polymnia

arthurba said:

I’ve yet to see a car with a USBC port, but there are already cars with wireless charging built in. 

USBA will be around for a very very very long time even if it’s just for cars.  

Cars will migrate away from USB to wireless charging just like they’ve moved away from ‘mic’ ports to Bluetooth. 

The future is not USBC, it’s wireless for power and thunderbolt for data (because USB 3.2 is still too slow).

I totally agree. I said something like this in another post recently.

I’d take an iPhone with no cable connection at all if it made the device sturdier, more waterproof and physically functional. 

It didnt seem to be a popular thought at the moment, but I’m happy to see it coming up again. 

I’m certainly not advocating for removing ports from iPads or Macs, but for iPhones, I feel ready to make that jump. 

Lacie makes the 2Big dual drive + dock in Thunderbolt 3:

https://www.lacie.com/products/big/2big/

One of the highlights for photographers is the SD & Compact Flash slots right on the front of the device.

I've been thinking of adding one to my iMac. Even though I have an SD slot, its ridiculously difficult to get a card into & out of it. And the 2 drive Raid built in would be a great near-line storage for projects I might want to refer to, but don't really need using up space on my internal SSD anymore.

hmlongco said:

BxBorn said: I'm with you, almost $2Gs to package a tablet to replace a laptop is crazy..

Well... please point me to the Mac laptop that allows direct manipulation of data with pencil support.

I also suspect that it's a mix of apples and oranges. Artists probably want the iPad with pencil and could do fine w/o the keyboard. People who want the keyboard for typing and "laptop" replacement don't necessarily need the pencil. Musicians, people editing film clips, and so on probably want the power but don't really need either.

I would love if the next MBP allowed the Pencil to work on the trackpad. 

elijahg said:

polymnia said:

theothergeoff said:

polymnia said:

Alternative idea: Perhaps the plan for iPhone is to phase out a wired connector entirely. It seems to me that once wireless charging gets a big enough foothold, and Bluetooth matures for short range data transmission, there is not compelling reason to continue punching a big hole in the bottom of our iPhones. I'd prefer a completely wireless iPhone that was more waterproof & had more room for battery & functional components.

There is always the bootstrap/SW-reset condition.   the 'I'm not certain my code is correct/confused' iOS state  currently requires connecting to iTunes via cable.  Having promiscuous WiFi mode for resets (button jamming to get it to come up and 'connect to any WiFI to hard reload corrupt SW') seems frought with hacking vectors.

Wireless for data/in-out and power in are pretty simple and have limited and user-controlled' security risks.  Full reset code updating... not so much.

I'm sure there are certain technical issues. But this is something that could be worked on. They make the Watch work without a user accessible cable fallback.

Anecdotally, I haven't used a data cable for restore/troubleshooting in 4 years. I could have given up my cable before that, but being a nerd, I thought the process would work better via cable. Based on my experience managing my iPone wirelessly, I can't imagine going back to cable restores for anything.

They do, but they also have customers return the watch whenever there's a seemingly quite common update failure, see watchOS 5.1. That's in no way good for anyone, especially people located without an Apple Store near, so they have to send off their phone and be without it for a week.

I’ve never encountered someone who had to return a watch to Apple to fix something they could have fixed themselves given a cable connection. Maybe that’s a bigger deal than it seems to me. 

theothergeoff said:

polymnia said:

Alternative idea: Perhaps the plan for iPhone is to phase out a wired connector entirely. It seems to me that once wireless charging gets a big enough foothold, and Bluetooth matures for short range data transmission, there is not compelling reason to continue punching a big hole in the bottom of our iPhones. I'd prefer a completely wireless iPhone that was more waterproof & had more room for battery & functional components.

There is always the bootstrap/SW-reset condition.   the 'I'm not certain my code is correct/confused' iOS state  currently requires connecting to iTunes via cable.  Having promiscuous WiFi mode for resets (button jamming to get it to come up and 'connect to any WiFI to hard reload corrupt SW') seems frought with hacking vectors.

Wireless for data/in-out and power in are pretty simple and have limited and user-controlled' security risks.  Full reset code updating... not so much.

I'm sure there are certain technical issues. But this is something that could be worked on. They make the Watch work without a user accessible cable fallback.

Anecdotally, I haven't used a data cable for restore/troubleshooting in 4 years. I could have given up my cable before that, but being a nerd, I thought the process would work better via cable. Based on my experience managing my iPone wirelessly, I can't imagine going back to cable restores for anything.