Hacker News Reader

Comment by Finbarr | Hacker News Reader

Seems like there are some new $79 adapters to split out the USB-C port into power, usb and av[1]/vga[2].

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

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

I'm sorry but when you ship a machine with ONE PORT for the purposes of charging and peripherals, this absolutely needs to be in the box.

Nickel and $80'ering me on a $1400 computer is ridiculous. I'll stick with my thinkpad.

The Surface Pro's come with only one USB port on the device, they make it up for it with having one on the power brick which I think is an awesome idea.

The surface pro also has a separate charging port.

With this new macbook, one cannot charge and use a mouse at the same time without an $80 addon.

Well, the official Apple mouse does not require a dongle, their logic must be something along the lines of "that's what you get for using third party mice".

What if i want to connect an external harddisk? or a pen drive having my work documents? or I want to connect a projector to do my presentation.

Is Apple's logic "that's what you get for having friends or working with people who do not buy the latest apple devices"?

You are ignoring the obvious answer that Apple even said in the announcement: wireless everything.

This is exactly like the removal of the DVD drive in MacBook Airs. "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO USE MY DVDs?!?!?" The answer is: don't. Download things over the network instead.

Same logic applies here.

Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Syncthing, BTSync, Aerofs, and others would all serve this use case.

"Waiting to upload 336 files at 3.6kb/s. Estimated time to complete 3 weeks."

Seen such messages right when I NEEDED those files. Also - remember epic KDE failure? When they had corrupted repository and it was perfectly mirrored to 1500+ other repos? And they had to search offline PC with a uncorrupted snapshot?

In general "all cloud" tech is at most 50% ready for use by everyone.

So the whole world (my office, friends, family, clients, colleagues) should change to suit my laptop?

For a disruptive product to be successful it should not be behind its time (where others are already there) it should not be too far ahead of its time (The technology might not be ready, the people might not be ready to understand the product, etc), It has to be just ahead of its time. I am sorry but I maintain that Apple has overshot with this product. This is not like removing DVD support or even removing flash support, because a lot of the world is still wired. Except for those who are fortunate to live in their own Apple bubble, many of the people who buy this will have to frequently face the frustration of owning such a device with practically no reward (apart from shaving of a few inches and grams off their laptop).

You mean like this one?

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB112LL/B/apple-mouse

He's talking about the more popular (and wireless) magic mouse.

That mouse has literally been around forever, and no it's not what users are generally using now.

Wow, I didn't even know they still sold that model.

Third party mice that require their own dongle instead of using bluetooth are just stupid.

For general use, yeah.

For gaming, you can get less input lag with wireless mice with dedicated dongles if you're intent on going wireless.

The macbook does have bluetooth, so I don't really see your point. There are lots of inexpensive, perfectly decent bluetooth mice out there.

> With this new macbook, one cannot charge and use a mouse at the same time without an $80 addon.

Can't you just use bluetooth? I prefer a bluetooth mouse anyway. Wires get in the way.

Only if you like Apple's mice since no one else makes a half way decent Bluetooth mouse.

And a Mini Display port. External monitor(s) on the one and USB hub the other. Surface can drive 1 4k or 2 1080p monitors from that port. Will be interesting to see if you can get the daisy-chain of monitors off that AND have a spot to set up a hub or charge another device.

I don't get it. So you spend $1400 on a computer but a missing port adapter not everyone needs is deal breaker? I strongly believe you were never in the market for a Mac anyways, just using the opportunity to hate a bit.

I own a macbook right now (it's one of the best laptops I've owned) and I will use this one until it dies because I dislike what they are doing with the new one. If it stays this way, I will likely go back to a windows machine. I agree with the above comment. It's ridiculous. Actually it's not. It's pretty typical of Apple.

I'm surprised it isn't. My ASUS Ultrabook came with a USB-Ethernet and MiniDP-DVI adapters in the box, despite coming with the usual 2xUSB3, MiniDP & Micro HDMI ports.

Though I guess it's not that surprising. Back in the day, my Gen4 iPod came with a power brick, a USB cable and a Firewire cable. Now you get a single USB cable.

The iPhones at least -- haven't purchased an iPod in a long time -- still come with power bricks.

With Bluetooth, the cloud and AirPlay, who even needs those ports? People are up in arms every time Apple changes/deletes ports and are almost always wrong.

Go ahead and stick with your thinkpad.

Show up to give a presentation anywhere in the world. Standard plug-in? VGA. Maybe HDMI. You can't count on an AirPlay connection being present and I wouldn't want to rely on wireless video for important presentations with 20 seconds set up time anyway.

That is an atypical scenario unless your job requires frequent presentation. Even then, you are used to having an adapter in your bag or pocket.

To me, this is a great tradeoff: I get a lighter and thinner laptop for 100% of my computing, the downside being an adapter when I return the the dark ages of VGA connectors.

In fact, for my MacBook Pro, I will have fewer connections. Instead of power and Thunderbolt, I will just get one of the connectors that bridges power, external monitor and USB peripherals and plug in a single thing when I "dock" my laptop.

I will take that any day over the awkward Dell and Thinkpad docking stations I see my coworkers use.

> That is an a typical scenario unless your job requires frequent presentation.

I completely agree with this assessment. Even here on HN the majority of users are not giving presentations or even screen sharing. When it does matter, there is often a third party device they have to present from anway.

I'll take the adapter not being in the box, as for most users they won't be using it enough to warrant the extra cost.

I agree completely. The top comment in this thread was about wireless connections making wired connections redundant. I want wired video output as I trust it more than wireless. VGA is an inelegant but working solution. Dongle is no problem.

True, but since Macs have lost the ports, better venues are finally starting to cater to modern standards.

Personally, I think VGA is an abomination and people should react a bit stronger to be invited to a venue and having to deal with standards from 1987.

Your right, we have much better standard in HDMI, because every laptop has that now. Oh wait, except the Macbook Air which has display port. So HDMI and displayport, oh wait, USB type C. So that's it just three connections to replace VGA.

Oh, forgot about iPads, 2 different ones for that, and android phones at least 2 MHL connectors and whatever google does in their phones. We haven't even got onto mini and micro HDMI.

At least 10 different connectors on recent devices then? Don't you just love standards?

I dunno. In my personal experience having worked with a lot of projectors, televisions, monitors I find HDMI to be an incredibly buggy experience. VGA always just works. The only problem of VGA (and other newer digital standards) when compared to HDMI is the lack of audio support, and also i guess VGA support is declining compared to HDMI.

I think guests should graciously work with whatever hosts provide, as long as it works.

The thing is, it doesn't. It requires the device to be able to do a Digital to Analog conversion. In modern graphics chipsets, that capability is only needed for legacy compatibility with CRTs and old projectors. If you speak VGA to a projector or any flat panel monitor, you're really just feeding an Analog to Digital converter. It's nuts.

VGA has lower quality at high resolutions than something like DVI, DisplayPort, or HDMI. Then again, if the place still has a VGA connector, it's unlikely the projector is high-resolution.

Yes. So as a guest do you make the best of it or whine that there are better things available?

Being a good host is also kind of a thing, FYI, and part of that is going to the effort of making life nice for your guest.

If you're going to harp on hospitality, please remember it cuts both ways.

This is the rudest politeness advice I've ever seen. Props!

That particular use case is apparently not expected by Apple to be a common use case for the target market of this particular device. Fortunately, other devices with different features focused on different usage patterns are available for purchase from Apple and other manufacturers. It's strange that this is at all controversial.

On the contrary, it is totally expected. They sell a dongle with VGA out.

If it was expected to be a common use case, it would be included as a core feature. Furthermore, the number of people for whom "show[ing] up to give a presentation anywhere in the world" is a common use case is likely very small. I would go so far as to speculate that people in that category are greatly outnumbered by people across all demographics who use their laptops for sending emails, browsing the web, using productivity software, organizing media, and doing other software-centric tasks.

Cars do not come with child seats included as a core feature. Would you say that transporting under-10s is not a common use case of a family car?

> Furthermore, the number of people for whom "show[ing] up to give a presentation anywhere in the world" is a common use case is likely very small.

College students? It's always a big hassle finding a dongle whenever a MacBook user has to give a presentation in class.

Not to nitpick, but for a long time, to use a Mac with VGA you had to buy an adapter. Same for HDMI. There is a case that can be made on including this accessory in the box, but VGA cannot be part of that argument. Not for a Mac user.

Instead of buying mini DVI to VGA or Lightening to HDMI adapter, just buy this?

You are not nitpicking something I am not arguing. I'm happy with a VGA dongle.

Bring a ChromeCast. Plug it in to an HDMI point, bring a VGA-HDMI adapter, and it'll work fine on your own ad-hoc network.

Idea. ChromeCast like device that can pump out HDMI, DVI, display port and VGA, attach to it over wifi, it has a fallback where it can run the presentation off an SD card while itself acts as a wifi base station. The ChromeCast of presentation hardware.

I almost thought this was an amazing idea. Except most places venues I'm in don't offer HDMI either.

So, er, carry a VGA dongle? I mean, most laptops don't have actual VGA ports these days.

Yep, happy with that. I was responding to the parent comment that said roughly "with wireless everything, who needs wired ports?".

Wireless is usually OK in my living room but I would not count on wireless video working reliably in a conference room with 500 people on their laptop/phone. Shudder.

I have a YubiKey permanently occupying a USB port in my laptop for 2FA.

Whoa thanks for brining this to attention. I have this as well and didn't even think about it! I would need to carry an adapter with my YubiKey.

That doesn't sound very 2 factor.

It may not be the purest usage mode but even a permanently inserted YubiKey protects you when your password got sniffed on the network or by a keylogger.

Moreover the YubiKey also acts as a PGP smartcard, giving you a private key (for e.g. SSH) that an attacker can't extract even if they obtain root on your laptop.

As much as I would like a "Retina MBA", the lack of a separate USB port is a dealbreaker for me too.

As long as the machine is on, can't the attacker ask the YubiKey to generate signatures on their behalf?

This is similar to standard SSH agent forwarding attacks. A sysadmin connects to a malicious server via SSH. If the sysadmin turns on agent forwarding, then "malicious root" can remotely ask the sysadmin's agent (running on the sysadmin's laptop) to authenticate to any other machine that accepts the sysadmin's public key. The malicious root can log in to any other server the sysadmin has access to, as long as the sysadmin still stays connected.

As long as the machine is on, can't the attacker ask the YubiKey to generate signatures on their behalf?

For the 2FA OTP portion: No. The button needs to be physically touched.

For the PGP (ssh) portion: Yes. (but again, the attacker can not obtain a copy of the private key, that's the critical difference to your scenario)

That's why (at least for critical servers) you should combine the two. That way an attacker can at most piggyback your connections. He can not initiate his own because he can not touch the button.

No, the yubikey can not be activated from the OS, just from the touch capacitive sensor embedded in it. It can be re-programmed, but I've not seen a way to trigger a generation, even from the re-programmer.

It's a slick device.

It's still something you have, even if it's glued into your USB port.

You have to physically touch the device in order for it to function.

If you chose to read an unspoken "while I use it" it's more logical and in some environment required.

In defense of the parent: Apple sells more than just the 12" MacBook, and if its specs aren't to your liking then you're not the intended demographic. Some people DO want an extremely thin/light Mac and don't need more than a charging cable & audio jack, enough people that Apple decided it was worth going to this extreme. Want more ports/power/etc? get a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, or Mac Pro - each with a variety of configurations.

Maybe it's just not set up correctly, but my company has airplay in every conference room and we very rarely use it because its so fickle whether or not it'll acknowledge your MacBook. Maybe Yosemite fixed these problems but that's just trading one set of bugs/problems for another.

Most people I know, many times.

I'm still waiting for AirPlay to actually work in corporate environments. We have a mix of wired and wireless, which I believe live on different subnets. Bonjour just won't work with it.

Yeah, we have to rely on cables, when the wi-fi isn't fast enough to transmit the video - or whatever is causing the laggy video.

Wide-area Bonjour and Bonjour forwarding are things. It works if your IT department cares to figure it out.

Yeah, who on earth uses headphones with a laptop. Crazy.

There's a headphone jack on the right hand side.

Gee, and if you're one of the <20% in the US with access to fiber, you can even upload to the cloud at greater than 10 Mbps

Then it would be sold $1480... At some point I had 5 Nokia phone and 4 Dell laptop ones, power adapter. Why having an adaptor for VGA/HDMI/DVI/Display Port/USB/Ethernet/... shipped with all machines when all users probably won't need all but just one. This is a waste...

Why have a power port on every adapter?

We're both getting downvoted for this. I'm not sure what we seem to be missing!

Didn't MacBooks come with those connectors before? It's like when iPods and iPhones used to come with the desktop stands

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7357/11147888116_9be011e0b1_n...

So they should increase the price of the laptop by $80 for everyone so that you don't feel nickel and dimed? Why do you care if your receipt has that $80 listed a separate item or not?

Think about it. Eighty dollars just to get less than you had before (with the 11-inch Air). And you're already paying the Apple tax, plus that ugly adapter defeats the purpose of the whole making-it-pretty thing. All in the pursuit of a few millimeters.

I easily expect monitors to start supporting Type C input, where they feed the host machine power and do USB passthrough to a classic USB interface hub with maybe a daisychained type C port on there as well.

Its temporary. In five years everything will have these ports and adapters will not be necessary. In the same way today you can get a DP to VGA adapter instead of having a bulky analog video output, even if it costs $15.

Yes and yet I am still lugging adaptors - DP to VGA - DP to HDMI - DP to DVI Because I never know what I'll have when I present and you know what, I nearly always have to revert back to VGA, its not like HDMI is new !

I have a nice integrated laptop but I have all these parts around in my bag that I sometimes lose or forget connected to a projector somewhere. What may have seem like a simpler solution really wasn't in the end.

The one video adapter to rule them all http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NXDD5HQ/

Otherwise, completely agree - the current situation is messed up. Yet I'm glad Apple is leading the way, just like with SSDs.

Full disclosure: I don't own any Apple products or stock.

It isn't meant to be a simpler solution, but staying on analog video was never an answer. The only reason VGA projectors are still in use because they still work because we have all these passthrough options. Without them businesses would have replaced them as soon as VGA was going out of style, aka, 2002.

Replaced them with what? HDMI, which needs an adapter and can't be fed from VGA sources? DP/MiniDP, which again needs an adapter and can't be fed from VGA or HDMI sources? Maybe USB-C, which doesn't need an adapter if you bought an Apple laptop within the last few hours and don't need to put it on charge? (Otherwise it requires an adapter in order to interface with DisplayPort - but hey, at least it has that backwards compatibility!)

VGA's popular because it's the only option that actually works for everyone, and it's not for a lack of newer alternatives - in fact, the plethora of newer alternatives is the problem here.

I feel your pain because I also have to make presentations—and thus carry display adapters in my bag.

But the vast majority of people never have to make presentations or hook up to legacy projectors and monitors. So bulking up the machine itself to accommodate that does not really make sense.

Most people aren't travelling around presenting everywhere.

Having a ton of adapters seems to be required for that niche

That's what Apple said would happen for Thunderbolt.

I don't want to shell out another $900 monitor to replace my existing $900 monitor that adds no new features on top of what I had previously.

"And you're already paying the Apple tax"

Can we stop with this meme? There's no tax. There's a price for a product. Buy it or don't. I have followed the laptop market quite closely for very many years and I'm consistently disappointed in my attempts to find non-Apple laptops that are of comparable quality and specs at similar price points. And let's stop pretending that "specs" are simply "cpu/ram/harddrive", as those are a small subset of the factors that matter to consumers.

As someone who travels regularly for work, I am absolutely OK with Apple trimming as much as they can from their laptops.

Next they should trim the keyboard, monitor, battery, touchpad, and everything else except the Apple logo, since that's really all that matters anyway. Then you'll be able to travel really light.

I am all for portability but there comes a point where you start trimming essential functions. I'm not saying every laptop needs to have a SCSI port, but ONE connector?! I thought Apple was bad before with two USB slots and mini-DP. My Thinkpad Yoga, which I bought specifically for portability, manages to have 2 USB connectors, HDMI, built-in SD card reader, and other useful peripherals onboard, and yes, I do actually use these.

I think MacBooks are cool but I always find myself unable to use them for serious work. If I was a casual computer user that just needed to update Facebook once in a while, they'd probably be fine, but every time I've tried something more serious than that with one, I've ended up on a non-Apple product because why torture myself over fashion?

> trim away the keyboard, monitor, battery, touchpad, and everything else except the Apple logo.

Hey, I have one of these... it's called an iPod shuffle.

Hey, I have one of these... it's called an iPod shuffle.

Which curiously uses the headphone jack as an USB port[1].

Perhaps there's hope for someone to hack up at least an USB2.0 port on the MacBook using this method?

[1] http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2006/11/usb-ip...

I suppose it depends on how you define "essential", or perhaps "serious work".

Granted, most of what I do with my MBP is modern full-stack stuff, which I gather doesn't qualify as "serious" even if it does make me a good living. But I don't see how the type and number of ports on my laptop would make much difference if I were, say, writing Linux kernel modules for hardware nobody uses, or building a window manager in Haskell, or whatever the current definition of "serious" is among those who put so much weight on the term. I need to plug in a real keyboard; all else is commentary. (And who does embedded away from home, anyway? There's too much you need besides the computer, unless you're targeting an emulator, in which case what need have you of physical ports?)

But, hey, it's always easier to feel superior than it is to see the other guy's point of view.

I have a wireless mouse that works via a USB dongle, and I use a USB headset for my Skype calls with my business team. I also charge my cellphone from a USB port, especially when travelling, as it's far more convenient to have one plug adaptor and my Macbook Pro power supply than carrying a plug adaptor and a multi-box everywhere.

At the moment, the two USB ports I have on my MBP are pretty much bare minimum but every now and then I find myself juggling peripherals.

If that works for you, then great!

You might consider the same cheat I use for charging, which is to keep a small but reasonably capacious USB battery [1] in my bag, and top it up via USB whenever I happen to have a port free. Since it's specified to fully charge an iPad twice, it can charge my phone several times before running flat, and a fully powered USB port can charge the battery itself in a matter of a few hours -- an overnight charge is ample. (And, hey, the only thing I ever plug in my phone for anyway is power, so it's not like I'm losing anything by not plugging into a port on my laptop.)

Another trick worth considering is, instead of using a USB headset, instead to use one which connects via the headphone jack proper. Mine is a Sennheiser HD558 with an aftermarket cable incorporating an Apple-style mic/remote module, but you don't have to get that elaborate, especially since the HD558 isn't designed to travel and does not do so well; for simple VoIP purposes, anything halfway decent will do, and serve the purpose of freeing up a USB port for things that a headphone jack can't do.

[1] http://www.nothingbutsavings.com/Product/270265-APB27US-Targ...

Why should one go to all this trouble just so he can use a Mac? There are many decent competitors out there that don't require these types of hacks (and for the record, I carry two USB batteries in my bag since there are occasions when I'm in the field for extended periods of time (24 hours+), but I certainly wouldn't be charitable to the idea of draining that backup power because Apple thought I needed to save 2mm of vertical space more than I needed the ability to transfer battery power from my laptop to my phone). That's the gist of the thing here. Apple people take using Apple products seriously and will go to lengths to make it work. Other people take their work seriously and will use the tool that best suits their needs. It's hard for me to imagine a MacBook ever best suiting the needs of a user that's more advanced than the casual Facebook browser just because so many sacrifices are made for aesthetics, and honestly even that market is a dubious target for the MacBook since the emergence of the tablet (for lighter casual users) and the ultrabook (for heavier casual users).

Do we care more about having the sexiest laptop in the airport or getting more productive time in? That's the dilemma one goes through when choosing PC v. Mac.

Well, I'm not going to all that trouble specifically to use a Mac; both the headset and the USB battery long predate the MBP. (And USB headsets have never made much sense to me in the first place, regardless of the machine with which they're used.) These are just the expedients I currently use, of the sort which I've found all portable machines to require.

The sine qua non of a computer's usefulness to me is its ability to support Emacs. While my experience has been that, all else equal, any portable machine is inferior for this purpose to any desktop, I have yet to find a better portable Emacs machine than the 15" rMBP. When I do find one, I'll use it instead.

If your "all Apple users are fashion-obsessed lightweights" proposition is susceptible to the white raven's disproof, this should amply suffice. (When was the last time you ran across an Emacs user who was either "fashion-obsessed" or "lightweight"?) But I suspect you'll prefer to explain away a white raven, than to reconsider your apparent confusion of reality with an "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ad.

When I sit down to work on a laptop, unless I'm just stopping to check something for a couple of minutes, I usually want to plug in at least my phone (since publicly-available WiFi is not really a thing, often I have to USB tether to get usable connectivity (I could wifi tether if I had to, but this kills the phone's battery)), mouse, headphones, and AC adapter. I'll pretty frequently want to use an external storage device like an SD card or USB hard disk and if I'm in a real office, I'll usually want to plug in to the physical network (even non-Apple portables don't include this port usually anymore, so that's another USB port occupied) and use an external keyboard.

That's just me. A few of those things could be transferred to wireless peripherals, but not all of them, and wireless peripherals usually suck pretty bad. I have a Bluetooth headset that I try to use in the field occasionally and it's a nightmare switching between A2DP and telephony modes. I could switch to a wireless mouse, but then that's batteries and many of these take up a USB port anyway with a proprietary dongle. I don't usually carry a full keyboard around with me so I just gotta use what they have in the office, which again, even if it's wireless, often occupies a USB port.

To me, this is serious. I don't think I'm doing anything super special; I'm definitely not writing custom firmware for esoteric embedded devices from Starbucks or anything like that. Just your everyday developer and sysadmin.

Now, if I put a lot of effort into it and decided I was going to live on a MBP and therefore needed to keep my usage restrained to one or two USB ports max, I may be able to come up with an arrangement that works, but it's by no means the default; I most recently tried to live off a MBP for 5 months in the first half of 2013, and it didn't work out (the lack of ports was a constant annoyance, but not the impetus behind the change). I swapped it for a Thinkpad and was much happier. I find this happens to me every time I try to live off an MBP. The most successful run I had was 2006-2008 where an MBP was my sole laptop and I did a lot of remote work, but it was not really pleasant and I had a desktop that I used to supplement.

To be clear, I have bought 3 Apple laptops over the years of my own free will and used a few more that were owned by employers. It's not that I hate them (in fact I continue to be astonished by Retina displays, which I was sure was just going to be hype before I saw it in person, and wish PC makers would catch up), but I just don't think they're good workhorse machines for people who do real work. I think they're mostly a fashion thing that people force themselves to live with. I'd love to have one around the house as a casual computing machine, but it's hard to justify dropping $2k for the setup, when again, there is real work that would be better served by the same investment going to actually useful equipment or to labor.

I just don't really see a reason to force myself to heed Apple's insistence that while I think I may want more than two ports, I really don't. Even the way I use Apple hardware usually pisses off Mac devotees -- back in 2006 I made some permanent enemies out of a few acquaintances that were stunned I would be voluntarily using Fedora on a MacBook Pro. They kept repeating that they'd totally understand if it was a PC, but if I had to use Linux on a Mac, I was most likely just a retard who couldn't grasp the beauty gifted to earth by Humanity's Eminent Genius Steve Jobs. They continued this hostility every other time I saw them. Pretty bizarre.

When I sit down to work on a laptop, I want to open my laptop and start working. I don't even think about a charger until three or four hours have gone by. Your farrago of impedimenta is alien to me, but no doubt if I had something like it, the MBP's relative paucity of ports would annoy me, too.

>If I was a casual computer user that just needed to update Facebook once in a while, they'd probably be fine

Congratulations, you've identified the target market for the new MacBook.

I'm not so sure. I find most such persons will put some money into a phone or tablet, but if they have a laptop, they usually buy a cheap one from Wal-Mart for under $300.

As far as I can tell, the market for Apple's laptops are normal hipsters, hipster devs that can't stop talking about how you can build a blog in only two hours with Ruby on Rails, video and photo editors clinging to the meme from the 80s that editing software is somehow superior on a Mac, and college students that don't want the embarrassment of using an "old person's computer".

Yeah, my first though was that this is basically a chromebook.

> Think about it. Eighty dollars just to get less than you had before (with the 11-inch Air)

or: $70-odd additional margin for Apple that people will be happy to pay once they notice they need it regularly. Clever.

But no Thunderbolt to USB-C. So those sexy $1000 displays you just got because Thunderbolt is the new black and integrated seamlessly with your MacBooks? GFYS, they're deprecated, no more Thunderbolt. Two years is a long time for a Retina 27" monitor anyway, time to upgrade.

Thanks for posting that. I think when the rumour was spreading about USB-C/loss of Magsafe everyone was asking if Apple was going to do something like that, or even if it was feasible to both charge AND provide back out USB/Mini-Displayport ports.

I hope IFixIt guys takes those things apart, I bet they have their own little OS and processor just like we've seen in previous Apple "adapters."

The VGA one has to have something special for sure. The Type-C connector doesn't do analog video at all.

Even for mini display port these have a chip inside that actually does the VGA modulation. It's not a big deal.

That's fine for portability...except that it's a whopping $79.

What we also want is a hub into which we can plug our monitors and additional storage. For desktop use, this should have a longer cord, of course. (There are such hubs for USB 3, which can already be bought for ~$79 t0 ~$250 depending on what you want out of video compatibility.

One more thing to carry in the bag I guess.

Neat tidbit, Type-C connectors also support analog audio mode. In this mode it can do stereo audio out, mic in, and 5V@500mA power in. Obviously the chipset would have to support this, but the connector spec allows it in any case.

Indeed. Yet video output is limited at 1/4 4k a.k.a. FullHD/1080p which is ridiculous in this day and age.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com