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So USB-C is what it takes to get you to switch to Linux? What are you going to do when all other laptop manufacturers follow suit - switch back? Mac users who

by nsxwolf 10y ago

So USB-C is what it takes to get you to switch to Linux? What are you going to do when all other laptop manufacturers follow suit - switch back? Mac users who make this threat sound just like people who threaten to move to Canada every election cycle.

nicolas_t 10y ago
Personally, USB-C is the least of my problem. I care about having a fast, powerful laptop with 32 or 64GB ram (I run a lot of VMs for my work, I could offload it to the cloud but then it's more of a hassle). I complain because Apple decided to make the macbook pro 15 inch lighter and thinner resulting in 25% less battery (going from 99.5 watt-hour to 76.0-watt-hour), this means that they have to make more compromises to keep a good battery life and instead of having a decent graphic card like the nvidia gtx 1080 or 32GB ram, the new macbook pros are underpowered. Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors. And to add insult to the injury, switching to usb-c forces users (at least for a year or two) to carry a lot of extra adapters which makes the weight loss moot.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  > Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors. Once the next generation of Intel processors land, I bet we'll see Macbook Pros with faster processors and 32GB or more of RAM. At that point they will catch up to their competitors. But it's important to remember who Apple considers their competitors. They've never competed on the cheap end--everyone knows that--but they've also never competed on the high-power end. For at least the past 8 years it's been possible to buy laptops that deliver more horsepower than a Macbook Pro, by caring less about size, weight, and battery life. I think that will always be true.
  - nicolas_t 10y ago
    It's true, but I don't remember having ever seen such a big gap in term of performance (or at least since apple switched to intel). The macbook pro 17 inch used to be not bad when compared to competitors.
  - benologist 10y ago
    I think once Apple detaches iOS development from macOS all bets are off.
- natch 10y ago
  Which adapters do you need to carry? I would love a 32G or 64G machine too, but did you see what Phil Schiller said about the 32G issue? It sounded like it wasn't a matter of a little bit more power, it was a LOT more. We really don't know how much more. Apple does know. If the new design was two inches thick people would be complaining about that. Personally I'm expecting that no matter what the vendor. desktops will always be more powerful than laptops, and some people will always complain that the gap is too large. For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    > Which adapters do you need to carry? USB-A adapter for my wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse. A gigabit ethernet adapter. Mini-DP x2 adapter, for my desktop screens. I may be able to leave those attached to the screens, though. I'd need another one for home in that case. Power adapter, HDMI adapter and two USB-A, for attaching to any external screens, speakerphones, and webcams when in a conference room. If I include my hobbies, I will also be needing a USB-C to USB-B cable for my USB hub (or a few new USB-C to Mini- and Micro-USB cables), and a SD card adapter. > For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation. Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs.
    - melq 10y ago
      > Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs. Perhaps not compared to memory, but that gap continues to look smaller and smaller. The new PCIe/NVME drive's bandwidth looks to be within 1(-ish) order of magnitude of ddr3. Apple is claiming ~3GB/s read ~2GB write and iirc 1600mhz ddr3 is somewhere around 20GB/s rw. I don't know what the latency numbers are, but I know the NVME/PCIe bus is a dramatic improvement -- not saying it will be measured in nanoseconds, however. I have some fusion ioDrives at work that have about 3GB/s r 2.5 w with ~30 microsecond latency over the PCIe bus. Exciting times we live in for io :)
      - 10y ago
natch 10y ago
You're too easily accepting the premise of the article at face value. It's likely the premise just was made up as a rhetorical device to promote the OP's favorite Linux distribution.
awinder 10y ago
Most of the laptop manufacturers are mixing the legacy ports with the new usb-c ports. That'll probably continue for a while, and not sure if you'll see things like sd card readers disappear anytime soon. Apple's DNA is to make upsetting changes quickly (often to their benefit), but that's not how a lot of users like things to go down, so this feels like a legitimate gripe. As for when the escape key / function row is going to disappear from windows computers, I'd say that one is a ways off / never. As for when it's going to be impossible to get a nice nvidea graphics card, but given the track record, I'd say this trends towards "never" as well.
- pmontra 10y ago
  > not sure if you'll see things like sd card readers disappear anytime soon I hope they don't. I love to open my camera, put the SD card in my computer and copy all the pictures. The camera also has a WiFi chip, which would let me download pics and control it with a very invasive mobile app (lots of unnecessary permissions). I just disabled it. Needless to say the desktop application runs only on Windows and Mac. I could have installed it in a VM but the SD card is just faster.
anderber 10y ago
Honestly I like the switch to USB-C. For me it's the price hike with year old processors, 16GB max for RAM, and that Touch Bar. And I only complain because this is supposed to be their 'Pro' version, while I see this is more focused toward general consumers.
Ajedi32 10y ago
It's not so much the presence of USB-C ports as it is the absence of anything else. For example, the Dell XPS 13 9350, has a USB-C port, but it also has 2 USB-A ports and a memory card reader. Until USB-C becomes the universal standard it's meant to be, consumers are better served by having multiple ports on their PCs to choose from.

by nsxwolf 10y ago

nicolas_t 10y ago

Personally, USB-C is the least of my problem. I care about having a fast, powerful laptop with 32 or 64GB ram (I run a lot of VMs for my work, I could offload it to the cloud but then it's more of a hassle). I complain because Apple decided to make the macbook pro 15 inch lighter and thinner resulting in 25% less battery (going from 99.5 watt-hour to 76.0-watt-hour), this means that they have to make more compromises to keep a good battery life and instead of having a decent graphic card like the nvidia gtx 1080 or 32GB ram, the new macbook pros are underpowered. Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors. And to add insult to the injury, switching to usb-c forces users (at least for a year or two) to carry a lot of extra adapters which makes the weight loss moot.

snowwrestler 10y ago
> Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors. Once the next generation of Intel processors land, I bet we'll see Macbook Pros with faster processors and 32GB or more of RAM. At that point they will catch up to their competitors. But it's important to remember who Apple considers their competitors. They've never competed on the cheap end--everyone knows that--but they've also never competed on the high-power end. For at least the past 8 years it's been possible to buy laptops that deliver more horsepower than a Macbook Pro, by caring less about size, weight, and battery life. I think that will always be true.
- nicolas_t 10y ago
  It's true, but I don't remember having ever seen such a big gap in term of performance (or at least since apple switched to intel). The macbook pro 17 inch used to be not bad when compared to competitors.
- benologist 10y ago
  I think once Apple detaches iOS development from macOS all bets are off.
natch 10y ago
Which adapters do you need to carry? I would love a 32G or 64G machine too, but did you see what Phil Schiller said about the 32G issue? It sounded like it wasn't a matter of a little bit more power, it was a LOT more. We really don't know how much more. Apple does know. If the new design was two inches thick people would be complaining about that. Personally I'm expecting that no matter what the vendor. desktops will always be more powerful than laptops, and some people will always complain that the gap is too large. For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation.
- falcolas 10y ago
  > Which adapters do you need to carry? USB-A adapter for my wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse. A gigabit ethernet adapter. Mini-DP x2 adapter, for my desktop screens. I may be able to leave those attached to the screens, though. I'd need another one for home in that case. Power adapter, HDMI adapter and two USB-A, for attaching to any external screens, speakerphones, and webcams when in a conference room. If I include my hobbies, I will also be needing a USB-C to USB-B cable for my USB hub (or a few new USB-C to Mini- and Micro-USB cables), and a SD card adapter. > For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation. Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs.
  - melq 10y ago
    > Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs. Perhaps not compared to memory, but that gap continues to look smaller and smaller. The new PCIe/NVME drive's bandwidth looks to be within 1(-ish) order of magnitude of ddr3. Apple is claiming ~3GB/s read ~2GB write and iirc 1600mhz ddr3 is somewhere around 20GB/s rw. I don't know what the latency numbers are, but I know the NVME/PCIe bus is a dramatic improvement -- not saying it will be measured in nanoseconds, however. I have some fusion ioDrives at work that have about 3GB/s r 2.5 w with ~30 microsecond latency over the PCIe bus. Exciting times we live in for io :)
    - 10y ago

natch 10y ago

You're too easily accepting the premise of the article at face value. It's likely the premise just was made up as a rhetorical device to promote the OP's favorite Linux distribution.

awinder 10y ago

Most of the laptop manufacturers are mixing the legacy ports with the new usb-c ports. That'll probably continue for a while, and not sure if you'll see things like sd card readers disappear anytime soon. Apple's DNA is to make upsetting changes quickly (often to their benefit), but that's not how a lot of users like things to go down, so this feels like a legitimate gripe. As for when the escape key / function row is going to disappear from windows computers, I'd say that one is a ways off / never. As for when it's going to be impossible to get a nice nvidea graphics card, but given the track record, I'd say this trends towards "never" as well.

pmontra 10y ago
> not sure if you'll see things like sd card readers disappear anytime soon I hope they don't. I love to open my camera, put the SD card in my computer and copy all the pictures. The camera also has a WiFi chip, which would let me download pics and control it with a very invasive mobile app (lots of unnecessary permissions). I just disabled it. Needless to say the desktop application runs only on Windows and Mac. I could have installed it in a VM but the SD card is just faster.

anderber 10y ago

Honestly I like the switch to USB-C. For me it's the price hike with year old processors, 16GB max for RAM, and that Touch Bar. And I only complain because this is supposed to be their 'Pro' version, while I see this is more focused toward general consumers.

Ajedi32 10y ago

It's not so much the presence of USB-C ports as it is the absence of anything else. For example, the Dell XPS 13 9350, has a USB-C port, but it also has 2 USB-A ports and a memory card reader. Until USB-C becomes the universal standard it's meant to be, consumers are better served by having multiple ports on their PCs to choose from.