bubblefree

What a misguided, arrogant and condescending article! If I have legitimate concerns about the course Apple have taken I am now a "hater". Apparently if I feel Apple could and should have taken a different design decision I am now a critic "pointing to heavy, thick models aimed at Windows video gamers, which clearly sell in obscurely small volumes and do not appear to be very profitable at all."

The sad reality is that many of the comments posted on this site and others reflect legitimate concerns from many different types of customer about the choices Apple made. I agree with many of those comments. By moving to an all USB C machine Apple is forcing it's customers to choose between a last generation machine that supports the legacy ports you so handily and easily deride or a machine built on more modern Skylake technology but which supports no outside peripherals without a large assortments of adapters or dongles. You yourself point out that Apple has sold over a billion iOS devices that have all shipped with USB A connectors and that the majority of PCs and Macs have USB A ports. "That effectively slows down how fast Apple can transition away from USB-A on its iOS power adapters." This clearly acknowledges that Apple needs a transitional strategy and expecting users to buy into the dongle / adapter concept isn't a strategy but a misguided fall back position that is clearly flawed. Why would Apple drop the price of their adapters by 40% soon after introduction if it isn't an acknowledgement that they got it all horribly wrong?

It didn't need to be like this. Apple could have built a transitional unit with both USB C and USB A ports when Skylake chips came out over 6 months ago to allow people a choice of how they would transition to the new USB C standard. And Apple has done this many times before. It's not new.

Unfortunately the flawed belief that everyone wants the thinnest laptop possible means that other design compromises have also occurred. I used the new keyboard in an Apple store a few days ago and this one design decision is enough for me to hold off on buying the machine. Again it's not necessary. I am happy with the size of the current MB pro's, especially when the alternative is losing a great keyboard.

It is most unfortunate that your article is written in such a way that it is not balanced or acknowledges the legitimate concerns that many people have expressed about these machines.

I love the way this story seeks to push the issues people are now commenting on from Apple to Intel. Apple could have introduced a Skylake update to their MB Pro series as soon as the chips were available. Skylake is now over a year old and even the 13 inch chips were introduced in Q1 2016. So I have a question. Can you put USB C and USB A together on the same machine? If the answer is yes then it seems it would have been a much better strategy for Apple to have introduced an old style MB Pro body in the spring of 2016 which included USB C allowing peripheral makers and end users time to start the transition over to the new tech. (This is the way that Apple handled many other transitions away from Firewire, etc). Kaby Lake quad core chips are going to be available in the next few months and this would have meant a much cleaner move over to an all USB C machine in the spring of 2017 with the sexy new touchbar. It seems as if the lunatics are now running the asylum if Apple's product introduction strategy is being decided by the design group rather than when the Intel chips become available. The ones in the middle are us end users who are now looking at the new models thinking why would I invest in a tech that is a year old and which forces me to upgrade all my peripherals or buy a horde of dongles which I have to schlep around with me. For once Appleinsider should question Apple's decisions rather than trying to blame Intel for something which is clearly not their problem!