Ra_

I bought the safe and sound based on the promise of airplay2 support “soon” via update. My mistake. The AirPlay 2 functionality still hasn’t shipped and I can find no update as to when or if (beyond the old claim of “soon”).

 Alexa mishears and thinks we are talking to her many, many times more often than we’ve ever had Siri ‘butt in”, but if you turn off the microphone, then the nightlight glows murder red rather than whatever color/level you’ve set it to and won’t change back as long as Alexa is turned off. Odd thing is first time I disabled the mic it momentarily showed a red glow to indicate mic was off, then went back to normal.

The app or firmware seem a little flaky. I also get errors polling some of the device details, even though I can set and change other things about the device, access the speaker, etc. Essentially I bought the 2x the price, same functionality (potentially more flaky though) plus a marginal quality manual Bluetooth speaker and a overly active microphone. Not sure I’d buy again, or even extend with the new model. I liked the concept.

The only two posts I've ever made here under any name, so far as I recall, were in the last couple days pointing out to all the people commenting about them not removing the audio jack that the optical functionality was an often forgotten about important (arguably, or at least neat) feature of the macs... le sigh. I'll miss it if it is true that it is removed. I used it for connecting to my 5.1 digital input pc speakers, as well as on rare occasions other devices.

larrya said:

"The card was excised because of the "path forward" with more generic physical card readers, or the growing implementation of wireless transfer.

Schiller says that the 3.5mm headphone jack was retained for professionals with audio gear that do not have wireless solutions, and still need the jack for macOS."

So, the "professional" solution to mass storage is wireless, but professionals don't have access to BT headphones. It's getting deep in the spin room. 

People keep forgetting that the jack on the MacBook Pro is optical too capable of high sample rate multichannel I/O, which is definitely still a useful pro feature.  And while wireless is great for convenient access to huge, reasonably fast mass storage, etc., the professional solution for *really* fast directly connected local mass storage is via those multiple thunderbolt 3 ports.  I don't think another laptop with more raw IO capability than the new 15" has ever been available, though that's not to say others didn't have a higher number of various, slower ports which happened to be more convenient for whatever the connection of the moment required.  Given time I expect wireless and the C interface will simplify things to a better point than ever, though that time may not be in the lifespan of this model for some people.

Those talking about the headphone jack are also missing the fact that the audio jack on the MacBook Pro has been a combo jack that also has multichannel optical for years. Losing it would mean not just losing a tip-ring-sleeve type electrical connection, but also the more advanced functionality that is less common to have good wireless solutions. Given the extra functionality, and that there was room available, and that they didn't have the same water resistance issues (though a water resistant MacBook would have been pretty cool…), I think it was a great call to keep the port.