And what exactly is wrong with that?
Ever seen musician's gear?
Even the cheapest, smallest mixer boards support XLR, RCA, 1/4", and often USB for audio I/O -- and have many of them.
Because yes, everyone has something essential to their flow, and number of configurations grows exponentially.
Honestly? Presentation. That's why I consider it a dumb argument in general. People mention "Homer's car" or equivalent memes from works of fiction as some kind of ridiculous contraptions, but don't bat an eye when a show like Star Trek does the same. The big difference, IMO, is that Homer's car is delivered to you up front, a solution looking for problem(s). Star Trek's tricorder or roundabout or a starship only happen to show a different one-off feature every episode - so the realization that the equipment is deeply multipurpose, and has all those features already present, kind of flies past people who're not into this sort of thing.
A laptop should be a general computing device. So why hard-code something as weirdly specific as an SD card reader into it? Give it the functionality to have any IO device attached (USB-C) instead.
Because a laptop is a portable device, and carrying something with dongles dangling from it is something that nobody wants to do.
Now all we need is an industry standard for those.
The sanest system I've seen in a decade at least.
I don't even need a new laptop, and I still want this one.
Say what you want about the MacBook’s lack of user-replacability, but it’s basically a tiny chip board about the same size as the iPhone’s, with a big box of batteries holding it.
Not buying it. I'll take extra 2mm for 3.5mm and usb a.
(The answer is of the same level as question. If you want to imply that there's a significant gain, go prove it.)
Looking at the insides, I'm going to guess about 2 watt hours. Or they could have made it unmeasurably thinner.
> Say what you want about the MacBook’s lack of user-replacability, but it’s basically a tiny chip board about the same size as the iPhone’s, with a big box of batteries holding it.
Framework has 55 watt hours. The obsolete macbooks have 41. Both intel and M1 macbook pros have 58. Both intel and M1 macbook airs have 50.
Sounds like that lack of user-replacability isn't necessary.
Even worse when they're the pathetic failure (host-side) that is USB-C, so nothing fits without a dongle anyway. Bonus points if you have to waste one of them for charging the laptop, yay!
I guess some of those are analogue? I guess you can't squeeze those all through the same physical form factor connector. You can with digital, so let's reduce the clutter and do it!
The only insurance against “the USB-C downtime” is a subscription to Amazon Prime 24hrs delivery and another $68 (no kidding) Apple cable.
Not sure what you mean - I said didn't really apply to analogue.
3.5mm TRS, dual 3.5mm TS, dual RCA, 1/4" TRS, dual 1/4" TS, XLR cables transfer the same kind of signal, and you can easily convert between the connector with dongles.
Mixers have all of these so that you wouldn't have to.
The utility is not thinking about where the f***ing dongle is when you just want to plug something in.
I'm sure that other factors play a role. The economics of going digital would be terrible if it meant replacing a significant amount of equipment every time a new standard took over the market. Again, pointing to USB (since that it what everyone seems to associate with universal digital connections), we have seen three major iterations and a number of minor ones over the past 30 years. That's hardly the type of cycle that businesses want to hop onto given that a tiny operation requires thousands of dollars of equipment, where any given component may be anywhere from a couple of years old to over a decade old.
... None of which broke existing functionality. I can plug a full-speed device from 2000 into a USB-3 A port and it will work perfectly (as long as there is still software support for the vendor-specific drivers that might have been necessary for non-class-compliant devices).