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Comment by bgorman | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand all the praise around ditching USB-C. After all these years there is finally a port that works well for all use cases - charging, data transfer, video transfer… And now we have a company reverting back to a proprietary charging port and a legacy video port created to satisfy the entertainment industry.

Monitors have been shipping with usb-c in for years, and passive usb-c to displayport/hdmi cables exist.

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The "proprietary charging port" is a) optional (you can also charge on the USB-C ports up to 100W), b) extremely handy for those of us used to the old magsafe ports, and b) actually a USB 3.1 port with extended power range in disguise.

The power brick that ships with the Macbook Pro is a USB-C wall adapter. The magsafe cable is USB-C on one end and magsafe on the other. The extended power range spec allows going up to 240W instead of only 100W per the original USB power delivery spec. The 16" Macbook Pro can draw up to 140W.

There aren't currently available any standard USB-C cables that support extended power delivery. The higher current requirements entail more robust cables that will have a compatibility marking on them.

Having dual charging methods is pretty great if you’ve got a Thunderbolt/USB-C hub/monitor that is capable of USB-PD. It means you can leave your brick and MagSafe cable in your bag and let your hub/monitor charge while you’re at your desk.

These new laptops from Apple come with "Three Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports"

So they are clearly not "ditching USB-C." They are just re-adding convenient ports; plug in HDMI in a pinch, throw your DSLR memory card right in the card reader.

Those things work very well without needing to remember an extra cable or adapter.

Contrary to my MacBook, I don’t tend to leave my monitor laying around the house with the charger plugged in.

I’m clumsy, I tend to accidentally stumble of cables that are plugged in. (It doesn’t happen that often, of course, but once every few months is sufficient to kill my laptop.)

MagSafe is wonderful. The fact that it’s a proprietary connector is far less important than the fact that it protects me from my clumsiness.

I blame the designers of USB-C for not coming up with something that can offer the benefits of MagSafe.

(Of course, the battery life of the new laptops makes it less necessary to plug in while you’re sitting on the sofa…)

It still has 3 USB-C ports and you can still charge through it.

That sounds like less need for apple brand chargers, which is good for lifetime ownership

That "legacy video port" supports cable runs of lengths far greater than USB-C, making it way the hell more useful for lots of use-cases. Plus most of the rest of the computing world still ships HDMI, so "I can't plug in to this" is mostly a Mac problem, and only solved well at places that are Mac-only or Mac-mostly—everywhere else, you better tote your stupid, expensive dongles around with you.

Basically, Apple's been pushing USBC-only for over half a decade now, and you can still plug directly in to 99% of video devices in the wild with HDMI, and only 10% (even that much? Probably more like 1-2%, because so many video displays are TVs) with USB-C, without resorting to an adapter or special cable that (again) users of most other brands don't need. It's not "legacy", it's "not that weird crap that only Mac users need".

Compared to USB-C, Magsafe is safer against tripping, easier to plug in, charges faster, and their customers explicitly asked for it. If you want to use USB-C instead though, you can... knock yourself out.

There were somewhat prominent USB-C power delivery issues with (various types) of PD USB-C hubs bricking M1 macbooks. At least in the beginning. Not sure, if fixed in firmware now, but in any case: The M1 chips may be particularly prone to failure from power irregularities - and apple bad at implementing standards and safeguards for interfacing with third party hardware (which I think is somewhat known). Maybe apple just doesn’t want to deal with buzz-killing details of USB-C PD.

Every laptop I have with USB-C charging had a broken cable. It’s far too thin of a connector for laptop charging.

Yeah. The USB C ports on my 15" MacBook Pro feel loose and are starting to become flaky. I hope the new ones fare better and also take less abuse with charging going through MagSafe on the new machine.

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