thedba

MplsP said:

crowley said:

chia said:

Clamourers for USB-A ports on the new MacBook Pros have appeared with depressing predictability. It seems contradictory to want old tech on new products: the official USB organisation has dropped the USB-A connector from the current standard: USB 4 is achieved only via USB-C connectors.

All this clamour for USB-A ports is ironic seeing how 20 years ago Apple introduced the iMac with just USB[-A] ports, and there was lots of whining back then as to why Apple couldn’t also add the SCSI and Serial ports of the day. 

The USB-C connector is superior both in ease of use and the features it can offer; if Apple kept on catering to the technology luddites we’d all still be using ”laptops” the size and weight of the Macintosh Portable with ADB and SCSI ports.

It’s difficult to believe that those incapable of adapting to a $20-50 USB-C/Bluetooth mouse, or a $20 dollar USB-C to HDMI cable/adaptor, are serious, or should be taken seriously, in their consideration of several thousand dollar MacBook Pros for professional revenue earning work.

The USB-C connector is inferior in one crucial way: it doesn't work with the millions of USB-A devices already out there, at least not without an additional adaptor.  

People who want USB-A are not luddites, we're perfectly happy for USB-C ports to be on our devices, and will use them as we acquire USB-C devices.  But we don't want to have our existing experience with USB-A accessories to be compromised for some corporate crusade for technological progress and simplicity that we haven't bought into.  Many of those USB-A devices are far in excess of the $20-50 that you pluck out of the air, and it wouldn't even matter if they weren't; Apple demanding any additional purchases of a MacBook upgrader is obnoxious and turns people off Apple.  The exact same was true with the original iMac; Apple should have had legacy ports.

There will be a day when USB-A is small beans, where the number of accessories has dwindled to the insignificant, and that is the appropriate time to drop the port.  Apple dropped it for some of the notebookswhen they were still selling iPhone with USB-A cables, so quit the apologist claptrap.

Exactly. The USB C ports on my MBP are all USB 3. They have no USB capabilities that a USB A port doesn't but they won't work without an adapter, making them inferior from a usability perspective. USB C can do power delivery, but unless you need more than 15W it doesn't matter. 

dk49 said:

viclauyyc said:

dk49 said:

After having used the Macbook Pro with touch bar for 4 years, I can tell you that it's been basically useless for me. Even a hindrance. And I think most people feel the same. Otherwise why would Apple remove it?

The only thing I will miss about the touch bar is the spelling suggestions which were handy. 

USB-A port is still very useful and important, yet apple still removed It years ago. 

They are not the same thing. Usb-a was a legacy tech (with USB-C replacing it). Touch bar was supposed to be the new "standard". So it's a quite different situation.  

You can't really call USB A a legacy tech. (to quote a lot of other people, it's only a connector.) As I said above, with the exception of power delivery USB A has all the same capabilities as USB C. Once USB 4 comes out that will change, but realistically, USB 3 is still more than adequate for almost everything people need anyway, and as a connector it is still dramatically more prevalent than USB C.

vedelppa said:

thedba said:

MplsP said:

darkvader said:

neilm said:

I'm pretty much in the "Ain't broke/don't fix it camp" as far as the MBP form factor goes. Sure, eke out a bit more screen real estate, and definitely upgrade the built in camera, but neither of those things requires any sort of wholesale redesign. My 2016 MBP is still elegantly simple and entirely functional in its design.

But that brings up a few things that Apple actually did break with the current M1 MacBook Pro compared to my old Intel version:
- Multi-monitor support
- High RAM option
- 4 TB ports
- Meaningful market differentiation from the M1 Air.

It's understandable why that was, based on the new M1 processor being the first and only one of its kind. But now's the time for a significant step forward.

I'm in the "really broke/needs fixed" camp.  Apple broke a lot of things with the Retina MBPs, and broke a lot more with the horrible 2016 redesigns.

- It's way too thin.  Yeah, thin is great for looking 'sleek' and being lightweight, but it's absolutely AWFUL for everything else.

- It's too fragile.  See thin above, and then add in material strength.  Also, would it really be that hard to make the keyboard and trackpad at least a little bit water resistant?

- Soldered storage.  This really is a massive mistake.  SSDs wear out, and drives are the component most people want to upgrade.

- Soldered RAM.  The second-most desired upgrade, and RAM sometimes fails too.

- Ports.  I mean, seriously, it won't hurt anything to put more on the computers, and a USB-A port and a Magsafe port (bring back the original, not Magsafe 2) would be amazing.

- Batteries.  I know I don't have to tell anybody that a glued-in battery is just plain idiotic.

Bingo. the butterfly keyboard was a colossal failure, and the design that forces you to replace the entire chassis just to replace the keyboard? Seriously?

I still miss the MagSafe port from my old MacBook Air, and a HDMI port would be huge for anyone who gives presentations (or simply wants to hook up to an external monitor at all.)  Phil may call USB C ‘the future,’ but even 5 years later it’s still not today. When I bought a monitor for my MBP HDMI and display port were universal but specifying USB C severely limited my choices.

That last sentence of yours just shows how much pundits and legislators suffer from ADD these days.
No other company has done as much to push the USBC standard as much as Apple, yet pundits and many commenters alike are all up in arms when they remove their personal favorite legacy ports.
The hypocrisy is that a few days later many of those very same pundits/posters will be calling upon Apple to replace their iPhone Lightning port with USBC, sighting e-waste/standards or whatever else that may be in their heads at the time.
My question is this. If standards, saving the planet from pollution is their call to arms, why not call upon all manufacturers to change to the USB4 TypeC/TB3 connector, including TV and computer monitor manufacturers? Why’s Apple singled out in the EU for not “complying” for the iPhone, yet we still have TV’s/monitors being sold with the old HDMI standard and the even older display port?    

these are just your (faulty) assumptions. also, something isn't legacy just because you (or Apple) calls it legacy (I mean the future of ports is paved with adapters and we've taken only the first steps). last but not least, think about the market size of devices with lightning ports and devices with old HDMI.

MplsP said:

darkvader said:

neilm said:

I'm pretty much in the "Ain't broke/don't fix it camp" as far as the MBP form factor goes. Sure, eke out a bit more screen real estate, and definitely upgrade the built in camera, but neither of those things requires any sort of wholesale redesign. My 2016 MBP is still elegantly simple and entirely functional in its design.

But that brings up a few things that Apple actually did break with the current M1 MacBook Pro compared to my old Intel version:
- Multi-monitor support
- High RAM option
- 4 TB ports
- Meaningful market differentiation from the M1 Air.

It's understandable why that was, based on the new M1 processor being the first and only one of its kind. But now's the time for a significant step forward.

I'm in the "really broke/needs fixed" camp.  Apple broke a lot of things with the Retina MBPs, and broke a lot more with the horrible 2016 redesigns.

- It's way too thin.  Yeah, thin is great for looking 'sleek' and being lightweight, but it's absolutely AWFUL for everything else.

- It's too fragile.  See thin above, and then add in material strength.  Also, would it really be that hard to make the keyboard and trackpad at least a little bit water resistant?

- Soldered storage.  This really is a massive mistake.  SSDs wear out, and drives are the component most people want to upgrade.

- Soldered RAM.  The second-most desired upgrade, and RAM sometimes fails too.

- Ports.  I mean, seriously, it won't hurt anything to put more on the computers, and a USB-A port and a Magsafe port (bring back the original, not Magsafe 2) would be amazing.

- Batteries.  I know I don't have to tell anybody that a glued-in battery is just plain idiotic.

Bingo. the butterfly keyboard was a colossal failure, and the design that forces you to replace the entire chassis just to replace the keyboard? Seriously?

I still miss the MagSafe port from my old MacBook Air, and a HDMI port would be huge for anyone who gives presentations (or simply wants to hook up to an external monitor at all.)  Phil may call USB C ‘the future,’ but even 5 years later it’s still not today. When I bought a monitor for my MBP HDMI and display port were universal but specifying USB C severely limited my choices.

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

iPhones would be extremely cool if Apple could find a way to allow creativity back into the app ecosystem. The iPhone was exciting in the first few years because every day there would be new amazing apps that did things no one had expected a smart device to do. There were apps that could listen to music and tell you what song it was. Another app looked at signs in different languages and turned them into English. There were highly addictive new games to play. Now all of that creative explosion is pretty much dead. The reason is that as soon as some new and exciting app becomes popular, like iDos for example, Apple kills it. Never mind that it had been in the App Store for years and got popular because it could run an extremely early version of Windows, it had violated the rules that Apple made up out of thin air and so had to die. Who is going to risk wasting years of their lives to produce an exciting new app in an ecosystem like that? No one that's who.

If Apple could carve out a space on the iPhone for risky apps to do risky things without access to the rest of the phone's data or iCloud, excitement could return to iOS. Oculus does this with the Quest. It has a separate app store for apps that are not quite ready to appear on the main app store or do things that Facebook is not yet comfortable with. The user takes the risk but the apps are there and some of them are wonderful. This will not happen on the iPhone because Apple's rules have very little to do with user safety. They are almost all about preserving Apple's control over the iPhone. The need for control is a kind of addiction for Apple's executives. Like other addictions, they are very harmful for both the addict and anyone around them. In this case, it is systematically killing the iPhone platform. Yes the new iPhones have nice new hardware features but when was the last time you bought an iPhone to get access to some amazing new app?