I do think the previous SD reader on the side was a better design. If you do a lot of photography it is a nuisance to have to look behind a big 27" screen every time.
I must've missed something. Rather than building in extra cameras or light sensors, on-screen guides and verbal queues… Wouldn't it be much easier to put the ports on the front?
Obviously it would be much easier. And obviously Apple will never use this harebrained system.
But this prevents anybody anywhere from using anything like this on any product. Apple likes to patent as much stuff as it can so it can sue any other company that comes anywhere close to using it. Apple knows and loves the US patent system, It has made Apple billions of dollars over the years.
you seem to be suggesting this is an Apple-only thing.
I stand up and look behind my iMac to plug/unplug. I require no innovation to ease this pain.
not easy at my workstation (i won't got into details, but you'll have to trust). thus if it were like magic to have an onscreen guidance signal, i certainly wouldnt be opposed to it.
different people have different use cases. something techies seem to overlook on forums like these.
This is over-engineering to fix aesthetic choices and port designs that seem to be on the way out. This would be a huge waste of materials and ridiculously multiplied complexity for no good reason.
I don't have a big problem with getting the Apple cable into the port. My big problem with Apple is the cables themselves are low quality and fail way too often... but I guess there is big margin to be made selling replacement cables.
This solution is way over-engineered.
I must've missed something. Rather than building in extra cameras or light sensors, on-screen guides and verbal queues… Wouldn't it be much easier to put the ports on the front?
Obviously it would be much easier. And obviously Apple will never use this harebrained system.
But this prevents anybody anywhere from using anything like this on any product. Apple likes to patent as much stuff as it can so it can sue any other company that comes anywhere close to using it. Apple knows and loves the US patent system, It has made Apple billions of dollars over the years.
You can have something that superficially is identical but if the implementation is different then it wont infringe... well until the solicitors and the courts get involved then all bets are off.
A lot of ignorance on this topic. I ran into this exact issue 2 days ago. I wanted to mirror my MacBook to my plasma TV. So I disconnected the HDMI from my blu-ray and connected it to my laptop. After I was done, I needed to reconnect my blu-ray. The power cord prevented me from turning the player around, so I had to feel around for the port, while dodging other wires. I will tell you, HDMI is not easy to plug in blindly.
The answer is not to put the ports on the front. It is ugly and unnecessary. A majority of consumers do not even need to access these daily. For those that do it is pretty easy to slightly angle the iMac and plug them in with ease. I have 3 of these set up for our kids to use and it works plenty fine. But the reality is we hardly use the ports. I understand there may be some that need frequent access. I use my custom built mega tower for that which does have ports on the front. 90%+ of iMacs go to consumers not professionals. At work we are using airdrop and shared cloud files so there is no need to plug in usb key anymore. Is anyone else seeing this perspective or am I way off?
I am doing app development so I continuously have to connect iPhones and iPads into my Mac Mini for testing purposes. As a consequence I would really appreciate to have at least 1 usb port at the front. I don't mind that other connectors are at the back as they are used for fixed connections that don't need to be plugged in and out. The solution in the patent is over engineered and too complex to be practical.
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different people have different use cases. something techies seem to overlook on forums like these.
So no, a port on the front doesn't make sense.