jdiamond

I'd guess the reason the iPhones are the last to switch to USB-C even though they were the first to lose the headphone jack is because the majority of iPhone users are actually Windows users (there are only 100 million Mac users and a billion+ iPhone users).  I'd say that MOST PC laptops do not have functioning USB-C ports.  Maybe Apple doesn't want to annoy their single biggest customer base (and source of revenue) with dongles?  (Even though they had no issues at all doing that to Mac users...)

OTOH, if USB-C is actually less reliable/durable than lightning, we're all in trouble, because lightning has not been exactly care free with my iPhones - in fact, the number one reason I've had iOS devices replaced is a broken lightning port...

Awesome article!  I just wanted to add another option to the mix that we used this past summer on our trip to Europe.  RAVPower sells a tiny device that you plug an external USB 3 drive into (it has a rechargeable battery for power and supports AC) and then exposes the contents of the drive for viewing (password protected) via a locally generated WiFi network.  (I think of it as a USB3 to WiFi Network adapter.)  The airlines don't let you turn on the WiFi while the plane's below 10,000 feet, but above that, we were able to stream full resolution (different) movies to all three of our iOS devices at once and it could keep up!  The huge advantage here is cheap plentiful storage and fast transfers - a 1 TB laptop drive is under a hundred dollars (but you probably have some old ones lying around), and we were able to fit around 100 movies on it.  Plus, the external USB drive easily plugs into your Mac, to quickly and easily swap them out.  And you even still have the external drive for emergency storage for non-media things.

I sincerely hope that people out there run these tests across ALL the 2018 Macbook Pros, including the 13" models, to see if any of them can out perform the earlier models.

It's so ironic - I'm used to dealing with Apple not designing Macbook Pros to handle the GPUs, because they design the thermals for the base configuration.  I always get the high end version, and I always have heating problems.  So when I saw that Apple now has discrete GPUs in ALL versions of the 2015 Macbook Pro, I thought "FANTASTIC!  Apple will finally have to design the thermals to accommodate a discrete GPU.  And now this happens. 

Did I mention the enormous volume of these fans drives me batty?  I had to hack my Macbook Pro to keep the fans on all the time at a low level so that they wouldn't spike up to a high level whose I couldn't bear.

Well, at least the keyboard works now.

Thanks for hitting home just how nonsensical investors' reactions have been to this amazing news!  Their only complaint is that Apple didn't hit their own expectations, but seeing how dramatically their view on Apple swings, they clearly know little about the business and should be ignored.