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All dead links... Not a surprise, really. But the fundamental question is WHY does he even NEED a dongle in the first place? Why not include a type A and HDMI connectors at a minimum? You don't get it...

Sorry, I obviously didn't copypasta them correctly, and then screwed up by not testing the result, sorry about that!

Here you go:

https://www.amazon.com/HyperDr...

https://www.amazon.com/VAVA-VA...

https://www.amazon.com/Adapter...

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-...

As to why Apple "Can't just put an Port on it?", the answer is likely that the internals are likely designed around using TB/USB-C, and, although it would likely just be an inexpensive chip and connector to offer a USB-A port, adding an additional HDMI port is far more involved, especially when all your PCIe lanes are already dedicated to USB-C/TB3 use.

You will notice that all of the Windows laptops that offer USB-C/TB3 (and there are many), that are based on the same series of CPUs, none of them offer FOUR USB-C/TB3 ports. Therefore, they give up a LOT of I/O flexibility to expose a couple of Dedicated "Legacy" Ports. It is a short-sighted approach.

And, as I have said before, given the average lifespan of Macs, Apple's decision to go with "USB-C/TB3" will seem less and less "dumb" in a year or two, as the rest of the industry catches up (which they are OBVIOUSLY doing).

https://www.ultrabookreview.co...

Plus, Apple computer users are used to having to use an adapter for video for most of the designs. As for the "lack" of an HDMI output, only a very few Macs released in the past 5 years (and really, throughout their history) have had a directly-connectable video output. Whether it's ADC, MiniVGA, MiniDVI, MiniDisplayPort, or USB-C/TB3, Apple has usually elected to provide a multi-protocol video output, rather than having dedicated VGA/DVI/HDMI outputs. So, the continuation of that concept (that video connections require an interposing adapter) is certainly of no moment to 99.999% of experienced Mac users, and quite frankly, is becoming quite common many Windows laptops/tablets and AIOs, as well. So, you are definitely in the minority, there.

The findings were for macbooks. I didn't realize anyone else had switched yet.

Here's one list of USB-C Laptops. Oh, and notice the prices. Looks like the MacBook Pro isn't so "ridiculously priced" afterall...

https://www.slant.co/topics/25... ...And here is the list of the (almost all non-Apple) Laptops with one or more Thunderbolt 3 Ports. Of course, those all use the USB-C Connector, too:

https://www.ultrabookreview.co...

So, did you clean the Lint out of your "worn out" USB-C Port yet? Looks like a bunch of Slashdotters joined-in on citing Lint as a problem. But I'll bet you didn't even bother to do a little Googling before you started on the Apple Hate tirade, since I found the "Lint" issue in about a half-dozen of the first-page Hits on Google for the search term "USB-C port wearout" (no quotes).

Looking at this, the best match is perhaps the Yoga 710. It's well specced enough and is the right size, and the M.2 SSD can be upgraded (with some work).

I can't help you with your buyer's remorse.

inside GNU/Linux

Here you go, my son. Pick one and buy it.

Doing so might result in the same sort of buyer's remorse mentioned earlier because the list you cited includes the ASUS T100TA and X205TA, which scored poorly in DebianOn. Sound, suspend, and Bluetooth fail on both the T100TA and X205TA. How would I go about narrowing the list you cited to only those products that work well with GNU/Linux?

Let's say I want to buy a subnotebook computer

Here you go, my son. Pick one and buy it.

Ah, thanks, bookmarked the dock for future. I've got a couple different ones. I'm glad there is a market and several companies making them.

Yeah. I like the fact that it has HDMI, VGA AND a MiniDP Port. If it had a FW800 Port, it'd be perfect!

In fact, IIRC, that's the only real difference between that dock and the $279 OWC TB3 Dock. I'm pretty sure they are both using the same chipset, since the capabilities are so similar.

Yeah, the Haters that say that "Apple just did this to trap people into buying DONNNN-GLES!!!" never perused the Amazon site with "USB-C" as a search term (for example, I think Dell has more USB-C "dongles" than Apple does!), or looked at THIS list of Laptops with TB3, most of which are NOT made by Apple...

Just wondering if these are the same Macbooks that have USB-C poert instead of standard USB ports, and have the touch bar that replaced part of the keyboard ? As I am not a (Cr)apple fan, I really don't care enough to look this up for myself.

Yes, they have the standard USB-C/TB3 ports, just like many, many other laptops.

Idiot Slashtard.

Regardless what I think, the decision was purely marketing, not practical. And the market has spoken. Whaddami gonna do? Guess I'll get a Razor Blade, with a matte screen.

You're an idiot. It WAS a VERY PRACTICAL decision!

By the time your late 2016 MBP is a year or two old (which is NOTHING for an Apple laptop), the industry will be about 75% USB-C, and Apple's decision will be recognized as being "forward-thinking", at the expense of a being temporarily just a little adapter-heavy.

I say that not as an Apple fanboi; but as someone who has seen the writing on the NON-Apple wall...

Great! Now plug in your hard drive at the same time. The other thing is that the USB port is not very robust. All that plugging in and out makes them pretty flaky in a very short time.

Practically this was a very bad move. The sales stats say otherwise. The owners manual needs to state 'some assembly required'

Well, if the USB-C connector is "flaky" (citation, please), then the WHOLE INDUSTRY is soon going to be having problems, because there is a metric shitpotfull of NON-Apple lappies with USB-C/TB 3 connectors.

And the MBPs have either 2 or 4 identical USB-C/TB 3 Ports; so I'm not sure what you are whining about with your "Now plug in your hard drive at the same time" statement.

There are is an important point you are missing and in one important aspect your post is factually wrong. This is one machine which is clearly intended as a direct competitor but there are more out there e.g. Dell XPS range which are strangely absent from the comparison. That was my point: so the MBP outsells the Surface Book (but not the new one because that is only out today) what about all the other competitors? Your comparison is far from fair. You exclude the touch bar "to keep it fair" while ignoring the fact that the Surface has a touch screen: how is that even vaguely fair?

I see that you conveniently failed to notice that, later on in my post, I compared the Touch Bar version of the 13" MBP to the Surface Book. The MBP was STILL $300 cheaper.

Then you claim that that the 13" MBP has "faster graphics" when it has Intel Iris vs. the Surface's nVidia 965M which is factually wrong.

That was just a badly-worded sentence on my part, sorry. What I meant was that the Touch Bar version of the MBP that I used for my second comparison has Faster Graphics than the non-Touch Bar MBP that I used for my first comparison. Both MBPs have Intel Iris Graphics, just different "models" of it.

And yes, I would cautiously concede that the ONE place the Surface Book MAY have an advantage over the 13" MBP is in the Display and GPU world. But I would have to see some graphics benchmarks of the various machines to be sure.

As for the the other features I have never used the TB port on my existing MBP (other than as a miniDP) nor have I any use for USB-C since everything I have is USB-A and a GPU is really important.

And I would agree for the TB 1 port on my personal mid-2012 non-retina MBP. But times they are a change-in'; and with the fact that USB and TB now share a common connector, and the fact that USB-C/TB 3 is seeing WIDESPREAD adoption (FINALLY!!!) outside of Apple computers, I am fairly certain those "new times" are almost here. So from a "future-proof" standpoint, Apple's decision is a VERY wise one, even if it causes people some adapter requirements for now.

So for my uses when I compare a MBP to a Surface I'm looking at the 15" model where the cost rockets up to over $4k with the 1TB SSD and over $5k with the 2TB which is insane for a laptop with an old CPU and GPU

With the prices of the arguably inferior (in terms of I/O and SSD performance at the very least) Surface Book being HIGHER than the roughly-equivalent MBP, do you REALLY think that a theoretical 15" Surface Book would be any LESS expensive than the 15" MBP? Because I don't.

Oh, and from what I have read, the Nvidia GPUs in the Surface Book (and Surface Studio) is OLDER than the AMD Polaris GPUs in the 15" MBP, and the CPUs are the SAME VINTAGE; so why the hate on the MBP, when they are (just like EVERYBODY) at the mercy of Intel and their "release" schedules? Oh, I know: Because it's cool to hate on Apple on Slashdot...

. While the Surface is similarly expensive it has features I value far more: long battery life, touch screen, USB-A ports and tablet mode. However really I am waiting for the XPS 15 to get a refresh to Kaby Lake and hopefully a 10-series nVidia GPU and then, while I'll miss OS X, it's goodbye Apple.

I'm sure Apple will survive. Oh, and enjoy WIndows 10, mwuhahahahaha!!!!

Obviously the price difference depends on what you need the device for if USB-C an TB3 are important for you great - go get a new MBP. However no matter how you spin it there is no way you can claim that the MBP fulfills a similar market niche to the Dell Inspiron 2-in-1, a Chromebook or the cheap Lenovo model they were also comparing it against. The data do suggest it outsells the Surface but I suspect the real competitors are the Dell XPS series and the equivalent

Absolutely. At this point, we have CARS with USB-A plugs, and televisions. USB-C is just a mobile port, and will remain so for at least decades. What's the big deal? Just put a damned normal port on there.

All of the Laptops on This List have at least one USB-C/TB 3 Port. Think it's just a "Mobile Port" now?

And that doesn't even begin to count those that have a USB-C Port WITHOUT Thunderbolt 3 support.

DO try to keep up. USB-C is a "normal port" these days.

Regardless, the hardware throttles aggressively and there’s little one could do about that. For instance, when trying to play games, both the CPU and the GPU drop to very low frequencies. In fact, I wasn’t able to run properly any of the titles I’ve tried on this laptop, not even older ones like Dirt3 on HD resolution with very low details. I did got somewhat better results when playing the game in Window mode, as you can see from the pictures below (look for Average CPU and GPU frequencies), but switching to Fullscreen resulted in an average of 6-8 fps. The same happend when trying Metro Last Light and I just gave up after that.

My point here is that at this rate, Apple will be putting out a fanless device that is faster, uses less power, has less thermal throttling (so wins both sprints and marathons). As of now, they have a device that uses less power and is faster at certain operations and will win most marathons.