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Design For the Present (marco.org)
Technology critic Marco Arment, who co-hosts an Apple-centric podcast called ATP with John Siracusa and Casey Liss, has shared his take on the design of the recently launched MacBook Pro models. Apple's decision to get rid of USB Type-A ports has irked many, with some saying that the company should have left at least a few USB Type-A ports on the computer, even if what it strives to do is lead the industry in how a computer should look like. Arment shares the sentiment. From a blog post: The new MacBook Pro is probably great, and most of the initial skepticism probably won't age well. But I want to pick on one aspect today. Having four USB-C ports is awesome. Having only four USB-C ports is going to hurt the versatility requirement of pro gear, because there's a very real chance that you won't have the right dongle when you need it. This is going to happen a lot, because even though USB-C is the future, it's definitely not the present. We've had the standard USB plug (USB-A) in widespread use for 18 years, and it's going to take a few more years for USB-C to become so ubiquitous that we can get away without USB-A ports most of the time. A pro laptop released today should definitely have USB-C ports -- mostly USB-C ports, even -- but it should also have at least one USB-A port. Including a port that's still in extremely widespread use isn't an admission of failure or holding onto the past -- it's making a pragmatic tradeoff for customers' real-world needs. I worry when Apple falls on the wrong side of decisions like that, because it's putting form (and profitability) over function."Design for the future, but accommodate the reality of the present," he adds.
I'm still angry I can't connect my dot matrix line printer using a parallel port so I can print off all the ascii art I have stored on my floppies.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
the truth is apple delt a killing blow to their laptop market with the USB C idea, the AMOLED bar, removing the escape key, and whatever paint-fume induced psychosis goes on in the development labs these days.
I dunno if it's the removal of the escape key that really scares me.
They removed the power button and replaced it with a software button. There is apparently no longer any way to manually turn the new MacBook Pros off and on. The removal of the "Mac startup sound" is apparently because they now automatically boot when opened. Or something.
Macs are not that reliable. I've routinely had to force-shutdown Macs or reset NVRAM simply to get the display working again.
You won't be able to on the new MBPs. They're simply missing the power button entirely - instead it's a "software" button on the "Touch Bar."
But you're right, they've killed their laptops. This "update" is so underwhelming and the lack of updates to other parts of the ecosystem so badly needed that every Mac fan I know is starting to look into plans to abandon Mac. It's become clear that Apple has.
What do you mean? That have a wonderful market in dongles! It is not like anyone uses a thumb drive to transfer files between Mac and PC. (Not with the poor speed of exFAT anyway!)
I'm ticked not only about the lack of USB-A ports, but that they're moving away from MagSafe power supplies. I LOVE that feature, and it has saved many a laptop of ours from damage as we have a rampaging standard poodle who does not respect power cords when we're sitting on the couch. My current laptop is a MBP 2011, I can't see me moving past the '14, which I think is the last year for MagSafe and SD card reader. Maybe I'll just keep my '11 and we'll see how long an SSD will keep it alive, then we'll see if Apple comes back to their senses or the ghost of Jobs returns to take over the company.
I'm surprised that Belkin or someone else hasn't made a C-to-MagSafe adapter for MacBook owners.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Apple has always taken the role of change agent. If you don't forcefully abandon the past, it drags on. You end up supporting legacy requirements forever.
They've always taken that approach (remember abandoning floppies on the iMac, and what a hoo-ha there was over that?). It's painful at the start, but it acts as an impetuous for change in the market. A year from now you'll see PC's with only USB-C ports, and you'll see a proliferation of USB-C devices... starting with USB-C to USB-A converters.
It's painful, but it drives progress. Apple is "brave" enough to take the risk of impact to their bottom line to lead that change.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
I keep reading everywhere about how many dongles and accessories you're going to need and not have when in reality it is only one. One single USB-A hub with a USB-C connector. They're cheap, come in pretty small and low profiles, and can come with various additions such as gigabit ethernet, audio, and USB-C charging (as in you can plug your charger into the hub and the hub into the macbook for the ports + charging at the same time) built right in. So why is every article I read exaggerating this so much? What am I missing?
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
When everything is USC-C then this whole argument about having the right dongle inverts. Right now I have storage bins filled with various saved cables converting between all different USB plugs, DVI, HDMI, VGAWall warts with all different diameter plugs, firewire, thunderbolt... I'm sure I have over 100 cables to cover all the possible ports on the vavious machines in my office.
Standardizing on one port for the next 5 to ten years is going to be a joy. I'll gladly carry dongles for he various peripheral connectors I target if I can at least standardized one end of them to USB-C. It's the interconversions that turn a few into many by creating a product space.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Having four USB-C ports is awesome.
[...]How do we expect to issue this kit to the world that hasnt embraced "bravery" and thrown away every still entirely functional USB device they own?
Case in point: I currently have 9 USB-A cables connected to my desktop, and recently had to get a hub to plug in more. I have yet to put my hands on a single USB-C device.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Has been for 5 years now, no? The legacy is not being carried on well.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Anyone with a clue knows they removed the headphone jack because PoS services such as Square Reader were in direct competition with Apple Pay and Square relied heavily on the jack. Courage is nothing but marketing bullshit.
I used to work with someone who described USB-A as a "4 dimensional device" - often you can be unable to insert it, flip it over, still be unable to insert it, flip it over again, and then succeed.
#DeleteChrome
Many of us in the media world were die-hard supporters of Apple through their leanest years, and didn't mind paying full-price for their expensive machines because these were necessary tools for the digital creative arts (music, photo retouching, artwork, and so on). These people haven't disappeared today, it may be small but it arguably also is a very stable market.
...food for thought.
Obviously, times have changed and their allegiances lie with the mainstream consumer market. And given the obligations of good-old "fiduciary duty to stockholders", all professional users as a group are being thanked for their undying support by been dumped unceremoniously as un-necessary baggage they probably don't even want to remember anything about.
Now please do not confuse this post for yet another garden-variety rant about how "they've abandoned us". Rather, it should be obvious that there well may be a splendid opportunity here for smaller, more nimble hardware manufacturers to address this situation and take advantage of this void Apple has left behind by making a whole line of professional desktop and laptop systems squarely aimed at this market, with the possibility of their components being so well matched and compatible to Cupertino requirements that these machines could easily run under OS-X as Hackintosh rather than merely the plain vanilla Windows OS they would ship with. Legally speaking, there is nothing that can be done against building PCs that use similar enough compatible components, even if they're one generation behind it probably would still be good enough to satisfy most everyone. Let Apple have all of the fancy gadgets like touch-bar, which obviously isn't the sort of thing pro users need yet. (It may be once software out there can take advantage of these features, but that's years down the road)
There probably is a reasonably massive market out there for people willing to pay for Pro hardware that would be exactly compatible with Apple software, even if installing it is something they have to do themselves because the legality of it might otherwise be a bit fuzzy; and obviously Apple couldn't be arsed to license their OS to someone willing to do what they can't fathom doing themselves.
There's gotta be a way for someone out there to manufacture and sell the products Apple refuses to make and meet this demand
Apple has always been slightly ahead of the game, in part because their products sometimes have a long life between refreshes. The assumption is normally that the old ports will go away quickly.
Unfortunately, USB is a little different, mainly because of the prevalence of thumb drives, for which an adapter is somewhat impractical because it is as big as the device you're plugging in, because people carry them in their pockets, because recent thumb drives last for years before you replace them, and because you don't always plug them into your computer (which greatly raises the risk of the thumb drive's owner not owning an adapter, much less having it with him/her).
The new MacBook Pro added some very consumer-centric features while removing lots of pro-centric features under the theory that wireless will somehow replace those features. I don't think Apple has really taken the time to understand just how slow wireless is in practice. In the absence of an 802.11ac infrastructure base station, the maximum speed two devices can communicate with each other is 802.11g speeds, or about 54 Mb/s. A 5D Mark IV RAW file can be ~60 MB. So it takes ~9 seconds to transfer a single photo. UHS-I can potentially read at ~100 megabytes per second, so it takes 0.6 seconds to transfer a photo. Transferring a batch of photos (say 500 photos for a day of light shooting) takes an hour and 15 minutes over Wi-Fi (long enough to run your camera battery down completely). Transferring the same photos via SD takes five minutes and doesn't run down your battery at all. And it is much easier to shove an SD card into the side of your machine than to keep your camera tethered by USB and using it to transfer photos and takes up less space in your bag than a separate flash card reader or a USB cable.
And then there's HDMI. Apple has always removed ports designed for computer video when newer ports come out, under the assumption that old monitors will get replaced with newer monitors with the new ports. The problem comes when TV is factored in. HDMI is a shared standard used by television sets, Blu-Ray players, etc. None of that gear will benefit from newer standards, and worse, has a much longer service life (decades) than computer monitors. Hotel room TVs will likely have HDMI ports in twenty years. So basically by removing the port, Apple is saying that they don't think most users need to connect their computer to anything except in their homes. Worse, most users who are impacted by this won't even know that they're going to be impacted. If connecting their computer to a TV is something you do every day, you'll have the adapter. Most people who are affected, however, are folks who suddenly decide to stay in the hotel and watch something on Netflix. Those folks won't even own the adapter, much less have it with them. And when they realize that they have to drive three hours to an Apple store to get a special adapter, it will sour their perception of Apple's product line.
These sorts of decisions aren't the sorts of bad decisions that kill a product line in the short term. They don't impact product sales for that model. They're the sorts of bad decisions that insidiously diminish users' expectations, leading them to question future product purchases. Unfortunately, the MBAs won't be able to connect cause and effect, which means they'll keep making the same sorts of mistakes.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I think you are missing the point. He agrees that USB-A is needed, despite the great future prospects of USB-C.
As for the DongleDangle, and being in the very real situation of needing a dongle that is at home based on an unexpected trip over to a remote site, I get it, and I hate it. For me personally at this point, I really need a built-in Ethernet, HDMI, and USB-A ports. In a pinch I can survive without HDMI for a few hours, but when it comes to the other two it puts me pretty much dead in the water.
It will take me about 4 years to completely phase out USB-A needs. My external USB-3 SSD will be two-three years, along with my phone. I will still have charging needs for four years, as well as USB console cables. I have test instruments that should easily last another 10 years, but I can write them off after four.
Jobs and now Tim Cook are just "queer eye for the queer guy" marketers with no unique features in their devices whatsoever.
You mean except for all the software which you cannot get from anyone but Apple.
This is what people don't seem to get about Apple. Apple is a software company. Don't take my word for it because Steve Jobs is the one that said it. Software is what makes their products different. Apple's hardware is barely different from their competition aside from some fit and finish details. People buy Apple gear and pay a premium for it because of their software. It's why they are so profitable and why their margins strongly resemble those of Microsoft rather than Dell. What makes Apple kind of unique as a software company is that they will not sell you the software as a standalone product in most cases. They only sell it with a (usually good quality) piece of hardware optimized to use their software.
It's a quantum device. It doesn't have an orientation until you look at it.
did you forget it requires an adapter to connect an iphone?
No it does not. You can use an adapter if you need to but it is not required.
unless you've real work to do. the future is swell until i need to transfer files to a dead server in the datacenter at 4 AM.
We can all contrive made up situations where having the wrong ports is a theoretical problem. Has this actually happened to you in real life? If not then I'm not sure what you are complaining about.
I'm surprised that Belkin or someone else hasn't made a C-to-MagSafe adapter for MacBook owners.
You mean like this one?
Jobs didn't start Pixar. Lucas did.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Fixed the subject line for you.
Apple creates superior interfaces. Through custom (& patented) hardware and software. And a lot of thought.
Personally I can't stand the Apple tax (that those same patents enable), but as an engineer, designer and analyst I have to give them full credit for their interfaces. Well. Thought. Out.
As to the latest MBP, it is much like Windows 10 -- put annoying stuff into your product when sales are flagging -- it will give the press something to chatter about and any publicity is good publicity.
I come here for the love
You're an idiot.
did you forget it requires an adapter to connect an iphone?
Did you forget that Apple could easily release a USB-C-to-lightning cable that will obviate the need to use a dongle with an existing USB-A-to-lightning cable?
Did you forget what the words won't age well actually mean?
I want to say in the friendliest way possible.. I hate magsafe. I don't get the point of it. When I try to use my laptop on my lap in bed the connector keeps coming out. move the laptop and the cord snags in the slightest, the connector comes out. What is this accomilishing? If I am by a power outlet I want to have my battery charged and run on AC so that my battery will be there for when I really need it. I drag thinkpad cords around all over the place, no issues; so they can be made to take the abuse. The only thing I can see it preventing is someone dangling it across a walkway, but that's just an obvious no-no. When my kids do that with their tablets they pay for the repairs.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Fixed the subject line for you.
No you didn't. Apple is a software company that happens to understand the value of good interfaces, good hardware design, and well built products. Software with a well thought out interface is still software. The value and defining characteristics of a company is what they make themselves. Apple cannot be a hardware company because they don't make any hardware themselves. It's all outsourced. That wasn't what was valuable about what they do. Apple kept two functions in house. Software and product design. What they really sell is software via a well designed piece of hardware that they contracted someone else to make.
No you don't. Plugging in USB can be done without checking: It's a three-step process.
1. Try plugging it in, and find it doesn't work.
2. Turn it around, and try it the other way. You'll find it doesn't work that way either.
3. Turn it around a second time. It'll now go in. You had it right the first time.
Who ordered that?
A device with a quantum spin of a half.
What do you mean? That have a wonderful market in dongles!
From the GP:
"queer eye for the queer guy"
And you wonder why they have lots of "dongles" dangling off their products? Hmmm?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
USB-C is a Standard, anyone can use that standard to make adaptors.
This is not Apple proprietary hardware.
Given Apples prices, I would guess most people will buy what adaptors they need (if any) from 3rd parties.
Hopefully, Apple will prevent that. They can easily add a check in the OS so that only Apple-approved dongles are allowed, and others are ignored. This would be a good thing to do in the name of "protecting the customer" from "potentially harmful" 3rd-party devices. And of course would be great for boosting Apple's profits. With the prices of Apple laptops, their customers can certainly afford to spend $50 or $100 each on adapters, and have no right to complain about this.
it could have been all lightning ports.