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Apple Cuts USB-C Adapter Prices In Response To MacBook Pro Complaints (theverge.com)
One of the biggest complaints with the new MacBook Pros is the lack of ports. There are between two and four USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) ports depending on the model you select -- that's it. If you need a SD card slot, HDMI, USB, or VGA port, you will need an adapter. In response to the criticism, Apple says they will be cutting prices for all of its USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) adapters: "We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition. We want to help them move to the latest technology and peripherals, as well as accelerate the growth of this new ecosystem. Through the end of the year, we are reducing prices on all USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 peripherals we sell, as well as the prices on Apple's USB-C adapters and cables." The Verge reports: It's a sign that Apple recognizes these dongles are a hassle, and it seems to hope that reducing the prices on them will lessen the pain of this transition. Starting immediately, all of Apple's USB-C adapters and some of its USB-C cables will have their prices cut by $6 to $20: USB-C to traditional USB adapter from $19 to $9; Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter from $49 to $29; USB-C to Lightning cable (1 meter) from $25 to $19; USB-C to Lightning cable (2 meters) from $35 to $29; Multiport adapter with HDMI, USB, and USB-C from $69 to $49; Multiport adapter with VGA, USB, and USB-C from $69 to $49; Only USB-C charging cables aren't being discounted. Apple is also cutting prices by around 25 percent on all third-party USB-C peripherals that it sells. SanDisk's USB-C SD card reader is getting a slightly steeper discount, from $49 to $29. The discounted adapters will be available at Apple's physical and online stores through the end of the year. It still has no plans to ship adapters in the box with the new MacBook Pro.
They have lost me as a customer to Hackintosh.
The computers look good when displayed in the Apple Store and in advertising because they don't have any dongles plugged into them. So they appeal to Jony Ive's sense of elegant design.
It's only when you buy one and need to use it in the real world, interfacing to the gear you have, that Jony's sleek lightweight machine is encumbered with dongles and the like, because having a star designer in control of everything seems to mean function now comes second to form. Do the engineers get a look in?
Let's face it... the dongle prices are nothing compared to the 2,500 to 3,000 € that you need for the macbook pro.
It's the hassle. For some people, including myself, also this (from an older comment):
I see one major problem with eliminating USB 3.0 ports. Currently there exist very small USB 3.0 sticks (example: Lexar S45 [amazon.com]) that can fit in the current MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops and increase the total storage capacity. These drives are so small that it's not necessary to plug them out when carrying the laptop around in a backpack, a fact that makes this setup an attractive way to save hundreds of dollars that would be necessary for buying a laptop with a 256 GB SSD instead of 128 GB let's say. The USB stick can be used to store music and photos for example, without affecting the overall perceived speed of the machine. There is no equivalent solution with USB-C AFAIK.
What I'm worried about is when Apple decides that going forward all iPhones and iPads will only support USB-C and stop selling USB-A versions of the cables.
The reality is that USB-C isn't here yet and the fact that iDevices don't even support it is evidence of that.
HDMI, USB, and SD cards are legacy? Seriously? ISA is legacy. PCMCIA is legacy. Apple is looking at a second year of declining profits if they continue the high-handed behaviour that just assumes the rest of the world will bend around them.
Ok, so they brag about how great the keyboard is and that you can connect to a bunch of monitors. But I don't know anyone who connects to external monitors and still types on the laptop keyboard.
Of course most of the people I know touch type and don't look at the keyboard anyway, so that 'feature' is just going to be a pain.
After this I'm done with macs and that's saying a lot considering how many how many I've used over the years.
this: https://www.amazon.com/Griffin-BreakSafe-Breakaway-Chromebook-replacement/dp/B01CQTK6GU
(Gordon Ramsay voice): It's not about the price of the bloody dongles you fucking donkey!
It's about not having to deal with all the extra connectors, keeping track of them, taking them with you when you travel and then worrying about losing them. It's about Jony Ive and Tim Cook having the arrogance to design both the iPhone 7/7+ and the new MacBook Pro with release dates less than a month apart, yet not include in EITHER BOX a cable that lets you connect these two devices directly to each other. What the fuck is that, Jony? Just tryy to justify that decision. I dare you. It's about marketing USB-C as the future but not actually providing any cables out of the box that connect to those ports! How many devices exist in the market that support this connectivity?
Anyone who has the money to spend on this laptop is not going to balk at another $50 of cables. But the fact that Apple expects them to play pin the tail on the dongle with their new laptop is a slap in the face. Every time you have to fiddle with a dongle, it is like Jony Ive personally reaching out and bitchslapping you.
"We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors. . ."
Nice of them to throw a bone to their legacy customers.
Seriously, if I can't plug a flash drive directly into the machine then fuck it, I'm not buying it.
Seriously. At current prices, at least 3 types of dongles should be included: HDMI, USB-A, Lightning.
Just because some firm removes current interfaces, it does not make them legacy, in the same way newly written software need not necessarily be modern.
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baxk when Dell was caught with bundling a PROprietary rf module in their laptop computer external power supply, rendering your Dell laptop impossible to be charged with superior univetsal power supplies, Dell responded by giving away the power supplies for FREE. Apple only cuts the price 20 percent. Crab Apple doesnt want anyone compatible with their PROprietary wares. Beam me up.
Apple is a modern app apper, so they know the difference between modern appy app apps and LUDDITE ports, NOT LUDDITE Appdot commenters!
Apps!
Here is the slogan: "Because lugging around a bag of shit never looked so pro"
This really shows how much Apple overprices their hardware. Almost 50% off and i bet they're still running a profit. Ridiculous
Zero or none at all? Pro!
Back when proven stable standards were GPIB, PS2, RS232, RS422, 10BASET, IRDA, VESA LOCAL BUS, DIGITAL ALPHA, we knew these as all-American domestically manufactured components and peripherals. Debatable proof of Intel conspiring against the homebrew origins of open computing standards, we get a chrony capitalist as Apple that can only say "Designed in California" as opposed to the original "Made in California." is piverse origins the nature of a self-sufficient industrious nation and country?
I would prefer a classic fab-shrunk DEC Alpha 21164 and all the glory of these usable bus architectures instead of something modern. typewriters only work as fast as a keystroke, calculators only a clone of the count or mathematician weilding it, everything else is porn.
halfprice cables and probably still raking in 300% profits. fuuuuuuuuuck these guys.
where's the appy apps guy? oh well
Appy app appers use USB-C! Only LUDDITES use LUDDITES USB 2.0! or something like that.
DEC Alpha was an abject failure in the market and was technically threadbare. Sure it was 64 bit when little else was, but so what? No software would benefit at the time as opposed to, say, an integer divide instruction that the Alpha didn't even have!
Morons who name-drop Alpha are simply exposing their ignorance. No one had Alphas because no one sold any.
"We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition."
Really? I got the impression from the latest product design that they didn't recognize that fact at all.
"legacy": a pejorative term meaning "it works".
The Mac Pro is the same way. (Some) People think "Oh look it is so small, and sleek, how cool!" Yes, indeed it is quite a small case that tucks away easily and is very sleek and featureless... until you need to do actual pro work with it. Then, because it has no drive bays, no PCIe slots, and so on you end of having to chain a bunch of shit off the ports on the back and have that laying all over your desk. It maintains its minimalist setup only if you make use of it in a minimal (meaning just normal computing) way in which case one has to ask why spend the $3k-4k.
It is just what Apple wants to do these days. Maybe it'll be successful, I dunno. I think they think it will be since for phones, such a thing works well. Of course for a phone the only things you generally hook to it are power and headphones.
Personally, I'll stick with my chunkier laptop. While it is larger and heavier, the only thing I really need to take with it is power. Everything else is fit inside of it, which I find useful.
You see, even when Apple is taking a step back and recognizing a necessity for professionals, they still have to act like cocky condenscendent f*ckers that do not understand the needs for the category. Just further confirms what I see wrong with Apple these days.
There is nothing f*cking "legacy" about these connectors. The company is bonkers and delusional. Professionals don't need help making any transition, and Apple does not offer a professional solution for most of the connectors they eliminated. No one wants to make a transition to a more primitive time when every company had their own proprietary connectors. This is bullshit.
It's just absolutely crazy. Does Apple really think now that ports not approved by the company are automatically legacy? This god complex of them is what's going wrong in recent years. Not only they stopped caring about what professionals really need, now they think they can tell what professionals should need, even though they seem to have no idea of what professional works composes outside their own headquarters. How about taking a walk on the real world every now and then to see what's really happening around? No one cares if you think removing a headphone jack is a corageous move.
Yes, professional cameras still uses memory cards. And a whole bunch of them don't have good wireless connection, when they even have wireless at all. Yes, most clients and 3rd parties still deliver content to be used in production with external HDDs and pendrives. No, most peripherals are not using USB Type-C and we don't expect this to change fast, even more when the standard has so many conflicting configurations. Most equipment on the music production and audio side are still on regular USB.
The rest of PCs, electronics and professional gear overall - which composes the vast majority btw - will keep using universal standards.
And those standards will keep improving. Professional work couldn't care less about what Apple thinks of ports, they'll be used as demanded.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having multiple different ports inside laptops with dedicated hardware to work with them.
Close to even gaming laptops, with all their glaring looks and "look, I'm a gamer" designs, the Macbook Pro looks like a kid's toy.
Professionals needs ports to connect external drives, sd card readers to transfer content and backup from multiple devices, ethernet ports to transfer files fast and in a reliable way, graphics cards that are on the higher end, HDMI connectors because that's the type of connector they will find in any situation, expandable RAM for fast renders and multitasking among a host of other stuff. Outside very few businesses, there is no Apple-only workflow.
There's nothing Pro about the new Macbooks. It's ok for regular use, but in the vast majority of jobs involving content creation you will need multiple dongles to handle demand. Macbook Pros basically degraded into Ultrabook territory. Yes, they are still plenty fine for a huge category of users, but other than the core spec upgrade, I'm not seeing many benefits for professionals. They should just be honest about it and remove the Pro from the title altogether. These are nice all-rounder machines, but a severe downgrade in philosophy for people who intend to use these laptops for content creation.
Jony Ive and Tim Cook
Are both brilliant in their own right but it was Jobs that kept them inline. They designed what Jobs told them to.
Using a dongle on the latest and greatest of your flagship products is not something Jobs would have allowed. Knowing jobs if they came to him with that idea he would have replaced them both. He did it to Woz before them.
It sounds like the different departments at Apple aren't communicating. They need a new ringleader to keep them inline.
I don't know about you, but I enjoy news about complaints against Apple.
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Apple has never based their deprecation of anything off of real situations. They don't evaluate the use of their system or peripheral market and say "Ya there is little, if anything, that uses this anymore, we should deprecate it." They do it and then act as though it was visionary.
That's how it with with USB originally. Suddenly, new Macs had USB instead of ADB. No transition period, there weren't ones that did both, it was you had one, and now you had the other. So all those ADB peripherals you had that were expensive like high end keyboards or dongles for software licensing just wouldn't work at all on new systems without an adapter. They weren't replacements available for many of them initially either. It took time.
Yet Apple claimed they were visionary and as USB slowly grew in market adoption they claimed it was their doing.
Same shit here. USB-C is very likely to be the thing in the future. It is really nice having a non-directional plug, it supports higher speeds, higher power delivery and so on. So I can totally see in 10 years an A plug being a legacy thing, seen only on old systems. However for now fuck-all uses it.
This includes all those things I listed earlier. Have a nice ergonomic keyboard? It uses USB-A, none of them have C cable I know of. Do music production and need an iLok for licensing? All three of them, including the new one that just released, are USB-A. And of course there's HDMI, which is going nowhere any time soon. Whatever computers do regarding video (displayport, thunderbolt or something else) the consumer electronic industry and Hollywood are all-in on HDMI for consumer video. That is not changing.
It is just the Apple way. Some people are ok with it, I guess, and that's there choice.
Wrong.
I worked at a supercomputing company that sold Alphas NON-STOP for 20 years.
Navy, clusters, Army, you name it, they had Alphas.
So, no. Do some research.
It just means everyone will dust off their 4-port USB hubs they have in a drawer and connect them via a USB-C-to-A cable.
Naturally they'll need a USB-C-to-Lightning adapter if they want to share peripherals with their iPhone 7 :)
Neither did Intel you tard. of'course you are criticising Alpha technolgy by comparing to modern Intel whom stole more DEC patents than did AMD. Just like how COPS whine that Harley Davidson couldnt offer a bike that performed like the Honda tweetybird muffler motorcycles, did you ask for the specs or just go forein allofasudden?
I was so ready to buy a new Macbook Pro, but seriously, this too small (no 17 inch?) too thin crippled machine? No way.
Pleeeeze come out with a real Macbook Pro, useful, all the ports, proper power cord, 17" (or larger).
Let me once again reiterate how grateful I am for Apple to have the courage to put the first nail in the coffin of the old, mildly annoying USB type A. I like the USB type C port better, and hope it replaces not just the Type A but also other ports. And, as a non-Apple user, this doesn't inconvenience me in the least and also gives me a good chuckle and another anecdote to point out the dangers of vendor lock-in.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
What would happen if you desoldered the USB-C plug and (would it even fit??) put a standard USB connector in place of one port?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Buy a used MacBook Pro.
This gives you the connectors you want.
The used MacBook Pros are almost as fast as the new ones. Trivial difference.
The cost of the used ones is about 50% of the new ones.
Buy used and you save. Of course, Apple doesn't make any money off of that transaction which is your way of voting with your pocket book. Apple will pay attention to this when Mac sales crash due to them releasing machines people don't want. They will pay attention and notice the sales of the used machines are doing well. They'll figure it out.
Lastly, leave Apple feedback here:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/...
They do read the feedback and that is your conduit to change.
At that price you shouldn't need more than one connector to external devices. Want more ports, we have an octopus adapter for $75 and all the cables you need and for hundreds of dollars you get those you need. Profit!
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
You never get them in the right way. I sort of appreciate Apple just ditching the standard connectors altogether and moving to USB-C.
It's a jerk move of sort, but they actually can get away with it and that way more will make the switch sooner as well.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
my laptop has 2 ports -- if you count the headphone jack and charger.
The new macbook 13 models have slower cpus than the last gen. The RAM maxes out at 16gb. The keyboard has been hobbled for a poorly thought out "touch" experience no one asked for. When I bought my macbook a couple of years ago it was a decent price for the specs, and performed well. Now that it's dead, I still want to wait a year to upgrade to see if Apple will actually respect their pro community of users, or if I need to bit the bullet and switch back to a windows/linux machine.
Anyone recall being forced to synch your contacts to icloud only....or how the entire world was going to Thunderbolt. I'm happy they see the wonder of the USB-c, but I think there could be another model cycle of standard ports. Losing the magsafe is moronic..it has saved me several times. Last, I bought an iPhone 6 when the 7 came out. Apple, you are supposed to give us more...for the price above Windows, I expect a stable OS, hardware that justifies the premium, mostly, and ease of use. WTF ?
Don't call the new MacBook Pro for "Pro". It's more like a regular Macbook. 2 cores, no SD-Card, no old USB connections, lower end models lack proper GPU. :D
My local price for a new machine with proper specs are 4400$. It seems to be 3500$ in the US.
I think it is time I learn to use something else than Final Cut Pro X.
Okay, fine, but how about sending them through the submission feed?
Jobs would have made sure everything worked together and match and even use it as a selling point. IMHO if Jobs were alive today, he would have made all products going forward without a mic port (if he thought it was ready to go all wireless)- iPhone, MacBooks, and anything else coming out. Same for the USB-C connectors... none of this half-way bullshit, again with a different treatment of the new iPhone and the MacBooks (USB-C vs Lightning connector). And to top it all off, he would have probably waited until the wireless power was available. That would have been his new vision of the future... "what this dongle stuff?!", wireless audio, wireless power, wireless video (via Airport/Apple TV), wireless sharing with Airdrop... now with more 3rd devices supported. He would probably name it/brand it... something like "the Apple Air Collection", or some such thing. Then he would use this vision to 'shame' you into buying the new stuff. "Oh, your still using physical connections. Humpf!". That's why Macs are better, they got rid of all those things (as long as you buy all their stuff). :P :P :P Posting Anon to preserve mods.
Yeah? Well, here's one. They could have put a few dollars worth (if that) of still completely current hardware into the macbook pro, and then no one would need these WAY more expensive dongles.
Here's your Macbook (cough) "Pro", right here.
Buy now, while you're still DRUNK!
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If all she's doing is using a word processor (and presumably basic Internet stuff) then a high end laptop isn't something she needs. A sub $1000 laptop would do very nicely for that. All most users need is a simple laptop. The only people who have a need for a higher power laptop are ones who ask it to do more. People who have few needs may wish to get a powerful laptop just because, but trying to argue this is an "everyman's" device is quite silly given the price tag.
That aside, display output is something many users need. At work (a university) we have a number of little loaner laptops. They are 11" Dell Latitudes that were chosen because they are very cheap, so they can basically be regarded as throwaway, very small and have an HDMI port and USB port. That last one matters because a common use is to hook them to a projection system and present, and HDMI has fast become the standard for that. The USB port, USB-A, is important because often things need to be loaded on via flash drive and essentially 100% of the flash drives out there are USB-A interface.
Or equivalently: fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Keep it up Tim, Apple can afford it. And don't worry about those pesky shareholders, they just don't get what real courage is.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The DEC Alpha was a huge success in the VMS / minicomputer and server markets - the main markets DEC cared about.
The Alpha was not "technically threadbare", but was the fastest microprocessor on the planet. The claim that no software at the time would benefit from a 64-bit architecture also reveals ignorance. DEC put together a little database performance test involving an Alpha with 14 GB of RAM, and a much more expensive IBM mainframe. The ability to use more than 4 GB of RAM was a huge advantage for the Alpha machine, which outperformed the IBM mainframe on that test. You might not crunch massive databases in your basement, but DEC's corporate and institutional customers did run tasks like that on their computers.
Now it is true that Alpha and other RISC architectures (MIPS, PowerPC) did not make much of an inroad into the Windows NT market. There were some reasons for this. One was Microsoft's failure to provide emulation support for running Win32/Intel binaries, a mistake that Microsoft repeated recently with their ARM-based Surface tablets. DEC was the only company that did anything (FX!32) about that, but even then, customers had a natural inclination towards running Intel binaries on Intel processors Another was the pricing on RISC PCs and workstations. If I remember correctly, IBM wanted $8,000+ for their PowerPC/NT machines, while DEC wanted $5,000 to $10,000 for Alpha/NT ones. Apple priced their initial PowerPC-based Macs in a similar way to their 68K-based ones. Guess which one of the three was able to attract customers to RISC-based PCs going forwards.
I don't understand the backlash and the hatred. I love new tech! Although I run Linux on the server, I like running macOS on the desktop so I ordered the new MacBook Pro.
With glee, I'm already planning out the new setup in my office and at my current client. Which cables are cheap? Which are quality? Which are middle-of-the-road? Should I get a docking station? Based on Thunderbolt or is USB-C good enough? Love that shit.
I guess it comes down to two kinds of people: those who don't like change, and those who welcome it.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I consider a "pro" notebook to be flexible out of the box. Not something you have to buy adapters in order to do basics. I'm just going to say it, Jony Ive needs to go. He is too obsessed with minimalist design that he has handicapped ever new Mac he has helped design. Mac Pro, Macbook, now Macbook Pro. Yes, absolutely if you want a pretty and expensive notebook to brag about buy a Mac. If you want a real work horse business notebook. The Macbook Pro isn't it.
"We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition." Obviously, Apple did not recognize that. If they did, they would have added more ports. Just two USB ports? Even a 35$ Pi 3 has more than that. Those who complain should have done the wise thing: stop buying stuff from Apple if it lacks the features you need.
I'd say you're not a real person but an Apple PR paid sockpuppet account.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The Mac Pro is the same way. (Some) People think "Oh look it is so small, and sleek, how cool!"
Really? The first thing I think of when I look at it is "Oh look it is almost old enough to belong in a computer museum why the heck are they trying to pass off a 3 year old machine as new".
Apple's famed reality distortion field seems to be suffering from severe feedback. Rather than us being affected it seems to now be affecting them which would explain why they think a their new laptops and desktops (3 year old MacPro, 2-core mini) will sell, at least after the Apple fan boys have purchased the initial production.
Done.
Apples "Pro" model has an i5 with two cores, How 2010.
It should have been called the "Lite" model.....
Do people just not read fables anymore, specifically The Emperor's New Clothes?
Tech companies used to do user testing (focus groups, user labs, etc.) to discover what their customers needed/wanted so they could provide it.
Now, they just pump out stinking piles of shit, hail them as "courageous" design statements, and tell customers they are just stupid if they don't get it.
There is nothing in the new MBP to make me want to ditch my mid-2015 MBP (actually an insurance fix of a late 2011 MBP).
I have upgraded it to have 16 GB RAM. And a 1 TB SSD. And the processor speed is about the same (and irrelevant because almost nothing is multi-processor aware). I do hate the shiny, glossy screen, but that's not going away. Worst of all, I can't find the fucking Esc key without looking down from the screen (+ monitors)?!? Never.
Now to the race to have a wafer-thin computer, and thus ditching all of the ports that I currently have. STUPID OF YOU JONNY IVE! I will not, am not, in a car; I shall not, cannot –– buy a bag-full of dongles just so that my myriad peripherals will still work. If a computer is slimmer or lighter – fine. If the designn throws away all of those ports for the sake of being thinner?, then you have lost sight of the fundamental principle of 'form-follows-function', and you, APPLE, have lost sight of any vision of actually producing hardware that people will value.
Just so everyone is clear here: I have been an Apple "fanboi" since 1991 after having started on DOS 3.1 on a PC – 8 years prior to encountering a Mac.
Apple has lost its soul.
Now prohibiting the use of USB/hdmi/SD ports...