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Comment by ballenf | Hacker News Reader

At work, the new MacBooks with HDMI are trickling in and I've never seen so much excitement around a laptop. People (mostly Product people) just giddy they don't need a dongle to connect to screens.

I didn't realize how much people hate dongles.

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I mean, I buy a dongle and maybe it’ll support 1080p, maybe 1440p, maybe 4K? Who knows! The Amazon review certainly won’t tell you, the company selling it to you will lie through their teeth. You won’t find out until you’re plugging it in (probably during a presentation) It’s just so much fun playing dongle roulette.

This made me laugh too much. It's true on so many levels with anything I bought recently on Amazon.

Kind of makes me wonder if Ive’s late Apple designs would stand up better in a world where Amazon was better and you could reliably receive what you ordered. Does anyone else remember that gentleman who worked at Google with one of their USB-C charging Chromebooks that would test various USB-C cables to see if they met spec until one fried his Chromebook?

But dongles would still suck so probably the answer is “technically yes, but not in a meaningful way”.

Buy the dongle from Apple and it will be expensive, but it will work perfectly.

Well that depends. The old Apple HDMI to USB C dongle doesn't do 4K 60Hz so if you buy used or the shop you're at has old stock...

The other adapters like the VGA one they make also don't support more than 60W PD passthrough and they don't really make this clear on the store page or packaging either.

Please add a trigger warning to your post. /s

I just wish MacBooks had something like HPs half height expanding Ethernet jacks.

That would be fantastic. I’ll never use HDMI, but I would love to have an Ethernet port!

Apple would never do this, this can't possibly be made to look "clean" enough for them to even consider

This is the port.

https://images.app.goo.gl/n3TFrbnZ8JbjzVyp9

It expands to support a standard Ethernet jack

It’s a good example of the difference between product and service design —- the product designer wants to prune ports to make the hardware smaller, lighter, and sleeker, while the service designer wants the user to not have to spend an hour browsing paid Amazon reviews to find the one dongle that will work, won’t catch on fire, and can get delivered before they have to get on a flight for a client presentation.

I actually like that I can connect everything - keyboard, mouse, two monitors, headphones, power, ethernet via one thunderbolt cable.

What I'd hate is the fact that I'd have to unplug everything and take this dock with me if I wanted to connect in the conference room.

You can still do that with the newer MacBook Pro with extra ports.

I did this, and I had to use all of the ports, except for card slot.

Every time I had to connect or disconnect 6 cables, now I have to connect only one.

What? I have a 2016 MacBook Pro (Touch Bar, maxed out), 2019 MacBook Pro (16” Intel, maxed out) and a 2021 MacBook Pro (16” M1 Max, maxed out). All can connect with the same single cable to my 2 x 5K displays, ATEM + DSLR webcam, audio interface and gigabit ethernet without any issue. The difference is the M1 can ALSO connect more easily to projectors, and have the protection of MagSafe when away from the desk. The keyboard is hands down the most comfortable on the 2016 (butterfly) though, so I tend to use that away from my desk.

Wait what? How are you doing that? I want this thing so my laptop can be more easily unplugged and stop being a stylish desktop pc

The legendary dongle! The one that serves as a docking station! I’ve heard of this one, a major company here has it. Even for them, they had their IT team to research it, and it’s valued $300 on the internal resale forum.

So, the magic dongle that delivers the USB-C dream is ultra expensive and rare and only worth finding if you have 6000 employees to provide.

No, I bought a dongle on Amazon that I use for my M1 Air for $60. It takes up both USB-C ports, but it handles power, can do 4K@60Hz HDMI (only for 1 display though), has an SD card reader, a few USB-A ports, and maybe another USB-C port. More ports than I’ve ever had to use. The read/write speeds aren’t best in class, but it was only $60.

It’s nice to only have to unplug one thing to be able to take my laptop somewhere, and I like the 2 port design more than I thought I would.

What you want is a Thunderbolt dock.

Be warned that they aren't cheap. Most of the good ones cost $300 - $400; I'd recommend looking at options from Caldigit and Anker.

When I bought in to usb-c I was pretty excited about this, but man to get a dongle to do all of that you listed and working as expected was like a couple hundred dollars, or you roll the dice with the no name brands. Eventually that laptop died and I went back to a macbook that had all the ports I needed on the dongle already built in, and life has been somewhat simpler.

The old laptops had mini display port - you didn’t need a dongle to connect to a screen.

Because every TV in every space in your office has a mini display port cable hanging out of it for you to plug into?

We use WiFi to stream the signal, which is far more convenient. But yeah, all the monitors have display port as well if you want to plug in.

That’s great. We have lots of large TVs for sharing in meeting spaces but these tend to have an HDMI cable hanging off them (you don’t want to try to plug your own cable in as it can be tricky to reach) so being able to plug that cable into your laptop is good. I carry an adapter.

Having said that, most of our spaces now have a box that lets you share via Teams meeting, which generally works fine too.

No cables is the holy grail!

All our monitors on desks have a USB-C cable so that’s nice and easy to get connected with these days.

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