My jaw hit the floor when I saw USB A ports. If only it had multiple HDMI ...
Say that you're a manufacturer trying to keep an eye towards wants new vs supporting what's old, what decisions do you make to support new and retro without increasing the costs? At some point, having backseat decision makers giving input results in the car designed by Homer.
Of all of the things I've personally railed on Apple about in the past as well as others, their most recent HW offerings have been a great compromise. They've brought back some USB-A, SD card reader, HDMI, etc. They realized they've gone too far in certain areas, but some how they had a come to Jeebus meeting that reigned them back in.
> trying to keep an eye towards wants new vs supporting what's old
No one is suggesting they trade anything away. Apple has settled on USB-C. But there's plenty of extra room on the rear panel. Your argument assumes benevolence on Apple's part. For all you know the chips support dual HDMI, they removed it to save money which ends up being pure profit because they didn't reduce the product price at all. Do you think adding a second HDMI would increase the arbitrary price from $2k to $2k plus $20?
For the record, I would LOVE it if the Mac startup chime played "La Cucaracha"
Sure, but I don't think any Apple Silicon Mac has dual HDMI. While I guess it's possible that they spent the money to design dual HDMI support in their own chips and then said "but now that we've done this, we can save twenty bucks by not actually making the physical ports," but doesn't it seem likely that they also saved the money by…not putting it on the chip?
> Do you think adding a second HDMI would increase the arbitrary price from $2k to $2k plus $20?
Do you think anyone contemplating buying a computer that starts at $2K is going to suddenly stop, slap their forehead, and scream, "To connect two HDMI monitors, I'm going to have to buy a $15 USB-C to HDMI cable instead of a $6 HDMI cable! That extra $9 blows my budget! CURSE YOU, TIM COOK!"
I mean, I get what you're saying, but this just seems like a weirdly tiny hill to die on. :)
> For the record, I would LOVE it if the Mac startup chime played "La Cucaracha"
Well, who wouldn't.
However, it's not like you have to replace your monitors because of only one HDMI port. There are cables that go from TB4 to HDMI without dongles. Yes, you would need a new something instead of the something you already have.
Do you really know what the cost of adding a 2nd HDMI port to a system is? I do not. I do know it will be much more than the cost of the actual port connector itself. There's a new hole to be added to the case. There's more robotically soldered points to connect the new port to the system. Of the way the system is laid out on the board, is there enough bandwidth to supply signals to all of the ports? I have no idea the level of complexities involved in deciding what ports are available with the bandwidth of the system, but I do not for a second think that I could do it better.
Also, I'm pretty excited to replace my big tower with this thing and finally get my computers off the floor.
Because of the "sleek" design and smaller size, Apple has people convinced that the computer should be like children in the '50s--seen but not heard.
If you offer someone a computer in the shape of the mac mini or this new studio design OR they could have a typical PC style box, I'm guessing the majority of people will choose the smaller box. Even if there are no Apple logos on the smaller box. Nobody wants a 30+lb box any more. As an editor, you can take this bad boy on the road with you without incurring overweight luggage fees at the airport.
MAKE IT THICKER. IT'S A GODDAMN DOORBELL. YOU CONTROL THE THICKNESS! THERE IS LITERALLY NO REQUIREMENT IT BE THAT THIN!
<3
-- I really get so angry when these arguments are given so I feel your pain.
FWIW I do have a thickness requirement to install one on my door
Not only that but with the Ultra variant, all of the USB-C ports are thunderbolt 4 ports at 80gb/s, that's a massive amount of IO.
(note that despite the number of ports - only 4 of them can be running displays, plus the HDMI port gets its own channel)
On Max it's only 4 thunderbolt ports (and I would assume 2 displays + 1 HDMI since it's half of an Ultra) but still, that's about 2x anything else on the market.
And people who only have HDMI cables! I was using display port on my old MacBook, but I'm using HDMI on the new one as I already had an HDMI cable, but not a USB-C to DisplayPort one.
I had a M1 Mac Mini but I do occasionally want to take a Mac with me so I replaced it with the Air. I only slightly miss the extra ports on the Mini.
That was on a Dell desktop I had at a previous job. Not sure if it was just kinda crappy, or whether the inrush current on those Model Ms is just that big.
Also, the Mac Studio actually has an HDMI port.
They have multiple TB4 ports. I'm not sure if their USBC ports are video-compatible. If you get the ultra, then the front ones are TB4, as well.
Don‘t forget the headphone jack!
It's at the top to the left of the USB-A ports.
I mean, if you're going to break with Apple tradition and have visible ports on the front, seems like you'd want the headphone jack to be one of them.
I use a Lenovo Thunderbolt dock for both my M1 16" MBP and a Lenovo laptop running Linux. It runs 2 x DisplayPort monitors, mouse, keyboard, and webcam.
Yep. There are monitors with Type-C, power delivery, usb hub, so they avoid you the need of having a dock. Usually they're priced at around monitor+fancy dock, so it doesn't even cost more for more practicality.
Otherwise, it has been great, especially with games.
> Supported Interface: DisplayPort (G-SYNC, FreeSync), HDMI (FreeSync).
[0] https://gscs-b2c.lge.com/downloadFile?fileId=Do77Cjc9rIkTamu...
Just to be clear yes I know USB-C thumb drives exist but they are next to useless because their whole purpose is to shuttle files between devices. Devices that likely don't have USB-C yet.
USB-A is the de-facto standard for thumb drives. Are we all just supposed to throw them away overnight because Apple blessed us with computers without USB-A ports? Or, they'll sell you a dongle for $19 which can be had on Aliexpress for $0.75. Would it have killed them to throw an extra USB-A 3.x port on the nearly empty front panel? It carries nearly the same signals as USB-C minus power delivery. No, this was a purely aesthetic decision. Apple could design a brick PC with no ports besides power and people would still pleasure themselves into a coma at the thought of spending $2k on such a grotesque monstrosity.
If you are willing to buy a $0.75 anything from Alibaba and trust it with your precious data, you do you. As I've already suggested, you more than likely already have everything you need in a drawer, on your desktop, etc that will allow multiple USB-A devices to connect through a single port.
This seems like a very disingenous way of saying that Apple is one of the largest companies on the planet and sells hundreds of millions of devices a year.
Given that Apple regularly supports devices almost a decade old with firmware updates, has one of the most aggressive environmental agendas in the industry, and has invested billions of dollars in recycling programs, I would hazard a guess and say that on an adjusted basis they probably compare very favourably to competitors like Samsung and other OEMs.
>USB-A is the de-facto standard for thumb drives. Are we all just supposed to throw them away overnight because Apple blessed us with computers without USB-A ports?
You're upset about having to reach seven inches further to plug in a USB drive. If that's enough to cause you to throw all of your thumb drives away then I'd say that reflects more on you than on Apple.
>Or, they'll sell you a dongle for $19 which can be had on Aliexpress for $0.75.
There's a considerable engineering (and therefore cost) difference between a dongle that carries all the required electrical certifications, and a 75c Chinese firestarter that stands as much chance of damaging your computer as enhancing it, but that's moot anyway since nobody is forcing you to buy the Apple-made adapter in the first place.
>Would it have killed them to throw an extra USB-A 3.x port on the nearly empty front panel?
Given the form factor, quite possibly. It isn't as simple as just cutting out a slot and sticking a connector in, you need to route that connecter internally and find space on the logic board for the supporting circuitry, which has all sorts of difficult implications for the board layout.
And for what? How many thumb drives do you think the average person needs to plug in at any given moment? Why do you assume that your extremely narrow use-case is so important that it must be given the highest possible priority for Apple's engineers to meet?
The overwhelmingly vast majority of consumers, even pro consumers, will do just fine plugging their thumb drives into the back of the very small box sitting in front of them, or plugging in a USB hub to one of the USB-C ports on the front. Why add complexity and cost to solve a non-problem for a tiny subset of users who, if they're anything like you, were never going to buy an Apple product irrespective of what ports it has on the front?