Slashdot Mirror
Apple's New MacBook Pro Requires a $25 Dongle To Charge Your iOS Device (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: As Phil Schiller explained during today's event, Apple's new MacBook Pros feature four Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C ports, and conveniently, each of these can be used to charge the machine. Now, USB-C is incredibly versatile, and Apple will use the advanced port for power charging, HDMI and much more. However, with USB-C the only game in town, you might reasonably be wondering: How in the world do I connect my iPhone to my sleek new MacBook Pro? The frustrating answer is that you won't be able to do so out of the box. Instead, you'll have to buy a dongle. This is especially frustrating because many people use their notebooks for a) charging purposes when an outlet isn't necessarily handy and b) for transferring photos and other data. Now, you might reasonably state that you can just rely upon the cloud for items like data transfer, but there's no getting around the fact that Apple's efforts in the cloud still leave much to be desired. How much will it cost to connect your iPhone to your brand new MacBook Pro? Well, Apple sells a USB-C to Lightning cable on its website for $25. While this is undoubtedly frustrating, we can't say that it's entirely unexpected given Apple gave us a preview of its preference for USB-C when it released its 12-in. MacBook last year. Still, it's a funky design choice for a decidedly Pro-oriented device where the last thing a prospective consumer would want to do is spend some extra cash for a dongle after spending upwards of $2,399. Lastly, while we're on the topic of ports, it's worth noting that the new MacBook Pros also do away with the beloved MagSafe connector.
You must be new around here. Turn in your geek card and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer
Get a dock if you want to use lots of (legacy) ports on a compact laptop! I bring my computer home and plug in TWO cables. (power and thunderbolt) and suddenly I have: printer, scanner, SD card reader, firewire backup drive, speakers gig ethernet, 1080p display, and several more open USB3 ports. (as well as another thunderbolt and mic port I'm not using atm)
Compare that to plugging in ALL that crap one cable at a time before the dock. Now with USBC hubs, ONE cable will do all of that since C combines the data and the charge. I'm still running a 2010 mbp, I'm due for an upgrade, and a dock will be the first accessory I get for it.
This is just a headline grabber looking to wind up the haters by giving them something to hate that they have no real reason to hate. Anyone that's somehow finding it possible to be hurting for an additional $25 after buying a $2,000+ computer can just get on ali or amazon or ebay and pick up two cables for $6 shipped or something like that. But considering how few ports the computer has, you'd be stupid to get a handful of cables and adapters that you can only use one or two of at a time. Get a dock! Problem solved, and solved well.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
"Still, it's a normal design choice for a decidedly Pro-oriented device since there's no reason a prospective consumer wouldn't spend a few dollars extra cash for a dongle after spending upwards of $2,399."
I guess that story isn't as good since it doesn't make as many Apple haters foam at the mouth.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.