all the way to being literally HAPPY it's not there.

If it's there, and you don't use it, it doesn't cost you anything.

> Magsafe wasn't that great (comes off too easily)

THAT IS THE ENTIRE GENIUS POINT!

No, it's not.

The first incarnation of the MagSafe connector was a bit harder to pull off and just right.

> Also, on what planet did anyone have a Magsafe cord over 2m? It was fixed to the adapter. The 2m usb-c cable is removable, add it with the 1m power cable and it is a further reach than any prior Mac laptop adapter I've had, though I suppose third party ones exist.

The power brick had a 2m detachable line-voltage cable, and fixed 2m low voltage cable. 2 + 2 = 4. I can sit 4m from the wall and charge using only the power adapter that came with the computer.

I'm also confused why you seem to think that Apple couldn't engineer a low voltage cable with connectors at both ends. Wouldn't that solve the cable fraying issue mentioned in your other post?

I see many people making the same argument as you: that USB-C is better because the cable is detachable from the power brick. Can you help me understand why you believe that Apple needed to move to USB-C to on the computer end in order to make a cable removable at the power supply end?

Apple could have easily had the best of both worlds: Put a USB-C plug on the cable and USB-C receptacle on the power brick. Then put both USB-C and magsafe receptacles on the computer. The USB-C -> magsafe cable could either be included with the computer or sold as an optional extra.

> The power brick had a 2m detachable line-voltage cable, and fixed 2m low voltage cable. 2 + 2 = 4. I can sit 4m from the wall and charge using only the power adapter that came with the computer.

You can use the very detachable line-voltage cable on your Apple's 60W (or was it 80?) USB-C charger too. The cable is removable at the power supply end.

> The power brick had a 2m detachable line-voltage cable, and fixed 2m low voltage cable. 2 + 2 = 4. I can sit 4m from the wall and charge using only the power adapter that came with the computer.

Still the same with the USB-C power adapters, except that the detachable extension cord isn't included with new devices anymore. You can either use one from an old Mac, buy one from Apple (with the usual Apple-tax (https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK122LL/A/power-adapter-e...), or get a cheap third-party one (https://www.amazon.com/s?k=apple+power+adapter+extension+cab...).

There's also the usual Apple Upgrade tax, the old charger was 85-90 euros and came with 4m of cable. The new one comes without a cable, is 99 euros and needs a 30 euro USB-C PD cable.

The new one is also much more useful, because it charges any arbitrary USB device: smartphones, tablets, visitors’ PC laptops, miscellaneous small gadgets, ...

Also, if the USB-C cord frays or breaks, it is replaceable.

I’m a bit sad about the loss of the magnetic connector, but overall I much prefer the new chargers.

I still wish someone would get around to putting 2–3 USB-C ports in a power strip which were capable of charging laptops though.

The old MagSafe stuff you could only (legitimately) buy from Apple. The USB-C stuff you can buy from anyone, and there are some decent quality cables and power supplies available that don't require you to pay the Apple tax.

> "The power brick had a 2m detachable line-voltage cable, and fixed 2m low voltage cable. 2 + 2 = 4. I can sit 4m from the wall and charge using only the power adapter that came with the computer."

You can still do this with the USB-C power brick. Apple sell the matching extension cable, or you can re-use one from an old MagSafe brick.

> "Can you help me understand why you believe that Apple needed to move to USB-C to on the computer end in order to make a cable removable at the power supply end?"

The thing is, once you make the cable detachable at both ends, it eliminates the need for MagSafe in the first place.

A USB-C laptop will not go flying across the room if someone trips on the cable, because the cable will detach at either or both ends before that happens.

That's not quite true. The USB-C port is pretty strong relative to MagSafe. Depending on the surface where my laptop is resting, the laptop will move before the cable detaches.

I'm not going to test this, but I seriously doubt it.

My 13" MacBook is very light, and I can even lift it half way with the USB-C cable. Pretty certain it would fly to the floor if my feet swept the cable that way. Of course, I don't have it set up so that can happen.

Good point about the MacBook - they're much lighter than my MacBook Pro.

I'm surprised you can actually pick it up by the cable, however! The fit of the power cable in the USB-C ports on my (2017) 13" Pro is very loose - in fact, sometimes the power cable slips out on it's own with even a small movement. Maybe this has changed in the 13" MacBook?

I can't fully lift it off the table, but it gets pretty close.

The fit of my TOTU dongle cable is pretty tight, I guess, now that I think about it.

> Moving back to older USB ports really would make no sense. They're obsolete.

I sure wish I could join you in the year 2030 where USB-C is everywhere, but unfortunately I’m stuck here in 2019 and USB-A is still the de-facto standard on just about everything.

It’s nice to design a product to be forward-looking and adopting standards early when it’s foreseeable that they will soon become big. Like the Mac mini 2018, with its 4x USB-C and 2x USB-A. Got the future ports, but also the still-current ports. Awesome! But designing a product with USB-C only, for a future that is many years away, is pretty stupid, it just makes the product inferior and inconvenient in the here-and-now.

You can get USB-C monitors, external hard drives, most modern phones connect via USB-C. What else do you need? Bluetooth fills in the gaps for things like external keyboards and mice and most modern printers can be connected to via wifi.

I appreciate my needs/requirements are not everyones but USB-C isn't exactly elusive these days.

Sure, if I throw away all the USB-A things I have and start over now... but that would be quite a waste.

Also, try to find a true USB-C hub. With that I mean a box with one upstream USB-C input and several (>= 3) USB-C downstream ports. As far as I can tell, such products still do not exist. There are many USB-C-docks with USB-C input, various other downstream ports, and sometimes an additional USB-C port which is power-delivery-only, with no data connection.

I have only found one such product at all, but it fits the description just barely: Belkin has a USB-C-hub, but with only 2 USB-C downstream ports, and only supporting 5Gbps and no Alt-DP-Mode on any of the ports.

Do you still hang onto that old VCR because DVD players won't play your tapes and it'd be a waste to throw that VCR away?

At some point we have to upgrade if we want to stay current. This is the same with any technology, not just USB-C.

I just bought a brand new (released 2019) wireless Logitech mouse. Wireless dongle and charging cable are USB-A

I just bought a brand new (released 2019) audio interface, connects with USB-A

In fact, besides my recent 2018 external SSD which came with an interchangeable USB-A/C port, none of my newer devices are USB-C

So, this is more like... I've got my VCR and a DVD player, and all the new movies are only coming out on VHS

Edit: I'll add to this - it's also frustrating not having any other ports on the MBP as well. I recently had surgery and was bedridden for a while, and the nest of cables I needed for ethernet, HDMI, mouse, etc.. was insane. Normally it's not a huge deal, but there's a lot of factors that have been making me regret not getting a Razer Blade when I was deciding between the two.

I probably won't be buying another Apple laptop.

That National Instruments DAQ on my bench isn't going obsolete any time soon. Going to more mundane things, neither are my keyboard and mouse.

I get your point, and at some point in the future I’m sure USB-C will prevail. My point is that we’re not there yet, and right now, having at least one old-fashioned USB-A port on a laptop is just useful.

Right now, it’s like throwing out your VCR and all VHS movies when DVD just came on the market and there’s barely any movies released on DVD yet. Did anybody with a sizeable VHS collection throw them away the day DVD arrived?

It’s too soon for “USB-C only” - at least for me - it would mean constant need for all kinds of dongles.

You can buy cords with USB-C on one end and USB-A or USB-B on the other end. No need to dump all of your devices.

> Also, try to find a true USB-C hub.

I don’t understand why USB-C hubs and USB-C on power strips don’t really exist yet. They would be very useful.

When I looked into the issue of USB-C hubs some time ago, all I could find is this claim in a blog article [0] that suitable chips for such USB-C-hubs are not available:

> Update (2018-07-30): Accidental Tech Podcast reports on a rumor that next year Intel will finally ship the chip that’s needed for making a USB-C that adds additional type-C ports.

[0] https://mjtsai.com/blog/2017/10/14/the-impossible-dream-of-u...

You need to learn more about what the current Mac ports actually are, clearly. Hint: Google "Thunderbolt 3". Then Google "Thunderbolt 3 dock".

> most modern phones connect via USB-C

The iPhone doesn't.

I bet a future iPhone will. And you'll note the "most" in my comment.

I bought a USB-C to alighting adapter for my phone, got USB-C Sony wireless headphones, and a couple USB-C adapters for my regular USB 3 devices. Kept all my Thunderbolt peripherals (bought a TB2->3 adapter), and a hub and a video adapter or two (HDMI and Display Port)

$200 later I’m happy but when I use my old 2013 MBP I feel kind of slighted.

You can buy cheap cables with USB-C on one end, and USB-A, USB-B, Display Port, mini-DP/Thunderbolt, HDMI, Lightning, mini/micro-USB, etc. on the other end. No need to change devices, just get new cables. There are even tiny little adapters that fit on the end of your existing cables; you’ll hardly notice them.

Honestly I think the touchbar is for Apple’s original constituents: creatives. I don’t use it when doing software development, but it’s amazing when I’m going through scuba movies. I can scrub through videos to get the perfect frame for my subject, which is especially nice since I have one of a creature none of my friends can identify. Only through scrubbing did I catch that two frames revealed a distinctive blue sheen on part of its black bands under a dive light.

I agree that the laptop is great. Personally I love the USB-C ports and don't miss the magsafe. I bought plenty of cables for all my devices (i.e. usb-c to micro usb) so I'm not caught in dongle hell. The only reason I miss the USB-A port is I can't find a wireless mouse with a low-profile USB-C wifi adapter. Bluetooth mice kinda suck and the ones that do exist have annoyingly large adapters right now.

That keyboard though, nearly ruins everything, I can't stand it. This is both the absolute best and absolute worst laptop I've ever owned.

I have a Logitech MX Master 2S and it's actually gorgeous over Bluetooth. At least for work, haven't tried gaming.

I do have a bluetooth mouse although it's not a Logitech. It works ok. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody but it gets the job done.

Maybe I should give a Logitech BT mouse a try. I've been holding out waiting for Logitech to release a mouse with a USB-C adapter but they don't seem to want my money.

For years I've been buying "Snuglets" and using them on my magsafe connectors to make them more secure. http://www.snuglet.com/ They are a cool little product making the cable less easy to pull out but still able to come out if pulled a bit harder. On probably a total of eight or more Macbooks over the years I've never had the cable pull the jack too hard or have the cable break. Highly recommended...

true fanboi right here. i admire the passion tho

Apart from the OS, hardware wise there are quite a few laptops that are better pound-for-pound.

The XPS and Huawei MatebookX pro seem to be better in every way, with the polish that is expected of Apple products. Think pads cater to a different market, but have all the same bells and whistles too.

The XPS and Thinkpads have great linux support, so it helps bridge the OS downsides to a certain extent.

The XPS 15 looks fantastic in theory. Great ports, high resolution, Linux support, there's even an Intel-only Precision model so I wouldn't have to deal with Nvidia drivers.

But every time the XPS line is refreshed, people confirm that there are still issues with coil whine. It baffles me that this issue hasn't been fixed in all these years.

I just last week bought a pristine, maxed-out 2015 MacBook Pro. Yet I think you're wrong about most of this.

* I hate magsafe. I've owned a dozen of these and almost all of them have come apart just behind the magsafe connector. Expensive, proprietary, and fragile. I would much much rather have USB-C than shell out $90 every two years.

* USB-C is great. A bunch of different ports means carrying a bunch of different cables, so it doesn't matter what's on the computer-side. USB-C to microusb is no different than the USB-A to microusb. Actually it's better; the tiny dongles give you options without carrying a multitude of cables.

* The touchbar is meh. I would probably enjoy having dedicated Step In/Step Over/Step Out buttons when debugging, but I'm not willing to pay $300 for that.

The real problems with the new machines, which pushed me into buying a 2015 model, are:

* The new keyboard. The ergonomics are fine, but I am hard on keyboards and nevertheless expect 5+ years of duty (my last machine was bought new in 2013, and just wasn't cutting it with 8G of RAM). I can't have an unreliable and expensive keyboard.

* The price. A reasonably spec'd MBP is now pushing $3k. It's just too much! The specs of a modern maxed-out MBP are nearly identical to the 2015 model I just bought. Critically, I can't get more than 16G of RAM in a 13" form factor (and I'd really rather have something smaller). I bought a functionally equivalent machine and paid less than a third of what a new one costs.

I don't want a sexy svelte fragile expensive luxury status symbol. I want a rugged capital good that will reliably allow me to work for the next half-decade.

> The new keyboard. The ergonomics are fine, but I am hard on keyboards and nevertheless expect 5+ years of duty (my last machine was bought new in 2013, and just wasn't cutting it with 8G of RAM). I can't have an unreliable and expensive keyboard.

I just don't get it. I've had my MPB with the new keyboard for 9 months now and I hate it more than ever. The ergonomics are absolutely terrible, the layout (particularly the arrow keys is terrible) the feedback is terrible, the fragility is terrible, the touchbar is terrible.

9 months and I still can't type for shit on this keyboard. This is coming from somebody who can type over 100 WPM with 98% accuracy. On a normal keyboard, when warmed up, I can correct many mistakes without even looking at the keyboard OR the monitor. I just know I made a mistake and my fingers know what to do to fix it (a side-effect of having done dictation and typing out handwritten papers/notes professionally for a couple years).

They keyboard is objective crap. It's past time for it to go, or at least give us an option.

I’m only two months in having been clinging to my 2015 MBP until recently forced to upgrade by my company. Now I feel borderline incompetent at times when I can’t hit the arrow keys or escape smoothly. One solution is to use an external keyboard, but then I won’t adapt to the new feel and I’ll be stuck like this forever, unable to type competently in a meeting or any other time I’m away from my desk.

I could probably get used to the feel of the latest butterfly keys, but the arrow keys and virtual escape key and to a lesser extent virtual F-keys are intolerable. It’s like has Jony Ive ever had to type something? Hell no, he has people to do that for him, the important thing is everything he touches look immaculate in a 90-degree closeup and framed above his mantel.

You should make the caps lock key your escape key, that's what I do. It's vastly superior to the touchbar escape key. In fact, I even prefer it to a regular escape key at this point, although my muscle memory does cause problems when I use somebody else's computer.

I removed the escape key from my touchbar entirely because I kept accidentally brushing it when I went to type ` or ~. I also had the lock screen widget on the touchbar for a couple months, but I removed that because again I kept accidentally brushing that and locking my laptop when I meant to hit delete.

I think you are right, Ivy probably never really used the keyboard. He probably has a desk both at home and at work with the magic keyboard and that keyboard is decent enough. The couple hours he spends on the plane travelling between Cupertino and London isn't enough time for him to build up empathy for what the rest of us have to go through.

Already use it for Ctrl in the UNIX tradition, and it's really hard to change that muscle memory.

If you get a Japanese layout keyboard, you get a bunch of extra free keys which you use for whatever you want. https://i.imgur.com/tuCklIJ.jpg

Particularly handy are the extra thumb keys (I use the one to the right of the spacebar for backwards delete, but vim users could put escape there.). Also control is in the right place and caps lock is in the hard-to-reach corner, where it should be.

One especially nice approach is to re-map all of the right-hand letter keys one position over to the right, spreading the hands apart, making right enter and shift more accessible, and leaving an extra column of easily accessible index-finger keys in the middle of the keyboard.

Oof, the vertical return key on the UK keyboard almost made me tear my hair out when I did a 3-year stint in London :)

If you shift the right hand over to the right by one key, then return will be in the same position relative to your hand as on a US-ANSI keyboard. You then only need to find an appropriate key to use for the right bracket and backslash, but there are plenty of good choices.

I have caps lock mapped to Ctrl and Ctrl mapped to Esc. Seems to work pretty well.

Personally, I have an older wired Apple "chiclet" keyboard (short-throw, not long) and I can hit ~120 WPM on it- which is way above the 90 WPM max I get on a clicky mechanical keyboard (Cherry Blue / Green / Red).

I don't like their new keyboards, and I have a Lenovo Thinkpad keyboard which I love to use, too, but Apple's slightly older keyboards have a spot in my heart.

I just switched to the Apple keyboard at work from my CODE keyboard (too loud in conference calls and I always forget to unmute) and I was shocked to find I’m faster on the Apple keyboard, even without any time to get used to it.

The MBP keyboard is still a POS though.

Soon after buying a 2016 Macbook Pro quicly I learned from personal experience how fragile thekeyboards were. Ater it was repaired under warranty I quickly sold it and bought two maxed out 2015 MacBook Pros hoping they would last until Apple got around to fixing the keyboard. It looks like my bet will be rewarded.

Also contributing to my decision is that the Touch Bar did not work for me at all. I have less than perfect eyesight. I need keys with tactile feedback and that don't move around to be sure I'm sure I'm accurately hitting the right key.

I do still have a non-touchbar 13 inch 2017 MacBook Pro that I use from time to time. I move around a lot and work in many locations. I've cursed Apple many times when suddenly needing to connect to an older USB or HDMI device but not having my dongle collection with me this time... The need to carry dongles seems like a kludge that detracts from the elegrant compactness the computer itself.

USB-C is a clusterfuck and Apple forcing that as their only connector is just plain bad design.

I have a MBP but opted for the non-touchbar model because I happen to like the escape key (lots of time spent in vi - amongst other things). My MBP only comes with TWO USB-C ports. That means I have no choice but to carry around a dongle when before I rarely used to. What's worse, the charger uses one of those ports and most dongles are garbage that die after 3 months (finding one that doesn't is an expensive game of pot luck). To add insult to injury, one of the USB ports on the MBP has now stopped working as a display out (the USB-C connector is just garbage - but that's only one of the many reasons USB-C is a clusterfuck).

And as for the keyboard, how anyone can say "the ergonomics are fine" - particularly when you're a self-confessed hard typist - is just weird. It's by far and away the worst laptop keyboard I've ever typed on. It's no exaggeration that I prefer the keyboard on budget laptops and those things are cheap and nasty (but at least they work and don't send uncomfortable shock waves back up your fingers as you press the keys)

The new MBP's are what you'd design a laptop for looks rather than actual everyday usage. The fact it comes with a "Pro" label is really just an insult to everyone's intelligence.

> when you're a self-confessed hard typist

Whether or not you stick with the keyboard you dislike, you should try to fix this if possible. RSI is no joke, and “hard typing” causes excessive impact on your joints irrespective of keyboard.

You want to be using just enough force to reliably actuate the key.

(This is one reason that bad rubber dome keyboards are terrible: they don’t reliably actuate unless you really mash them, which trains people to type much too hard.)

FWIW the parent misunderstood me; I said "I'm hard on keyboards" - mostly due to environment. I don't think I press particularly hard.

> I have a MBP but opted for the non-touchbar model because I happen to like the escape key (lots of time spent in vi - amongst other things).

Incidentally, the worry isn't about no ESC key but the opposite. There's still the soft key on the touchbar, right where muscle memory expects it; but, since my finger hovers there by default, I frequently find myself triggering it unexpectedly. I eventually realised that a lot of what I thought were bugs were caused by my ESC-ing out of some intended action without being aware of it.

USB C connectors are rated for a life of 10,000 cycles the same as USB micro. If your computer has only two USB C ports, especially if one is always used for charging leaving only one for general use, they will wear out faster than if you had a say a power jack and two or three USB ports plus maybe an HDMI port.

> I don't want a sexy svelte fragile expensive luxury status symbol. I want a rugged capital good that will reliably allow me to work for the next half-decade.

Then why are you looking at Apple products at all? You're looking for a ThinkPad or an EliteBook. Fragile expensive luxury status symbols are exactly what Apple makes and always has ever since Jobs. Now they're just more blatant about it.

Thing is, they used to not be very fragile (at least, not in comparison to how they are now.)

Mind you, ThinkPads have arguably gotten less easy to repair since then, too.

ThinkPads have certainly gotten steadily worse over the years, along with every other laptop, but relative to the rest they still seem to be the most sensible choice. Personally, I just use and maintain a collection of old ThinkPads for laptops, relegating real work to the desktop.

> You're looking for a ThinkPad or an EliteBook.

I've seen such recommendations before, so my first non-Mac purchase in a decade (~2014) was a ThinkPad. I used to love the nub in the '90s, and I got used to it again, but otherwise the keyboard was horrible, and I eventually had to replace it. (A big plus: it was really easy to do.) Right out of the box I had a dead pixel on the screen, and, when I told customer support, they said that they regarded a certain number of dead pixels as normal, and would not replace it.

I'm sure I just had a bad experience, but I have never had either of these problems with any Mac purchase (aside from the fucked-up-by-design modern keyboards).

Yup, non-corporate customer support is terrible. The bright side is, everything is easily replaceable (or at least used to be until very recently) and if you don't want to do it yourself, chances are you can find a cheap third party tech to replace any screen, keyboard, etc.

Also, for what it's worth, in over a decade of using and recommending ThinkPads, I've never encountered a bad keyboard before. Dead pixels are fairly common, though.

That's just plain nonsense, and reveals that you've never actually supported 100 or 1000 laptops at once and become familiar with real-life failure rates of PC laptops from 2005-2015 vs. Macs.

If you have good statistics on real-life failure rates between Macs and ThinkPads/EliteBooks that contradict me (hopefully going past 2015, when Mac build quality really went down), by all means share them. I don't work in IT support and never claimed that I did.

This seems like a weird question. I like OSX well enough and I would rather not incur the cost of switching to a different software toolchain.

> shell out $90 every two years

More like $15 if you don't mind 3rd party adapters...

> I would probably enjoy having dedicated Step In/Step Over/Step Out buttons when debugging

This is the main drawback of current MacBooks, difficult to debug with them.

> A reasonably spec'd MBP is now pushing $3k

Yeah, on the other hand 13" now has a quadcore i7 that is faster than 4790k. 16GB RAM limit is too low (32GB chips are available) and SSDs are way overpriced. Latest butterfly keyboard is much better than the previous variants; touchbar is the only thing that really kills it for serious developers.

Yes, removing magsafe was regression. They could (or somebody could) do a magsafe adapter for them perhaps.

But this fetish to produce the smallest - we saw this before with mobile in the early day and that ended with what got affectionately known as the mars bar phone, then things got sane again.

But with laptops it is different - what we effectively have is - hey look at our new cool smaller and lighter laptop. Don't look at the now heavier, larger bag of adapter and accessories you now need to carry so you may use it as you intended.

Why their consumer base puts up with it makes no sense until you view the core of them as you view religion. Almost case for many that if Apple says jump, they jump. [EDIT ADD] This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEERq5tLiOY maybe sums it up :).

I like you comparision of Cook, maybe we will get a video of him one day doing a parody of Ballmer's infamous developers developers developers speech, with smaller smaller smaller. Maybe that has already happened - nobody would be supprised.

A number of people have created magsafe adapters for USB-C but it's never really taken off.

Aha, thank you - good to know.

Had a quick google and yay - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Magnetic-Compatible-MacBook-Reversi... - though that was one of the first links that jumped out, nice picture of what it is, but if your getting one, do look around more as probably better or cheaper options.

Make sure they don't fry your power adapter - some USB-C magsafes like to do that upon disconnecting the cable from magsafe area.

> USB-C are a mess

Apple doesn't support USB-C adoption themselves, look at the cables included in all of their peripherals and the iOS lineup. They are all USB-A. Everything they sell is incompatible out of the box if you have anything in the MacBook line.

I'm spending $300 on your keyboard and trackpad... and I can't even plug it into my MacBook. I have to buy a separate $20 USB-C cable.

Why are they not including USB-A and USB-C cables in the box... if you're pushing for transition, put your money where your mouth is and take the (insignificant) hit. Or sell multiple unit versions that include the different USB types.

There is no transition strategy. Years after introducing USB-C, they don't even support it themselves. It's just so thoughtless and careless, and cheap.

How do people see removing Magsafe as a downgrade? My wife's Air has a Magsafe and the damn thing just keeps falling off.

My new Air's charger has none of those problems. And if the cable gets torn, I can just plug in another.

Even better, I can charge my other devices from the same cable. Right now, I'm charging my OnePlus phone with the same cable.

This was definitely one case where Apple actually practiced some pragmatism

Have you ever tripped over a cable with the Magsafe connector while attached to your laptop? It comes off, like it's supposed to. What about the USB-C connectors? The laptop comes off the desk.

This assumes that Magsafe laptops will never fall off the table, even if pulled at less than ideal angles, and USB-C laptops will always fall off the table, even if pulled at the perfect angle for unplugging.

Unless you read it uncharitably and require disclaimer clauses in every internet comment, their comment just suggests that one is better than the other and points out a practical and reasonable scenario that demonstrates this difference.

I really don't want an HN where we have to constantly hedge against an absolute reading of our comments with disclaimers like "btw, there are exceptions."

What is the use case for tripping over your laptop charger cable?

I just can’t see myself having to do that very frequently, but I definitely remember the constant struggle that was keeping the magsafe cable plugged in.

You only have to do it one to remember forever.

coffee shops, conference rooms, over at my friends place.

Magsafe has saved my laptop from a fall many times. it's a downgrade to me.

The use case is taking your laptop out of the office and working in other places: the whole point of a laptop.

> How do people see removing Magsafe as a downgrade?

Because it's so much easier to plug in. Get the plug close, and the magnet does the rest.

In contrast, with USB-C, you not only have to align it with the receptacle, you also have to apply considerable force. I've had my MBP fail to charge overnight because I mistakenly thought the USB-C cable was plugged in all the way.

USB-C cables also don't have the little LED to tell you that a) the computer is receiving juice (yellow or green); and b) whether the computer is fully charged (green). Just that feature alone would have save me from the not-charging situation I mentioned above.

   USB-C cables also don't have the little LED to [visually represent status]

IIRC, Dell's Thunderbolt dock cables have a light that turns on when your laptop is plugged in. (I don't have one yet, but some of my coworkers do.)

I disagree. I love the Magsafe adapter on my mid-2013 Macbook Air.

> And if the cable gets torn, I can just plug in another.

Personally, I am less concerned with the cable than I am for the power socket on the laptop, which if damaged could require replacing the whole motherboard.

I'm conflicted about the power adapter. I miss Magsafe. But I don't miss paying ~$80 when I (admittedly, stupidly) forget my charger on a trip. I can buy a $30 USB power brick, and then a USB C extension cable for a couple of dollars if I need a longer cable.

My dream is a Magsafe cable. USB C on both ends, magnetic connector in the middle (or near one end). Best of both worlds. But Apple wouldn't be able to charge $80 for that.

>My dream is a Magsafe cable

Like this[0] ?

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Magnetic-Adapter-Connector-Quick-Char...

I've got a similar product, but unless the company doesn't want USB-C certification the adapter is _really easy_ to pull out.

Apple could have kept magsafe and added USB C. Didn't have to get rid of magsafe.

My favorite MagSafe adapter ever has been a 3rd party one with a giant cable (that uses the '8' connector that is used by a lot of my TVs etc as well) which I bought on Amazon for $35 bucks. It also has 3, 2.1Amp USB-A ports for charging my phone / kindle / etc.

It's really great and has lasted for 2 years so far with zero problems.

I disagree with all of these. USB-C is great. You can use non-Apple chargers now, and external batteries. I never understood the dongle issue. You almost always need a cable to connect to something anyway, right? So why not carry a C-A cable instead of an A-A cable? Or a C to HDMI cable instead of an HDMI to HDMI cable? Or do people really leave cables at home and count on their destination having the right ones?

I don't even know why anyone would need that many cables. I've had to plug in a USB drive into my Macbook literally once in six months, and for that, I got a $5 C-A adapter that's half the size of my thumb.

I used to think that Apple dropping CD drives in the original Air was a dealbreaker, but we all know how that CDs are largely redundant. The same way, we might realize in a few years that USB-A is redundant

I didn’t even mind the non-retina display on the Air. But ffs give me an IPS panel at least. For years I see it being called the best laptop again and again by tech journalists. I always wondered if I was in a parallel universe.

Despite not having IPS, I would still consider the Air of yesteryear to be the best laptop (for most people). I had the 2012 and 2014 models and found they were the perfect balance of form factor, build quality, and non-pro performance.

I haven't evaluated the latest Retina Air, but if it improves on the non-Retina air with a better display and TouchID, it's still probably the best laptop for most people.

>The dongles and USB-C are a mess.

The failure here is that they did not leverage their power over the market to drive adoption faster. Apple managed to get all the music labels in line back in the day, perhaps they could have done a little more to encourage peripheral makers. They could have, at the very least, dropped their proprietary lightning connector in new products in favor of USB, but I suppose they were blinded by the potential to increase short term revenue by selling superfluous future e-waste.

One would assume that they had gained knowledge as to how to encourage adoption of Type C with their experience with their previous supported standards which failed to become popular, but evidently not.

Adaptor and cable sales may have given them some revenue, but the need to use them, together with the other problems with their laptops have tarnished their brand.

The Ballmer comparison seems apt. Coasting on astronomical financial success while pursuing a vision (remember “Windows everywhere”?) that consumers don’t actually seem to want.

Fortunately it seems that Microsoft has experienced a renaissance. I wonder if Apple has the humility and self-reflection to do the same.

> The 2-meters-at-most charging cables are a downgrade

From what exactly? My 2015 MBP and partner's older Air both have 2 meter cables from the Magsafe connector to Transformer. Mac power supplies have always had a modular transformer to mains connector that you can swap out for longer if you need.

The MagSafe has a brilliant feature which is often forgotten: You can take someone else's MagSafe cable and plug it into your own MacBook without disturbing that person.

This is possible because of the magnetic connector, of course, but it's also because the connector has a light that tells you that the laptop is fully charged.

I frequently sit in an office with co-workers, or in a room with friends, and there's an unspoken rule that you can nab someone's charging cable if you need to charge your own MacBook.

The light helps in situations where the other person isn't near their MacBook, too. You'd obviously never take a charging cable from someone's laptop that might be low on juice. But if the light is green, you can.

> The light helps in situations where the other person isn't near their MacBook, too. You'd obviously never take a charging cable from someone's laptop that might be low on juice. But if the light is green, you can.

If they were doing any computation with the lid closed, that's not going to make you any friends.

Surely they'd need an external screen connected for that.

I personally like the lack of Magsafe. It means I can charge my macbook pro and my iphone with the same cab... oh wait, no I can't. Add iPhones still using lightning to this list.

You can get cables longer than 2m. I have 4m usb-c cable for charging my computer. And as for dongles, most people will need only one. And it's not like with other computers you don't need any dongles. Lottery with display connectors was always PITA (vga, hdmi, mini hdmi, micro hdmi, displayport, minidisplayport, dvi, mini-dvi). Having usb-c for that should finally solve this in some time.

I don't have a newer Mac and I still have a box full of adapters.

MicroHDMI-to-HDMI, MiniHDMI-to-HDMI, DisplayPort-to-HDMI, DisplayPort-to-VGA, DisplayPort-to-DVI, HDMI-to-DVI, USB-to-MiniUSB, USB-to-MicroUSB, Mini-to-MicroUSB...

Then there are the Flash Memory readers...

> The 2-meters-at-most charging cables are a downgrade which will mean shorter battery life due to lesser plugging in.

You must be referring to the fact that the extension cable is no longer bundled with USB-C MacBooks like it was with Magsafe MacBooks. To me that's extremely minor. I almost used my extension cable. And the new wall charger that lets you just unplug the USB-C cable and replace it with your own is a big plus for portability because it means you can use whatever USB-C length cable you want for charging. Plus the USB-C standard means I can buy a very lightweight and relatively cheap PowerPort Atom PD 1 charger for my MBP that I keep in my backpack so I always have a charger with me even when I'm not home or at the office. In other words, way better battery life.

> The dongles and USB-C are a mess. The 2-meters-at-most charging cables are a downgrade which will mean shorter battery life due to lesser plugging in. The lack of Magsafe is a downgrade, they removed a feature. The lack of any port variety which my 2013 Macbook Air did exceedingly well is a major downgrade. Consumers must carry a variety of dongles because the laptops don't offer a variety of ports.

Must we? My USB-C external hard drive and USB-C phone disagree with you. As does my USB-C magnetic adapter and my USB-C monitor. No dongles here.

USB-C is the future (for USB), someone has to force the change.

The only place I ever plug anything besides a power cord into my macbook is at my desk, where there's a usb-c hub that has power, an external monitor, a USB mouse, a USB keyboard, and another open USB A port on it. I plug that single thing into my macbook and my entire workstation is plugged in. It's way less of a hassle than you're making it out to me.

Great, it works for your use case. Not everyone does that, not everyone has the same requirements as you.

When i goto offices not setup for USBC and need to plug in power, monitor and ethernet?

At a conference and i want to do external display, power and my cellphone to charge it & tether?

With my 2015 i'll often (and easily) plug in 3-5 things at once when not at home (there i have a macmini)

Now try doing that with a 4k monitor at 60Hz. You can’t.

Also they dropped nvidia so I can't train models on the GPU. I'm switching to PC + ubuntu for by next laptop.

You trained Deep Learning models with a 2GB GPU? It must be a very niche problem where it both fits on an onboard mobile GPU and provides a significant performance gain over CPU considering the data transfer overhead?

eGPU most likely... With Sierra even NVidia worked fine, from High Sierra it's a disaster.

The lack of magsafe innovation really pisses me off.

Make a friggen magsafe USB port. Period.

>The dongles and USB-C are a mess

No, they are not. People have been saying the same when Apple killed NuBus, SCSI, serial, the old iPod adapter... USB-C is leaps better than old USB and is here to stay.

I wish Dell had an XPS 13 with 2x USB-C Thunderbolt.

People should really stop complaining about the dongle situation.

Just about any portable device can be bought with USB-C or wireless. For fixed desk hardware (keyboard, mouse, monitor, ethernet) you should use a TB dock anyway.

Yes, if you do presentations you probably need a dongle for the projector, but that has always been a mess anyway (VGA, HDMI, DP, DVI, it's never the same connection as your laptop).

Yes, if you use a camera you'll need an external SD card reader, but you'll need that for many other computers too.

> People should really stop complaining about the dongle situation.

You're not really refuting anything below, just essentially saying to people: you know, I know better than you, you don't really need these things (the same thing Apple is saying).

> Just about any portable device can be bought with USB-C or wireless. For fixed desk hardware (keyboard, mouse, monitor, ethernet) you should use a TB dock anyway.

Never had a need for a dock before...

> Yes, if you do presentations you probably need a dongle for the projector, but that has always been a mess anyway (VGA, HDMI, DP, DVI, it's never the same connection as your laptop).

I dunno, HDMI is pretty standard these days.

> Yes, if you use a camera you'll need an external SD card reader, but you'll need that for many other computers too.

No my current MBP, though, which is the point here.

People should really stop defending the dongle situation ...

My 4K monitor bought in 2016 doesn't have a USB C input so I need to purchase a $20+ USB-C to HDMI or DP cable if I want to use a monitor?

My iPhone SE bought in 2016 uses Lightning so I have to buy a $20+ Lightning to USB C cable to charge that as well? I guess I should throw out all of the other Lightning to USB-not-C cables I've had to purchase over the years?

My Apple USB keyboard bought in 2016 also uses USB-not-C so I guess I have to buy an adapter for that too?

Meanwhile my 2013 MBP is perfectly capable of connecting to a monitor and keyboard and charging a phone without paying for add-ons.

On top of that you suggest we "should" be using a $200+ TB dock anyway?

How about Apple doesn't require users to buy $300+ of adapters to use their latest laptop with modern peripherals?

In 2016 there were already usb-c peripherals that you could've opted for though. I've used a thunderbolt/usb-c monitor since then, which uses 1 cable for video data and mbp charging. This convenience alone has sold me on usb-c as the future.

This is not an Apple situation. I own a Lenovo laptop and I also had to invest in ~450 euro in peripherals (TB dock, extra chargers, cables). That's just the reality if you want multiple places (work, home, on the road) to work comfortably with a laptop.

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