Hacker News Reader

Comment by rakoo | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but how do you plug your new USB key and your charger at the same time ? The only solution is to bring a hub with you everywhere.

View on HN

I expect the charger will be a USB hub.

surprised this wasn't addressed in the keynote. I can see a lot of clever Apple-y solutions to this problem.

surprised this wasn't addressed in the keynote. I can see a lot of clever Apple-y solutions to this problem.

It wasn't addressed because Apple offers no solution (yet?).

It's not.

If you need expansibility and are running a large external monitor, that sounds pretty 'professional' to me.

Currently Apple offers these two:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital-av...

and

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MJ1L2AM/A/usb-c-vga-multip...

Unfortunately both only have 1080p HD. Let's hope there will be a (mini-)DVI version with a higher resolution soon.

Thanks for the links! Both of those are quite 'ewww' of course.

So we have the "USB-C Charge Cable" $29 (http://store.apple.com/us/product/MJWT2AM/A/usb-c-charge-cab...) -- I wonder if that is proprietary or if any cable would work. Then there's the "USB-C Power Adapter" $49 (http://store.apple.com/us/product/MJ262LL/A/apple-29w-usb-c-...).

Too bad they can't fit 29W into the smaller cube form factor which charges my phone. That would be incredible powering a laptop off of that.

Someone needs to create a much sleeker implementaion of a in-line 1-port hub. So basically something that looks like USB-C on both ends, but 4" from one side of the cable there's a quarter-sized circle of hard plastic that has the USB-C cable going through it, with another USB-C port available on the side.

I hope we will see USB-C to HDMI and USB-C to DisplayPort "cables" which are not big fat massive dongles but really function more like just a cable.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MJ262LL/A/apple-29w-usb-c-...

No hub.

Not every device needs to fill every use case. Apple apparently has reason to believe that use cases that require simultaneously using the port for multiple purposes are rare enough among potential users of the MacBook that they don't need to support those use cases. If this particular product doesn't provide all of the features you need, there are other products available from Apple and other manufacturers with additional features.

They're supported actually, Type C allows hubs and chaining, and Apple already has two splitters (HDMI/Type C/Type A and VGA/Type C/Type A) for sale.

They're way too expensive ($80), but give Type C is a standard port I expect Amazon Essentials or Monoprice will fix that pretty soon.

And I expect Apple will make sure those don't work, just like they did with generic Lightning cables.

They couldn't use the USB trademark if they broke compatibility with other USB-certified products.

They own Lightning themselves so they can do whatever they want there.

I completely agree that my needs may not be the needs of everyone and actually, when we're talking about Apple, they tend to be changing ways of usage rather than following them.

Another perspective I've seen recently about this is that this new Macbook will probably make people change their habit towards something traditionally only for smartphones: you'll see people keep their computer untethered for the larger part of the day, and only plug it for energy during the night. So, basically, mobile first instead of plugged first. You then have a port constantly available for whatever you want to plug on the go.

The only solution? Couldn't you buy a bluetooth keyboard?

A bluetooth keyboard doesn't solve the problem of needing to plug the computer to a charger while using a USB key.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com