mpantone

applesauce007 said:

Ok, let's see...  Apple has zero stores in Colombia.  Oh well...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Store

Those are bricks-and-mortar stores. You don't need a bricks-and-mortar location to do business.

Ever hear of Amazon.com? How many bricks-and-mortar stores do they have where you live? How about Roku? Or Sony? Or LG? Or Logitech?

How many retail stores does Nintendo have? Two: New York and Tel Aviv. Zero in Japan: not a single one.

Beats said:

It was important enough to announce at the keynote.

No, it wasn't to Apple senior management. This was a minor development.

There were probably a couple hundred new feature announcements that could have been included in the keynote. If it went 10-12 hours, they might have gotten to it.

That's why there were separate platform keynote presentations and why WWDC is a full week event with hundreds of hours of breakout sessions.

Sorry about that.

Beats said:

the downside is it’s useless. 

Yes, for now.

At least you got one thing right I'll give you that.

Somewhere on a whiteboard in Cupertino, there's a wishlist of desired features for the MacBook Air.

Senior management crosses out HDMI every time it shows up on that whiteboard.

Every. Single. Time.

And this probably follows years of MBA prototypes with HDMI ports getting thrown on the scrap heap after a new MacBook Air is launched.

It's worth pointing out that Thunderbolt has more functionality (data, video, power) than the legacy HDMI connector.

That said, I am happy that my ghetto Acer Swift 3 notebook has an HDMI port. (Yes, it also has Thunderbolt.)

  

It's important to remember that all products include compromises: features, cost, price, availability, etc. and are still subject to the laws of physics.

And no one can please everyone all the time.

The most important feature might be the Afib History Feature, approved by the FDA hours before the keynote.

Actually most of the health and fitness features are going to ultimately be more valuable than UI tweaks.

It's worth noting that Apple is extending some of its fitness functionality to users who don't own an Apple Watch like me. I abhor tight fitting wristwatches so it's unlikely that I'll ever have one as an activity tracker as long as it needs to be snug on my wrist. And I certainly don't wear my watch on my wrist when I sleep. Hell, I'm doing my best to keep all wireless devices out of my bedroom.

If there were a health fob like an AirTag, I might be up to that, but I'd have to remember to remember to pull it out of a pocket every night before I went to bed.

wood1208 said:

M2 Macbook AIR is nice upgrade with performance, larger screen, front camera,etc etc but you don't have to be Apple genius to put one usb-c port on right side!! If Apple wants to save money or keep usb-c ports to minimum than than just split two left side USB-C ports and move one on the right. How hard is that ?

These ports aren't ordinary USB 3.2. They are Thunderbolt ports.

Thunderbolt can support two ports per bus. My Mac mini 2018 has two Thunderbolt buses (Bus 0 and Bus 1) thus the four Thunderbolt ports on the back of the machine. My guess is that there are engineering and cost considerations involved. They cannot realistically route one port to the opposite side of the MacBook Air chassis without considerable expense and possibly sacrificing reliability.

It looks like these MacBooks only have one Thunderbolt bus which is why the ports are adjacent to each other. Putting a USB-C port on the right side might have been a possibility but it does increase cost. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a prototype M2 MacBook Air with ports on the right side sitting in a lab somewhere in Cupertino but ultimately got the ax.

I understand your desire for a port on the right. I use an Acer Swift 3 as a notebook PC and it has a very convenient USB-A port on the right side; there's one on the left side as well as a Thunderbolt 3 port next to it. The right side USB-A port is very useful. There's only one USB-A on the left side of the Swift 3 to give space for an HDMI connector.