jkichline

Dumb. It will flop, especially at that price. It's only about an inch larger than Apple's iPhone XS Max. How is this an improvement if you need to open it up to get a subpar tablet experience that Google can't even get off the ground with developers already?

MisterKit said:

Referring to the 3.5mm jack as a headphone jack is a misunderstanding. The 3.5mm jack is a two channel analog audio output. Headphones are just one specific example for how that 3.5mm jack can be used.

There are too many examples to list as to how this elimination will affect users. Here’s one that would affect me regularly. You’re having a music rehearsal. You pull up some Apple Music, You Tube videos, whatever, as a group is working out a song. The audio MUST be fed into a sound system for this to be useful. Okay. So I buy a USB-C to two channel analog audio output adapter and guess what! My iPad is running low on charge! Oops. Better have a dock so I can charge and have a two channel analog audio output at the same time.

Hopefully I am making a point. The 3.5mm two channel analog audio output cannot be worked around like a floppy or optical drive could be.

Sound tech here... while I agree with you on convenience, I don’t agree with you on the tech. Analog signal paths are preventing the live sound industry from leapfrogging forward. Digital is the state of the art and the future. While your sound system may require analog inputs, not all do.  Many consoles have USB interfaces. Guess what? Connect that to this hub and you get multiple channels of audio, or input digital audio directly into your digital console without decoding/encoding with possible loss of quality.

Pulling audio from a headphone jack has some issues. For starters, the left and right channels are not well shielded on iOS devices causing the channels to mix. You don’t get proper channel isolation. You also have to set the level so you don’t get distortion by overdriving the channel. You have to worry about noise in the line, etc.

When you use a professional audio interface, you get a better DAC (digital audio converter) to analog, or you keep the audio digital through the signal path which is much cleaner. Plus you can accomplish something around 96 channels of I/O with USB 3.0. 

cpsro said:

Initially the battery life of my Max seemed dramatically worse than the old X (which was fantastic), but after ~ a couple weeks, the Max seemed to be doing as well as the X.  (This is all very scientific, mind you.) I was wondering if, for example, the Bionic side of things runs in the background, until it learns about you or your photos or your ____, and then things settle down to a more copasetic rate of battery consumption.
Basically, every tester could be right, including Consumer Reports, just depending on when they tested.

That was my experience too but then I remembered that when you first restore to a new device, it does go through and set up things in the background. Within a few days, my Xs Max was having amazing battery life. I’ve even been able to change my charging habits where I don’t charge it overnight. I just wake up and plug it in at work. It charges so fast over USB-C I’m good to go in a few minutes.

bobolicious said:

fastasleep said:

goldenclaw said:

I'm very sensitive to Apple messing with the MacBook Air model as it seems to be the last remnant of practical computing.

Is USB-C for power better? It's really not, it's consuming a valuable port and MagSafe could be argued was an excellent design. USB-C for power feels like a step backward in that regard.

I was at an Apple event recently and watching the presenter carry his new MacBook Pro around with various dongles hanging off to be able to connect devices was quietly ridiculous.

"Various dongles" = a single HDMI to USB-C adapter. GET THE FUCK OVER IT.

USB-C for power means you can just plug into your dock, monitor, whatever and get power as well. You can use portable power bricks from any vendor. It's the future. Magsafe means you need your proprietary Apple charger. 

Since when does such abusive potty mouth incite represent the spirit of non-troll posting or constructive contribution ?

Personally I really dislike having a bag full of costly, messy dongles that seem outdated every few years, and one can of course arrive at a meeting and be surprised by a need for something one does not have... Also one snagged USB-C cord and a $4k macbook pro flying off a desk is not something I would look forward to or consider a design 'upgrade'...

Opinions and needs differ.  Was someone having a bad day?  Live and let live...?

You need one adapter. One. And I hardly ever plug my MacBook Pro in when it's not on my desk. I simply don't need to.  I get at least 4 hours of run time on a charge, plenty for a meeting.  Just saying you're using a lot of hyperbole with the "bag full of dongles" bit.  It's time to upgrade your various peripherals you may carry then.  I just haven't seen an issue in my own use since 2016.

goldenclaw said:

I'm very sensitive to Apple messing with the MacBook Air model as it seems to be the last remnant of practical computing.

Is USB-C for power better? It's really not, it's consuming a valuable port and MagSafe could be argued was an excellent design. USB-C for power feels like a step backward in that regard.

I was at an Apple event recently and watching the presenter carry his new MacBook Pro around with various dongles hanging off to be able to connect devices was quietly ridiculous.

It's only a problem because we are transitioning to a new standard along with the rest of the industry, but Apple usually leads the charge.  The future is better with a standard port that can handle the future.  When you can run power, USB, networking and two 4K displays of the same, high speed port... that beats everything else. Dongles are a temporary solution until the market catches up with USB-C products.

As far as the MagSafe argument... it's actually not really needed any more.  The reason is that we now have laptops that last hours on a charge.  The paradigm has shifted slightly where most of the time we can use these devices without being plugged in, but when they are, they are likely on a desk.  In addition, the devices are all solid state and built with unibody construction.  What this means is that even if the computer falls off the table, it's not going to be damaged.  That was the use case of the original MagSafe port which is simply not a very valid case any more.  I do agree that having some kind of indication as to the of charging status would be nice. But it's not a huge deal to me really, just something that changed.