4 ms·

If they released a computer with two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports, every device manufacturer would continue to release all of their products for USB-A only a

If they released a computer with two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports, every device manufacturer would continue to release all of their products for USB-A only and say "We've chosen to build our products to be compatible with all the old computers, you can use those USB-A ports for our products and the USB-C ports for somebody else's." And then 5 years later, nobody's adopted USB-C yet because every computer still has USB-A ports and every accessory manufacturer wants to be as compatible as possible. Apple is betting that the short-term inconvenience of a few dongles is worth it in order to force every accessory manufacturer to jump on the USB-C train immediately. I can't say I disagree with them.

giarc 10y ago
Would placing only 1 USB-A port help at all in your opinion? Make it a bit tougher to use older products?
- wlesieutre 10y ago
  Hard to say how that would play out, but I wouldn't want the computer I'm going to be carrying around for the next 5 years to be thicker just to include a port that will hopefully be out of use within 1-2 years. In the short term, my main desire for an A port would be for wireless mouse dongles or other people's flash drives. But I mostly switched to a bluetooth laptop mouse already, so I'm not sweating the mice. For my own flash drive, you can get one that supports both ports, but other people won't necessarily have one. I think I'd still rather carry around an adapter for the short term and be able to transition completely off of USB-A when I no longer need it.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    I personally don't care how thick my professional laptop is. I'd rather have a 12-hour battery, 32GB RAM, two DisplayPorts, a few TB3 ports, serial, network, audio in/out (+toslink), and 4-6 USB ports. I guess I want the Thinkpad P70, but I want it to run macOS, and not have a terrible track pad. There is currently no option for this. The Mac Pro used to be cool, and they could update it to make it great again. I'm not sure why they don't invest at all into the pro market. People have been saying this now for about 5 years, and Apple would obviously rather sell luxury consumer "lifestyle" laptops than serious professional tools. It's not that I'm against thin-and-light, I just see that as fitting the needs of e.g. PMs and managers, and the MacBook / Air filled that need nicely. Now they've gone and made the mbp into the air, thinking that's what everyone wants and needs.
    - wlesieutre 10y ago
      It's basically my dream laptop on account of the screen: wide gamut, variable refresh rate, great brightness and contrast. In the regard it's way nicer than the Air (which is what I have now). But I do any heavy lifting tasks on a (cheaper + Windows) desktop with an i7 and 32 GB of RAM, so my laptop doesn't need to be the beefiest machine in existence. Nor do I run piles of VMs or huge deep learning datasets. IMO it's a computer more for artists than it is for programmers, and that's driving a lot of the negativity about it on HN. We're mostly programmers on here. On the USB-C note, I'm curious what happens to the Mac Pro now. They're pushing USB-C as the new standard for pro accessories, and yet the Mac Pro doesn't support it. As if being 3 years old wasn't bad enough, now it's 3 years old and has the wrong ports. Here's hoping for an "Our bad, the new Mac Pro has USB-C, Thunderbolt 3, upgradeable GPUs and multiple drive bays," but I'm not holding my breath.
      - goalieca 10y ago
        Am I the only programmer that uses tmux and vim with old fashioned makefile? I still need a serial port to talk with hardware but a simple usb dongle works. I remember people complain almost 15 years ago that apple didn't have a serial port on their laptops. Its funny that windows itself became the biggest problem for serial.
- vlozko 10y ago
  Not everyone uses USB ports on a regular basis (can't recall the last time my wife did on her Pro) and even fewer people would use more than one. So I'm inclined to think including even one USB-A port would significantly impact adoption of USB-C by third parties.
pier25 10y ago
Quite the contrary. Apple has delusions of grandeur if it thinks it can change an entire industry with a less than 10% market share.
- Artemis2 10y ago
  But they do. They removed optical drives and RJ45 jacks from their laptops. Most new laptops don't have these anymore. Some competing models already just have USB Type C ports.
  - wlesieutre 10y ago
    And the original iMac, which dropped all the old printer/keyboard/mouse/serial/SCSI/whatever connectors in favor of USB and FireWire. Psssh, USB. Like that'll ever catch on... And Apple was a tiiiiny fraction of the market then compared to what they are now. Anybody remember all the PS/2 to USB dongles? We got over it.
  - pier25 10y ago
    Optical drives didn't go extinct because Apple removed them, but because USB sticks were much more useful. RJ45 went extinct because everyone uses Wifi. In both cases Apple didn't set a trend, it was inevitable. But a USB-A mouse works perfectly, just like a wired headphone. There is not a clear advantage here.
  - kyriakos 10y ago
    Other manufacturers dropped them not because of apple though but because they were no longer needed.

giarc 10y ago

Would placing only 1 USB-A port help at all in your opinion? Make it a bit tougher to use older products?

wlesieutre 10y ago
Hard to say how that would play out, but I wouldn't want the computer I'm going to be carrying around for the next 5 years to be thicker just to include a port that will hopefully be out of use within 1-2 years. In the short term, my main desire for an A port would be for wireless mouse dongles or other people's flash drives. But I mostly switched to a bluetooth laptop mouse already, so I'm not sweating the mice. For my own flash drive, you can get one that supports both ports, but other people won't necessarily have one. I think I'd still rather carry around an adapter for the short term and be able to transition completely off of USB-A when I no longer need it.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  I personally don't care how thick my professional laptop is. I'd rather have a 12-hour battery, 32GB RAM, two DisplayPorts, a few TB3 ports, serial, network, audio in/out (+toslink), and 4-6 USB ports. I guess I want the Thinkpad P70, but I want it to run macOS, and not have a terrible track pad. There is currently no option for this. The Mac Pro used to be cool, and they could update it to make it great again. I'm not sure why they don't invest at all into the pro market. People have been saying this now for about 5 years, and Apple would obviously rather sell luxury consumer "lifestyle" laptops than serious professional tools. It's not that I'm against thin-and-light, I just see that as fitting the needs of e.g. PMs and managers, and the MacBook / Air filled that need nicely. Now they've gone and made the mbp into the air, thinking that's what everyone wants and needs.
  - wlesieutre 10y ago
    It's basically my dream laptop on account of the screen: wide gamut, variable refresh rate, great brightness and contrast. In the regard it's way nicer than the Air (which is what I have now). But I do any heavy lifting tasks on a (cheaper + Windows) desktop with an i7 and 32 GB of RAM, so my laptop doesn't need to be the beefiest machine in existence. Nor do I run piles of VMs or huge deep learning datasets. IMO it's a computer more for artists than it is for programmers, and that's driving a lot of the negativity about it on HN. We're mostly programmers on here. On the USB-C note, I'm curious what happens to the Mac Pro now. They're pushing USB-C as the new standard for pro accessories, and yet the Mac Pro doesn't support it. As if being 3 years old wasn't bad enough, now it's 3 years old and has the wrong ports. Here's hoping for an "Our bad, the new Mac Pro has USB-C, Thunderbolt 3, upgradeable GPUs and multiple drive bays," but I'm not holding my breath.
    - goalieca 10y ago
      Am I the only programmer that uses tmux and vim with old fashioned makefile? I still need a serial port to talk with hardware but a simple usb dongle works. I remember people complain almost 15 years ago that apple didn't have a serial port on their laptops. Its funny that windows itself became the biggest problem for serial.
vlozko 10y ago
Not everyone uses USB ports on a regular basis (can't recall the last time my wife did on her Pro) and even fewer people would use more than one. So I'm inclined to think including even one USB-A port would significantly impact adoption of USB-C by third parties.

pier25 10y ago

Quite the contrary. Apple has delusions of grandeur if it thinks it can change an entire industry with a less than 10% market share.

Artemis2 10y ago
But they do. They removed optical drives and RJ45 jacks from their laptops. Most new laptops don't have these anymore. Some competing models already just have USB Type C ports.
- wlesieutre 10y ago
  And the original iMac, which dropped all the old printer/keyboard/mouse/serial/SCSI/whatever connectors in favor of USB and FireWire. Psssh, USB. Like that'll ever catch on... And Apple was a tiiiiny fraction of the market then compared to what they are now. Anybody remember all the PS/2 to USB dongles? We got over it.
- pier25 10y ago
  Optical drives didn't go extinct because Apple removed them, but because USB sticks were much more useful. RJ45 went extinct because everyone uses Wifi. In both cases Apple didn't set a trend, it was inevitable. But a USB-A mouse works perfectly, just like a wired headphone. There is not a clear advantage here.
- kyriakos 10y ago
  Other manufacturers dropped them not because of apple though but because they were no longer needed.