5 ms·

People bitch about dongles but if you think about it, who would make this progress if Apple doesn't? Apple is probably the only consumer tech hardware company

People bitch about dongles but if you think about it, who would make this progress if Apple doesn't? Apple is probably the only consumer tech hardware company out there that can do this. I almost think it's their responsibility to push the boundary. People make fun of the term "Courage" and I thought that was funny at first too. But the more I think about it the more I get what he's trying to say. Right now NO ONE other than Apple has the "courage" to make this decision. Do you think Dell would do it? Samsung? Only Apple has enough influence in the industry to be able to do something like this and NOT lose all their users. If Samsung got rid of all their ports, people would probably ditch them and buy a Lenovo or something. So Samsung cant' do it. Coming back to Apple, I'm an apple user and I have to buy it because it's just much better for me as a developer. And honestly speaking, I don't care about all these dongles arguments and "it's not for a pro" arguments. I'm not buying a device whose primary purpose is to stick in my USB cable. And pros don't complain about their tools. Anyway Apple knows that if nobody makes this decision, laptops will just stay as some stagnant genre of devices that are only able to do things that people used to do in the 2000s. In other words, if Apple didn't do this, I think the entire laptop category will just stagnate and be cannibalized by other platforms. See TV as an example.

jacquesc 10y ago
PC Laptop world is actually really competitive. Check out Razer, Alienware, Yoga line, and Microsoft Surface. They're innovating like crazy. Touch screens, OLED displays, external GPUs, different form factors, VR capable performance, etc. And many of those laptops integrated Thunderbolt 3 a while ago. Regrettably, Apple has us all locked into their ecosystem via software so it feels like they are the only ones innovating.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  Yeah I agree that they are competitive, that's why they can add stuff but can't remove. Adding is easy. Adding is always good, which means it's easy to make that decision, but removing requires "courage" (haha I just can't help it although I agree with the term) For example, it would be an idiotic move for Microsoft Surface to remove USB cables and headphone jacks because as far as hardware is concerned they're an underdog.
  - majormajor 10y ago
    > For example, it would be an idiotic move for Microsoft Surface to remove USB cables and headphone jacks because as far as hardware is concerned they're an underdog. That doesn't track with history. Apple was a huge underdog when they released the iMac and removed floppies and many non-USB ports.
    - cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
      Well I guess they had "courage" back then! But most companies don't, and that was my point.
- cletus 10y ago
  See I don't see this as "innovating like crazy". I see it as "adding bullet-list features like crazy", which isn't quite the same thing. This is always where Apple has excelled eg not adding touch screens to laptops cos it's ergonomically terrible (as Steve Jobs IMHO rightly said). Apple has also historically taken technologies that have been in the market for awhile and made them not suck. Wireless is a prime example. Anyone else remember the days where you had to setup a wifi connection by specifying encryption type and trying to figure out if you were WEP, WPA1, WPA2 or WPA2-Enterprise? Apple came long and simply let you enter a password. OSX will figure out the rest. The problem with the new Macbooks (IMHO) is that it represents a change in philosophy. As one review said "USB-C is the future but we're living unfortunately still living in the present" (paraphrased from The Verge IIRC). How much would it have hurt to have 2 A and 2 C ports? This rush to market has also led to some compatibility issues between TB3 devices. A comment I read online (on HN IIRC) went something like "we've moved from a world where if the cable fits, it works to where the cable fits and nothing works". It's a salient point: the cost of a universal connector is putting us in cable hell. PCs have long been a case of marketing pinheads building incoherent bullet lists (ie throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks). You're seeing negative reaction because people expect more from Apple.
  - thatswrong0 10y ago
    It would have hurt to have the USB-A ports because that would have led to slower adoption of USB-C. All USB-C means that device manufacturers can't ignore it for as long, esp. for manufacturers that want to have their products featured in Apple stores. So it is a bit painful for the end user, but in the long run everyone benefits from quicker adoption.
- icanhackit 10y ago
  > Check out Razer, Alienware, Yoga line, and Microsoft Surface. A lot of their headline features gimp the user experience in some way. Touch screens on laptops means you have to customize the UI so that each element is large enough to be tapped by a finger. So either you have to hide features to make room for these larger elements or pack the screen edge to edge, leaving a pretty cluttered interface. I'd rather have a better touch pad for precise input and without having to lift my arm from the keyboard. Packing gaming-class hardware into a laptop leaves you with pretty terrible battery life, weight and heating issues. Something has to give. The metrics manufacturers should consider when building a portable device is performance per watt and durability vs weight. You'll always be better off money and performance-wise building a desktop PC for gaming. Apple went with class leading storage speeds, an adaptable touch interface that's integrated with the keyboard and doesn't mess with the system UI, brought touch ID with the secure enclave, made a much larger touch pad which was already class-leading, made a considerably brighter screen - aiding outdoor use. It's a strong refresh with a premium price-tag, but you know you're buying quality when buying Apple.
- rayiner 10y ago
  I mean I keep looking around and I don't see what's so innovative. The Razer Stealth is in the 13" rMBP's weight class, but gets a third less battery life. Alienware makes big heavy gaming laptops. Surface is a good design that was poorly executed: http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/macbook-pro-13-inch-with-touch-bar http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/macbook-pro-13-inch.... Somehow, the Surface Book with Performance Base gets less battery life than the 13" rMBP, despite having a battery that's 60% bigger! You have to nail the fundamentals before you start thinking outside the box. Surface Book, for example, had an innovative form factor, but it shipped with major bugs (heating up during sleep, screen refusing to detach from the base, etc.) Shipping a neat-o feature before it's ready for prime time is pointless. E.g. OLED is a disaster for battery life right now on typical white-screen desktop workloads.
Razengan 10y ago
It's more baffling when "pros" who claim to have been loyal to Apple for decades but aghast at getting only USB-C, forgetting that Apple have done this before, way back in 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence And again with the removal of the CD drives and Ethernet ports. Does anybody really miss any of those things? I'm sure the loss of RS-232 ports and floppy drives caused some people pain during the transition, but the world moved on and it will move on again.
- merb 10y ago
  I still have a RS-232 to USB cable for MAC which I regulary use with minicom for Cisco/HP network devices.
- khedoros1 10y ago
  > Does anybody really miss any of those things? Yes? I take it that you don't? I have a few hundred CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays that I like having access to. Generally, I'll access a floppy once, and just store an image on a USB drive for later use. My building is so jammed with wifi signals that sometimes the best option is to string an ethernet cable across the room, and the access point can't be configured over a wireless interface anyhow. I use serial and parallel connections (DB9 and DB25) to access various little hardware projects and pieces of network hardware I've got around. I've got USB-based hardware for most of those. For others, I keep around some older computers. It feels "clean" to have a computer with fewer ports, but sometimes I wish I'd chosen a machine with a few more of the connections that my previous machine had.
Razengan 10y ago
It's more baffling when "pros" who claim to have been loyal to Apple for decades but aghast at getting only USB-C, forgetting that Apple have done this before, way back in 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence And many more times after, with the removal of the CD drives and Ethernet ports. Does anybody really miss any of those things?
rplst8 10y ago
There was plenty of progress in the laptop market before Apple became the power-player that it is today. Did Apple play a part? Yes. Did many of the other companies that have since gone out of business, merged, or still exist today? Yes. Personally, I don't think touch interfaces are progress - for laptops (or desktops). There are many reasons this is true, but the biggest one for me is that your finger obscures things on the display when you use it, and there is often very poor or no tactile feedback. The touchbar idea is not entirely new. I think HP or Dell had some laptops years ago that used touch slider interfaces to adjust screen brightness or volume. Adding a display to that touchbar doesn't help that much as your finger just obscures whatever you are touching. Knobs, switches, and dials are better suited for this kind of work - which is why people complain about shallow keystroke movement on keyboards. The less and less key movement there is, the closer you are to a touch display. The only reason that Apple is pushing touch interfaces like that is so they can reduce the unit cost and (maybe) improve the water/ingress resistance. It's the same reason they are removing ports. And yes, removing external physical interfaces may improve things like water resistance - but they make it harder for humans to use.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  One thing I just couldn't relate to during last couple of weeks is how all these people are criticizing the touch bar and saying it's a gimmick when they have never used it. I am ready to listen to you if you come back after you use it for a month. But I think it's funny to make all these conclusions about something when you haven't touched it.
- dpark 10y ago
  > There are many reasons this is true, but the biggest one for me is that your finger obscures things on the display when you use it, and there is often very poor or no tactile feedback. This is a poor argument against touch interfaces on laptops/desktops. This argument applies 100% to every touch interface, and yet we use touch interfaces for phones, and tablets, and modern point-of-sale systems, and the decent car navigation systems, etc, etc. There are compelling arguments against touchscreens on laptops and desktops, but this doesn't seem to be one.
forgetsusername 10y ago
And pros don't complain about their tools. Pros, in every industry, complain about their tools more than anyone else. >See TV as an example The TV industry, from both the physical panels to production and distribution of content, look drastically different than 10 years ago. I can't tell if you're trying to credit that to Apple or not? But it's hardly stagnant.
gokhan 10y ago
>...who would make this progress... Are you talking about loosing ports? A lot of people think it's not progress but something limiting their options. > I'm not buying a device whose primary purpose is to stick in my USB cable. People don't stick cables to laptops just for the sake of sticking it, no? People work with lots of devices with different interfaces. People travel to different offices and need to "stick" a cable of a device which they don't own, don't have a dongle ready and maybe won't see that interface for months or years again. Having all possible dongles for all the devices you come across is impossible for some use cases. > .. if Apple didn't do this, I think the entire laptop category will just stagnate... Oh, come on! Will just stagnate because of too many ports?
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  Please google why Apple got rid of the ports. They didn't do it to make you suffer.
  - lightbyte 10y ago
    They did it because the lightning port is proprietary and digital. You need to pay them to license it, and they can put DRM on it when they eventually choose to. That's main reason that they will never admit.
    - neotek 10y ago
      I keep hearing this silly conspiracy theory, but the numbers just don't add up. Apple makes the princely sum of $4 per accessory on MFI licensing fees. Last year, those licensing fees made up less than one fifth of one percent of their revenue, a number so tiny that it doesn't even show up as a line item in their financial reports. It would be such a spectacularly stupid decision to jeopardise sales of the world's most profitable smartphone just to try and add squeeze a minuscule amount of extra revenue out of MFI fees, it completely beggars belief that anyone is even considering it as a possibility. Regarding DRM, Apple is the company that forced music labels to abandon DRM on their distribution platform the moment it became clear that Apple held all the power in that relationship. What possible conceivable benefit could there be for them to sneakily try and add it back now?
little_data 10y ago
I think replacement of magsafe with usb-c is a step in the right direction. Hopefully one day products will all have the same ports...unless there's a cooler faster usb-d that has even more function. Maybe one day there will be no ports at all.
- cglace 10y ago
  Magsafe is/was my favorite mac feature.
  - davidf18 10y ago
    Actually, after a few months it is a problem because the adapter doesn't stay on when you're on a table in a coffee shop and the cord is hanging over the edge because you've got papers that you're typing from.
loco5niner 10y ago
> And pros don't complain about their tools. Why wouldn't they complain? Because it's unprofessional? Nonsense. If a tool isn't up to it's designed task (especially if it used to be),complaining is certainly in order.
- otterley 10y ago
  I think he misunderstood the venerable proverb, "a bad workman blames his tools." It's pithy, and people often overlook the the "bad" adjective and misinterpret its meaning.

jacquesc 10y ago

PC Laptop world is actually really competitive. Check out Razer, Alienware, Yoga line, and Microsoft Surface. They're innovating like crazy. Touch screens, OLED displays, external GPUs, different form factors, VR capable performance, etc. And many of those laptops integrated Thunderbolt 3 a while ago. Regrettably, Apple has us all locked into their ecosystem via software so it feels like they are the only ones innovating.

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
Yeah I agree that they are competitive, that's why they can add stuff but can't remove. Adding is easy. Adding is always good, which means it's easy to make that decision, but removing requires "courage" (haha I just can't help it although I agree with the term) For example, it would be an idiotic move for Microsoft Surface to remove USB cables and headphone jacks because as far as hardware is concerned they're an underdog.
- majormajor 10y ago
  > For example, it would be an idiotic move for Microsoft Surface to remove USB cables and headphone jacks because as far as hardware is concerned they're an underdog. That doesn't track with history. Apple was a huge underdog when they released the iMac and removed floppies and many non-USB ports.
  - cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
    Well I guess they had "courage" back then! But most companies don't, and that was my point.
cletus 10y ago
See I don't see this as "innovating like crazy". I see it as "adding bullet-list features like crazy", which isn't quite the same thing. This is always where Apple has excelled eg not adding touch screens to laptops cos it's ergonomically terrible (as Steve Jobs IMHO rightly said). Apple has also historically taken technologies that have been in the market for awhile and made them not suck. Wireless is a prime example. Anyone else remember the days where you had to setup a wifi connection by specifying encryption type and trying to figure out if you were WEP, WPA1, WPA2 or WPA2-Enterprise? Apple came long and simply let you enter a password. OSX will figure out the rest. The problem with the new Macbooks (IMHO) is that it represents a change in philosophy. As one review said "USB-C is the future but we're living unfortunately still living in the present" (paraphrased from The Verge IIRC). How much would it have hurt to have 2 A and 2 C ports? This rush to market has also led to some compatibility issues between TB3 devices. A comment I read online (on HN IIRC) went something like "we've moved from a world where if the cable fits, it works to where the cable fits and nothing works". It's a salient point: the cost of a universal connector is putting us in cable hell. PCs have long been a case of marketing pinheads building incoherent bullet lists (ie throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks). You're seeing negative reaction because people expect more from Apple.
- thatswrong0 10y ago
  It would have hurt to have the USB-A ports because that would have led to slower adoption of USB-C. All USB-C means that device manufacturers can't ignore it for as long, esp. for manufacturers that want to have their products featured in Apple stores. So it is a bit painful for the end user, but in the long run everyone benefits from quicker adoption.
icanhackit 10y ago
> Check out Razer, Alienware, Yoga line, and Microsoft Surface. A lot of their headline features gimp the user experience in some way. Touch screens on laptops means you have to customize the UI so that each element is large enough to be tapped by a finger. So either you have to hide features to make room for these larger elements or pack the screen edge to edge, leaving a pretty cluttered interface. I'd rather have a better touch pad for precise input and without having to lift my arm from the keyboard. Packing gaming-class hardware into a laptop leaves you with pretty terrible battery life, weight and heating issues. Something has to give. The metrics manufacturers should consider when building a portable device is performance per watt and durability vs weight. You'll always be better off money and performance-wise building a desktop PC for gaming. Apple went with class leading storage speeds, an adaptable touch interface that's integrated with the keyboard and doesn't mess with the system UI, brought touch ID with the secure enclave, made a much larger touch pad which was already class-leading, made a considerably brighter screen - aiding outdoor use. It's a strong refresh with a premium price-tag, but you know you're buying quality when buying Apple.
rayiner 10y ago
I mean I keep looking around and I don't see what's so innovative. The Razer Stealth is in the 13" rMBP's weight class, but gets a third less battery life. Alienware makes big heavy gaming laptops. Surface is a good design that was poorly executed: http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/macbook-pro-13-inch-with-touch-bar http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/macbook-pro-13-inch.... Somehow, the Surface Book with Performance Base gets less battery life than the 13" rMBP, despite having a battery that's 60% bigger! You have to nail the fundamentals before you start thinking outside the box. Surface Book, for example, had an innovative form factor, but it shipped with major bugs (heating up during sleep, screen refusing to detach from the base, etc.) Shipping a neat-o feature before it's ready for prime time is pointless. E.g. OLED is a disaster for battery life right now on typical white-screen desktop workloads.

Razengan 10y ago

It's more baffling when "pros" who claim to have been loyal to Apple for decades but aghast at getting only USB-C, forgetting that Apple have done this before, way back in 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence And again with the removal of the CD drives and Ethernet ports. Does anybody really miss any of those things? I'm sure the loss of RS-232 ports and floppy drives caused some people pain during the transition, but the world moved on and it will move on again.

merb 10y ago
I still have a RS-232 to USB cable for MAC which I regulary use with minicom for Cisco/HP network devices.
khedoros1 10y ago
> Does anybody really miss any of those things? Yes? I take it that you don't? I have a few hundred CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays that I like having access to. Generally, I'll access a floppy once, and just store an image on a USB drive for later use. My building is so jammed with wifi signals that sometimes the best option is to string an ethernet cable across the room, and the access point can't be configured over a wireless interface anyhow. I use serial and parallel connections (DB9 and DB25) to access various little hardware projects and pieces of network hardware I've got around. I've got USB-based hardware for most of those. For others, I keep around some older computers. It feels "clean" to have a computer with fewer ports, but sometimes I wish I'd chosen a machine with a few more of the connections that my previous machine had.

Razengan 10y ago

It's more baffling when "pros" who claim to have been loyal to Apple for decades but aghast at getting only USB-C, forgetting that Apple have done this before, way back in 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence And many more times after, with the removal of the CD drives and Ethernet ports. Does anybody really miss any of those things?

rplst8 10y ago

There was plenty of progress in the laptop market before Apple became the power-player that it is today. Did Apple play a part? Yes. Did many of the other companies that have since gone out of business, merged, or still exist today? Yes. Personally, I don't think touch interfaces are progress - for laptops (or desktops). There are many reasons this is true, but the biggest one for me is that your finger obscures things on the display when you use it, and there is often very poor or no tactile feedback. The touchbar idea is not entirely new. I think HP or Dell had some laptops years ago that used touch slider interfaces to adjust screen brightness or volume. Adding a display to that touchbar doesn't help that much as your finger just obscures whatever you are touching. Knobs, switches, and dials are better suited for this kind of work - which is why people complain about shallow keystroke movement on keyboards. The less and less key movement there is, the closer you are to a touch display. The only reason that Apple is pushing touch interfaces like that is so they can reduce the unit cost and (maybe) improve the water/ingress resistance. It's the same reason they are removing ports. And yes, removing external physical interfaces may improve things like water resistance - but they make it harder for humans to use.

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
One thing I just couldn't relate to during last couple of weeks is how all these people are criticizing the touch bar and saying it's a gimmick when they have never used it. I am ready to listen to you if you come back after you use it for a month. But I think it's funny to make all these conclusions about something when you haven't touched it.
dpark 10y ago
> There are many reasons this is true, but the biggest one for me is that your finger obscures things on the display when you use it, and there is often very poor or no tactile feedback. This is a poor argument against touch interfaces on laptops/desktops. This argument applies 100% to every touch interface, and yet we use touch interfaces for phones, and tablets, and modern point-of-sale systems, and the decent car navigation systems, etc, etc. There are compelling arguments against touchscreens on laptops and desktops, but this doesn't seem to be one.

forgetsusername 10y ago

And pros don't complain about their tools. Pros, in every industry, complain about their tools more than anyone else. >See TV as an example The TV industry, from both the physical panels to production and distribution of content, look drastically different than 10 years ago. I can't tell if you're trying to credit that to Apple or not? But it's hardly stagnant.

gokhan 10y ago

>...who would make this progress... Are you talking about loosing ports? A lot of people think it's not progress but something limiting their options. > I'm not buying a device whose primary purpose is to stick in my USB cable. People don't stick cables to laptops just for the sake of sticking it, no? People work with lots of devices with different interfaces. People travel to different offices and need to "stick" a cable of a device which they don't own, don't have a dongle ready and maybe won't see that interface for months or years again. Having all possible dongles for all the devices you come across is impossible for some use cases. > .. if Apple didn't do this, I think the entire laptop category will just stagnate... Oh, come on! Will just stagnate because of too many ports?

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
Please google why Apple got rid of the ports. They didn't do it to make you suffer.
- lightbyte 10y ago
  They did it because the lightning port is proprietary and digital. You need to pay them to license it, and they can put DRM on it when they eventually choose to. That's main reason that they will never admit.
  - neotek 10y ago
    I keep hearing this silly conspiracy theory, but the numbers just don't add up. Apple makes the princely sum of $4 per accessory on MFI licensing fees. Last year, those licensing fees made up less than one fifth of one percent of their revenue, a number so tiny that it doesn't even show up as a line item in their financial reports. It would be such a spectacularly stupid decision to jeopardise sales of the world's most profitable smartphone just to try and add squeeze a minuscule amount of extra revenue out of MFI fees, it completely beggars belief that anyone is even considering it as a possibility. Regarding DRM, Apple is the company that forced music labels to abandon DRM on their distribution platform the moment it became clear that Apple held all the power in that relationship. What possible conceivable benefit could there be for them to sneakily try and add it back now?

little_data 10y ago

I think replacement of magsafe with usb-c is a step in the right direction. Hopefully one day products will all have the same ports...unless there's a cooler faster usb-d that has even more function. Maybe one day there will be no ports at all.

cglace 10y ago
Magsafe is/was my favorite mac feature.
- davidf18 10y ago
  Actually, after a few months it is a problem because the adapter doesn't stay on when you're on a table in a coffee shop and the cord is hanging over the edge because you've got papers that you're typing from.

loco5niner 10y ago

> And pros don't complain about their tools. Why wouldn't they complain? Because it's unprofessional? Nonsense. If a tool isn't up to it's designed task (especially if it used to be),complaining is certainly in order.

otterley 10y ago
I think he misunderstood the venerable proverb, "a bad workman blames his tools." It's pithy, and people often overlook the the "bad" adjective and misinterpret its meaning.