linkman

Micro USB is one of the most hated connectors in history but vendors KEEP USING IT. Why why why?

cornchip said:

Are there any of these things that just tuck into the standard space like this one but without the massive screen?

Are you looking for a screen big enough for CarPlay in a 1 DIN space?

Metriacanthosaurus said:

"Critical data"

This trend of being obsessed with the exposure of data that is not meaningful in the least is incredibly obnoxious and needs to die.

Tomorrow's headline: COMPANY CREATES GIANT BOOK OF EVERYONES NAME AND PHONE NUMBER AND MAILS IT TO EVERYONE! OUTRAGE CANNOT BE QUELLED!

I actually get a slight bit of outrage when I receive one -- what the heck do I need that thing for? It's a total waste of trees and my city doesn't want them for recycling.

neilm said:

If you don't like the TB you don't have to interact much with it. It's just not that big a deal either way.

However because the TB is part of Apple's Secure Enclave, we're unlikely to see it offered on external keyboards any time soon. To make that happen a secure encrypted communication channel between the KB and Mac would need to be developed. While that's technically possible to do, it would be complicated and expensive, and might also affect the ability to use a regular KB instead.

You mean something like Bluetooth?

GeorgeBMac said:

macplusplus said:

GeorgeBMac said:

macplusplus said:

rossb2 said:

I think Apple are making too many laptops, with the air. They dropped the 12 inch. But the air that is left, I find it pointless. It is not light enough to really be an air. Plus it is only a 7 watt TDP processor, and only two cores. For those reasons alone I would go with the pro. I feel that Apple should be concentrating on economies of scale with the pro, and just selling that. Splitting your customers off on to the air seems wasteful at this point.

MacBook Air is an excellent corporate laptop to be sold by ten thousands. That is economies of scale...

That's true -- at least for some.
But being a non-repairable, non-upgradeable machine it becomes a disposable consumable from the perspective of most IT departments.  Frankly I have never worked with one or for one that would go there.

Enterprises don’t repair or upgrade. They trash and get new. Within a deal of ten thousands, repairs and upgrades are already covered by the deal. Corporate accounts work differently than individual accounts.

As I said, that has not been my experience.   Quite the opposite really.  One of the manifests of most IT departments is to operate cost efficiently -- which is one of the reasons why they control the purchasing and distribution of equipment.   So, throwing away a $1,500 piece of equipment for a minor, easily fixed problem like a failed harddrive is incompatible with their mandate.

In 25 years in the field I have never seen one act the way you describe.    I have no doubt that they are out there -- many are perhaps contractors supporting networks for mom 7 pop operations.   But no major IT department would waste money like that.

My company's (100000+ employees) IT department policy is to repair anything covered by warranty and trash it if there's a failure out of warranty. We always buy an extended warranty which usually puts it at 3-5 years of coverage. Any upgrades (including laptop battery replacements) are paid for by the business department. We also schedule replacements of desktops/laptops around the end of their warranty period. There are a few exceptions (like mine where I have a desktop as my primary PC and a laptop as a secondary -- the laptop's warranty expired 1.5 years ago).

My personal take on the corporate policy is that they replace personal computers too soon. The performance and reliability improvements don't warrant such a short cycle. Most of the bottlenecks of performance for business use are I/O related and server-side. Any increases in equipment failures are mitigated by having readily available spares/loaners, all important data on servers or backed up, and quick recovery time by standardized imaging.