Apple please for the love of usability: please give me back USB. I AM the pro that you want to feature in every one of your marketing videos. I have a music studio in my house, I build interactive lighting installations for the biggest music festivals in the world, I build custom hardware controllers for fire effects that travel all over the country, I travel around the world teaching people how to build hardware devices, and when home I spend the majority of my time teaching and building software that people love; I use my laptop for over 10 hours a day.
All of this stuff uses USB. ALL OF IT. Having to carry around stupid dongles all the time is the biggest pain in my ass when I'm trying to do all of this stuff. PLEASE give me back USB, you can even call it the "stupid loser old crappy loser lame macbook for loser non pros". I don't care. This nonsense minimalist sleek design stuff is actually harming my productivity.
Having to deal with dongles for a couple years while the rest of the market catches up isn't a reason to push against the best port standard in decades.
There is no such thing as a USB-C hub. The protocol doesn't support it. That's one really concrete way that USB-C is inferior. I think I heard rumors that the proposed replacement fixes that, but Thunderbolt 3+USB-C is inferior that way.
It's also easier to snap off. That's two. Yes, it's better in a lot of objective ways, but there are also non-imaginary ways in which it's a pretty substantial compromise.
Maybe we should do a longbet on whether you're willing to talk smack about T3 once T4 hardware comes out. Because I bet you will.
I didn't believe you, then I went and checked.
https://www.cnet.com/news/usb-4-will-resurrect-those-useful-...
Apparently all the hubs that have multiple USB-C ports are running USB 2 over them, or you can just use them for power delivery.
I am suddenly very happy that none of my other devices except for my USB-C hub, actually uses USB-C, I'd be limited to the ports that came on the computer!
Thunderbolt docks can do it, they just run multiple USB controllers on board, one for each port, but indeed, it USB-C 3.1 as it stands today doesn't support hubs.
Did you read the protocol specification? (It's freely available, with no paywall or even login wall.) The protocol does support a USB-C hub. Actually protocols, since there are three separate protocols involved, each on its own set of wires: USB 2.0, USB 3.x, and USB-PD. Each of them has its own support for USB hubs. The hub support for USB 2.0 and USB 3.x is the same as in the older USB hubs with the USB-A and USB-B plugs and sockets; only USB-PD is new (and has long chapters on how power delivery works through hubs in several different scenarios).
The only gotcha is that Thunderbolt 3 does not support a USB 3.x hub (but this is fixed by its successor USB4); this is worked around by including a full PCIe USB 3.x host on the Thunderbolt 3 device, since Thunderbolt 3 can pass through PCIe and Displayport at the same time (USB4 adds USB 3.x to the passthrough).
They should at a minumum have included a few choice dongles with the system. (usb-c to usb-a, and maybe usb-c to HDMI)
Additionally, they should have completed the ecosystem too. a mac-to-mac upgrade requires a dizzying variety of dongles, where one firewire cable was all that was required in previous systems.
Micro-USB is still clinging on but those will fade out within the next 2-3 years.
Additionally, four years is a laughably short period of time to measure Type-C's adoption, but even given that, I would love to see actual usage data for, say, American adults.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MUF82AM/A/usb-c-digital-a...
What more do you need?
As Steve Jobs says, you should start from the user experience and work backwards. Dongle hell is not a good user experience, especially when Apple's obsession with slimness is in part due to portability.
But why do I have to be the hostage here? I don't want to wait for "the rest of the market catches up", I want to get my work done, and my work requires plugging in lots of USB-A peripherals. The move to USB-C only was premature and trying to force the market using users as hostages shows incredible hubris.
I'm about 70-30 on it being satire
- Run a display
- Charge my laptop
- Charge a phone
- Connect a drive
I can even use a single port to both charge the laptop and run a screen with multiple USB devices attached to it.
I now need to daisy chain converters to use my PS/2 mouse on my MacBook Pro though, so that's a bit of a hassle.
Also, I can use the same charger and dongles for my work notebook, which is Windows based. I wish every new thing was USB-C, because I love it.
(This is a copy of a previous comment, because I feel it is relevant again.)
Possibly. But they'll be using it for the next 100 if no one ever removes it from anything.
As the guy who gave up my laptop( MacBook pro 2015) in a meeting to project because the 2 other MacBooks in the meeting only had usb c and the presentation was on a usb a stick.
At least they got the projector using usb c with a dongle now..
Nothing like having choices. Why my new personal machine was a linux based laptop.
Music professionals, video professionals, photographic professionals, and plenty of other professionals all have collections of USB peripherals which aren't going to be updated any time soon - either because there are no USB-C replacements, or because a complete replacement program might easily run to four figures, edging up to five for some users, and in extreme cases will be as high as six.
Some of these people tour or travel a lot. Having to rely on dongles - which can be lost, or stolen, or which may stop working for random reasons - is very much not a good idea.
Telling these professionals to "deal with it" is unhelpfully obtuse.
Things do change, but change for the sake of change isn't a good thing.
Meanwhile, I can use all 4 ports to: - Run a display With a dongle
- Charge my laptop Did you need 4 ports to do this? How is this better than a magsafe connector?
- Charge a phone Existing USB ports do this fine, and most charger cables have USB-A on one end. USB-C-USB-C cables are extremely limited in their use and are more expensive.
- Connect a drive Again, no advantage over USB-A
Apple has "solved" non-existent problems and in exchange they've created a whole new slew of problems. Why should I have to replace all my existing cables to work with a computer? It's because Apple is designing for slim cases above all else. (So slim and delicate that resting my hand on the case while typing causes random keypresses).
I broke an early macbook screen by tripping over the charging cable. When they made the switch to magsafe cables it was to explicitly prevent this very common occurrence. They traded trip-proof laptops for the ability to plug your charger into 4 different ports. What possible advantage could that offer?
Being able to charge on either side is really, really nice. I miss MagSafe, sure, but this mostly makes up for it. I can also run my laptop off the ubiquitous USB-C battery packs now, which is glorious.
USB-C-USB-C are going to be much more ubiquitous too, especially when the iPhone switches next cycle.
Other companies have dealt with change better than Apple. For example, I can buy a professional tier laptop from Microsoft or Lenovo with plenty of USB ports, while Apple's reaction to change has been to ignore their professional users' use-cases.
Just because you’re not a fan of it doesn’t mean it isn’t a solid solution for the rest of us. And the rest of us mostly like having change forced on us — it means we’re progressing forward instead of shouting at clouds for being in the way of the sun.
Being able to come to work and plug in a single cord and have it drive my mechanical keyboard, headphone amp, monitor, and power is pretty amazing IMO.
You know what else this laptop has? Two ports I don't recognize (thunderbolt and dock?) on the left, and on the right, two USB-A, ethernet, SD card reader, HDMI, and headphone jack. It's a false dichotomy to say that you can only get the one-port connection by throwing away all the other ports you might need.
Just imagine having a dock, and not needing to plug any cords :-)
Also, like most things Apple removed (I'm looking at you, 3.5mm), how has the removal enabled your use case?
To put it other way: you could have everything you outlined even if they had magsafe + USB-A
but with removal of those things, we can't have things we want/need/desire, for no appreciable gain to you.
I’d bet money Apple will move to USB C iPhones at some point. HN would go crazy considering all the negativity around any Apple announcement.
What I didn’t like was that over three or four of the Apple USB-C to hdmi/usb-a/whatever the last one was (thunderbolt?) and one third party adapter I never found one that wasn’t super choppy with my input.
So my Webcam would stutter, and my keyboard would suddenly repeating the same key 12 times (admittedly making for a pretty exciting experience with ViM).
Very frustrating. It may have been my computer. Don’t think I’d heard of others with the same issues in my workplace. But really made working a PITA sometimes for me.
Meanwhile my 2015 MBP did just fine with the same hub through switch setup, so it was most likely the USB C hardware driver in the Apple Laptop.
If you have 1 or 2 USB-C ports odds are you'll need a dongle. Since the only USB-C dongles don't multiply ports, it'll have multiple USB ports. If you had a lot of USB-C ports, you'd likely get adapters and switch to USB-C as you upgraded things. Now, unless you can switch to wireless, you basically have to replace it with a USB device.
Out of curiosity, what PS/2 mouse do you use?
That argument can be used to explain away any problem.
4 usb ports are massively redundant. Even if someone loves usb-C having a usb-A port will add a lot of usability without compromising on anything else.
If you haven't used a USB-C/Thunderbolt-3 notebook, being able to go from portable to charging, full size monitor, peripherals, external storage, etc. with one cable is a welcome change.
Apple's commitment to supporting legacy ports (albeit through adapters) is pretty good, in my experience. As an anecdote, I needed to get some data off of an old Firewire 400 hard drive and linked Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2, Thunderbolt 2 to Firewire 800, Firewire 800 to 400 cable into the drive and it mounts like it would on a direct connection.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Syntech-Adapter-Thunderbolt-Compatibl...
I tried to plug my firewire into my USB-C port and it didn't work. Help!
I mean, why stop there? Apple could just go to zero ports and force everyone to use Wi-Fi peripherals. They could sell a wi-fi peripheral hub for backwards compatibility. Then they could get rid of the power port and use inductive charging. That would make for an insanely sleek machine, even if it were insanely painful to use.
And even that's optional. I never plug my iPhone into my MacBook, because everything syncs seamlessly via "the cloud"; only use Lightning cable for charging, and I'm looking forward to dumping even that when I upgrade to a Qi-enabled iPhone in a couple months. Yes, I look forward to "zero ports".
The only need for cables at this point is high-power/high-bandwidth/high-security applications. Qi doesn't deliver 60 watts, and my employer overloaded the security so I have to use a Lightning/USB-C cable for debugging ... so I'm happy to have 4 tiny identical ports that do the job.
The newest gen of iPhones come with C to Lightning rather than A to Lightning now. Because that's also the requirement for USB-PD fast charging for the iPhone and Macbook. They've also sold the cables separately for the last two years for the USB-PD fast charging.
There is no real need to plug an iPhone or iPad into your MacBook though.
But in many other cases, due to latency issues and such (like displays), USB serves really well.
If you're talking about using a keyboard and mouse while mobile, I have no idea why you'd be using wired instead of bluetooth...
It was a bad decision 2 years ago when they introduced this generation of Macbook Pros, and it's still a bad decision.
That's straight up nonsense. You can still do everything you could do with a USB-A port. I'm also in the full USB-C camp and any of my old USB-A devices just use a USB-C to USB-A cable. I am in no way hindered from doing actual work.
Where do you see that?
https://satechi.net/collections/usb-type-c/products/type-c-m...
Basically my background is software (like everybody else here), but around 2009 or so that started bleeding into hardware via arduino/hackerspaces.
And then that bled into doing some consulting work on large advertising installations (building motor control software for robots, building interfaces etc. Some of the stuff I've worked on has been for SXSW,comic con, and the super bowl).
I got lucky in meeting some really cool people doing really cool stuff at burning man, and they eventually let me help on some lighting and fire effects control stuff. That group then eventually morphed into a group that is also building things for music festivals, and when custom stuff needed to get built for it, I was somebody who could help, and so I got to.
As far as the travelling stuff: that was something a friend of mine was doing, but when she wasn't able to go on a trip, she connected me with her employer, which then led to more jobs etc.
But yeah, basically show up and be nice to people. Offer to help a lot.
Also while you are at it include the Apple Power Cable extension cable too. Crazy that is not included.
I too connect a bunch of devices via USB to my laptop (minus the brag). The problem was that there were so many devices, I never had enough ports so I had to use a hub anyway. Then graduated to a docking station and carried my hub around with me in my electronics bag.
So I just bought an USB-C hub (as the docking station already had USB-C). I stopped using flash drives years ago, I have USB-C YubiKeys now so as a proficient user of multiple devices, I really don't feel any pain because of this..
