wiggin

Soli said:

why does this sound like the same bellyaching when Apple moved to USB (Type-A) and pulled the rest of the PC world along with it?

flaneur said:

wiggin said:

flaneur said:

wiggin said:

Soli said:

80s_Apple_Guy said:

Just curious how a company that prides itself on it's integrated ecosystem has its two brand new 2016 devices, iPhone 7 and MacBook Pro that can't connect to each other without an out of box dongle or cable purchase.  

You can't be serious. What solution do you propose other than never moving from USB-A?

Um, do what they did with every other MPB port migration in the past. When they moved to FW800, there was a model of MBP that had both FW800 and FW400. When they moved to Thunderbolt they had a model that had both Thunderbolt and FW800. In both of those cases, the outgoing port would easily have been considered a niche market, and yet Apple included it so that users could have time to transition their devices/peripherals to the new standard while still being able to conveniently use their old devices.

USB Type A is easily the most prolific port standard in computer history, not niche like FW was. Literally every device most of us own and use daily is going to require an adapter. You'll either need to buy many adapters, one for each device, or be constantly swapping them. And always carry one with you in case someone hands you a thumb drive with files you need. You'll need a different cable or adapter depending if you are charging your phone/watch/table/etc from your laptop vs wall charger.

Removing the headphone jack from the iPhone was a fairly bounded and manageable problem. The vast majority of people will only ever use one set of headphones with their iPhone. If you used 3rd party wired headphones, one $10 adapter solves 99% of the problem. A laptop needs to be able to connect to a much larger,  ore diverse, and, for some of us, constantly changing set of devices. "Get an adapter" is neither a convenient or elegant solution.

I know you are going to disagree and probably go into a rage about how stupid and stubborn I am, but in my opinion, they should have provided a model with both Type C and Type A and then gone C-only with the next iteration (along with Kaby Lake) just like they have with the port migrations in the past.

Not stubborn and stupid, but shall we say unsympathetic to engineering and production challenges. Each compromise wth past standards in the machine not only represents thousands of hours of engineering time, millions of dollars of resources as the compromises are prototyped back and forth, but most important they introduce fatal distractions and dispiriting rats nests of pointless finessing over obsolescences that should just be cut and done with. You have to think like Jobs did. Just buy an adapter.

I get all that stuff. I really do. But don't you think that you are exaggerating just a little bit saying that having a Type A port in place of one of the Type C ports is THAT big of an engineering challenge? As several have already pointed out, the adapter is around $10, how complicated could that possibly be to put that miniscule amount of technology inside of the case? If that requirement had been a primary specification from the beginning, it would have been a far, far less challenging technical accomplishment than making the MBP a few mm thinner! Apple has some pretty smart people on their payroll. I'm confident they could have figure it out if they had wanted to.

Oh, and those "transition" MBP models I mentioned in my post that supported both the new and old standards were under Jobs' watch. So I'm not so sure he thoughts were always just buy an adapter.

I never assume that engineering these works of art are easier than I imagine, but harder than I can possibly imagine. I get this from long experience with one form of "moving metal around" or another. You will remember that Ive took an uncharacteristic swipe at people who don't do that for a living. It's "really, really hard" to make these things with total integrity, or st least the best you can do at the time.

USB A would be an obscenity on these machines. Wait till you see how they're put together before you second-guess these hardware guys.

flaneur said:

wiggin said:

Soli said:

80s_Apple_Guy said:

Just curious how a company that prides itself on it's integrated ecosystem has its two brand new 2016 devices, iPhone 7 and MacBook Pro that can't connect to each other without an out of box dongle or cable purchase.  

You can't be serious. What solution do you propose other than never moving from USB-A?

Um, do what they did with every other MPB port migration in the past. When they moved to FW800, there was a model of MBP that had both FW800 and FW400. When they moved to Thunderbolt they had a model that had both Thunderbolt and FW800. In both of those cases, the outgoing port would easily have been considered a niche market, and yet Apple included it so that users could have time to transition their devices/peripherals to the new standard while still being able to conveniently use their old devices.

USB Type A is easily the most prolific port standard in computer history, not niche like FW was. Literally every device most of us own and use daily is going to require an adapter. You'll either need to buy many adapters, one for each device, or be constantly swapping them. And always carry one with you in case someone hands you a thumb drive with files you need. You'll need a different cable or adapter depending if you are charging your phone/watch/table/etc from your laptop vs wall charger.

Removing the headphone jack from the iPhone was a fairly bounded and manageable problem. The vast majority of people will only ever use one set of headphones with their iPhone. If you used 3rd party wired headphones, one $10 adapter solves 99% of the problem. A laptop needs to be able to connect to a much larger,  ore diverse, and, for some of us, constantly changing set of devices. "Get an adapter" is neither a convenient or elegant solution.

I know you are going to disagree and probably go into a rage about how stupid and stubborn I am, but in my opinion, they should have provided a model with both Type C and Type A and then gone C-only with the next iteration (along with Kaby Lake) just like they have with the port migrations in the past.

Not stubborn and stupid, but shall we say unsympathetic to engineering and production challenges. Each compromise wth past standards in the machine not only represents thousands of hours of engineering time, millions of dollars of resources as the compromises are prototyped back and forth, but most important they introduce fatal distractions and dispiriting rats nests of pointless finessing over obsolescences that should just be cut and done with. You have to think like Jobs did. Just buy an adapter.

Herbivore2 said:

A USB-A to USB-C adapter is quite inexpensive. 

https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Adapter-Converts-Resistor-ChromeBook/dp/B01AHKYIRS/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1477602932&sr=8-6&keywords=USB+USBc

I don't get it. People are honestly critical of the 4 TB3 ports!! I would rather rather have the functionality and bandwidth of TB3 than an old USB-A or DVI port. TB3 is more than worth having to purchase an inexpensive adapter. 

I was actually impressed by the new machines. OLED still isn't mainstream and I like the touchbar. Discrete graphics in the higher end machine is a plus. The discrete graphics would work well with the iPad Pro using Duet and having such a set up is quite portable and would serve nearly conceivable need I would ever have. Including the ability to run Windows in VMWare. 

I am seriously looking at picking up one of these machines. 

iamthegtiguy said:

On the balance, as Apple's "premium" notebook offering, this thing is pretty unimpressive.

The best part, by far, is the touch strip.  Hopefully developers are able to exploit its usefulness by integrating critical functions into easy-to-use gestures and buttons.  However, for people like me, who use my notebook in clamshell mode 90% of the time, the touch strip is useless (unless apple releases an external keyboard with one integrated).

The downsides, however, are numerous:

1) One-generation old processors, in a BRAND NEW model computer;

2) HDD storage still heinously overpriced (high end Samsung 1TB SSDs can be had for $300, why is it a $400 UPGRADE to 1TB??);

3) Ram still limited to 16GB (this doesn't affect me, but there are some professionals who will feel the pinch of this);

4) All USB-C.  I find it shocking that, for the first time in Apple's history, if I go out and buy an iPhone 7 and a new MacBook Pro, the two are incompatible with one-another without a dongle/converter.

At the very least, the new MacBook Pro should come with some sort of "docking strip" that plugs into a USB-C port and sports a host of legacy inputs.  But nothing like that is forthcoming.  Really, this thing should have had 3 USB-C ports, a USB 3.0 port, and potentially an HDMI-mini port.  Then, over time, phase out the USB 3.0 port and the HDMI port.

I will probably buy a 15" model with 1TB + 460 Video Card.  But $3,300+tax is a tough pill to swallow with the above limitations.  Maybe when this is available at Adorama for $3,100 with free shipping and no sales tax I might bite.

I guess, in short, my biggest issue isn't the fact that Apple wants to charge premium prices for this thing.  It is that the hardware is not premium-level hardware, by and large. 

I do, however, hope that the touch strip takes off!