10 ms·
Steve and the unified vision is gone. While on winter holidays my fiance pointed out to me: - She just got a new Macbook Pro from her new job, which has only
by chrisabrams 10y ago
Steve and the unified vision is gone.
While on winter holidays my fiance pointed out to me:
- She just got a new Macbook Pro from her new job, which has only USB C ports
- She just got a new iPhone 7 from her new job, which is only a Lightning port
She cannot connect her phone to her computer to charge without a dongle. EDIT: a Lightning to USB C cable does exist now. That is still equivalent to a dongle in my opinion, as the consumer still has to buy it and it is a cable that won't be used for anything else.
She has to carry two sets of headphones, one for her computer, and one for her phone.
The unified vision at Apple is gone.
- artimaeis 10y agoHere's my personal conjecture based on owning most products in the Apple lineup and trying to predict the future a bit. So far as I can tell the idea is Lightning ports for devices which require charging, and USB ports for devices which require data transfer. All cables designed to provide power utilize a USB A connector - this is the majority of Lightning cables. In their current lineup this can be used to charge an iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and Air Pods case. I recognize a lot of users still use the Lightning cable to transfer data to/from the phone to/from a computer. I'm betting Apple views these users as the current edge case. Given that - it seems only a matter of time until an iPhone which has no ports, similar to the Apple Watch. I imagine they'd rather not deal with USB-C on their devices at all - given the madness behind the different power capabilities of cables that seem to plague the specification. But they also recognize that is the future of general-use cables and are embracing it accordingly. Given the lack of ability to charge any Apple peripheral directly from the newest Macbook (12" or Pro) models I suspect the internal rule is that devices with batteries aren't considered charging sources. I'm personally excited to see the directions Apple keeps moving towards. I think it'll end up a more unified future than we've had yet. But I'm also ready to be wrong. I'll try to look back on this in a few years and see how we are.
- notwhoyouthink 10y ago> Given that - it seems only a matter of time until an iPhone which has no ports, similar to the Apple Watch. Unless we invent seriously good wireless charging, I just can't see that happening. There's too many cases where having your phone "docked" just doesn't work. Personally, I usually fall asleep with my phone laying on the bed next to me playing YouTube/Netflix/etc. No way to do that if it has to be resting on a pad like the Watch. And what about cars and navigation? Can't throw your phone in your cup holder and pull up Maps anymore. You either need a new car with wireless charging or need to strap some sort of wireless charging pad to the back, which defeats the entire purpose of wireless charging.
- artimaeis 10y agoThe Apple Watch doesn't use a pad charger - it uses a magnetic puck which attaches fairly firmly* to the device. Right now the puck is fairly large and thick, but I can hope that in the next 5 years Apple can manage to reduce its size a bit and provide an interface for it which works with the iPhone. Given that general design I imagine sleeping with the phone next to you in bed or in a cup holder shouldn't be much different than it is now - if anything the rotational flexibility provided by the magnetic puck charger would be advantageous in both situations. Jony Ive has a thing for reducing devices to their core-most functionality. It's a design trait picked up from the likes of Deiter Rams. One of the easiest ways to reduce a device is to reduce or eliminate points of ingress. An iPhone which has no port for charging and the updated speakers from the Series 2 Apple Watch designed for waterproofing would be more ideal. * Firm enough that you can pick up and move the watch about using only the puck as leverage.
- tribby 10y ago> Jony Ive has a thing for reducing devices to their core-most functionality. It's a design trait picked up from the likes of Deiter Rams. Ive likes to associate himself with Rams, and people like to throw around the "as little design as possible" meme, but Ive and Rams are really very different in their execution of that idea, which counts for a lot. Ive is much more willing to challenge convention in his reductions, which sometimes pays off, but sometimes it means his products are a pain in the ass for the user to figure out when they ship. This can't be said of Rams.
- rtkwe 10y agoThey would have to switch back to a non metal back to do wireless charging. I doubt they'd do plastic on their main models and glass seemed to give them a lot of trouble with shattering the last time they did it so I'm not sure they'll do it.
- johndubchak 10y agoI believe Lightning was added to the iPhone (and the headphone jack removed) only for the purpose of waterproofing the device. But that's just off the top of my head.
- takeda 10y agoI doubt it, S7 has both, headphone jack and an micro USB port, and it is still waterproof.
- LordDragonfang 10y ago>Lightning ports for devices which require charging, and USB ports for devices which require data transfer Except the new macbooks use USB C for charging, and one of the things Apple emphasized when they switched from 30-pin to lightning was the increased data rate. There's no consistency. This is just another case of everyone moving toward a standard (micro-usb and now usb-c) and Apple ignoring it, except this time Apple doesn't have any excuse.
- atarian 10y ago>the unified vision is gone. I disagree, their unified vision is a wireless one. But you could say they rushed it at the expense of the consumer.
- chrisabrams 10y agoThat's why the very first thing I mention is Steve.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoDidn't Apple recently stop developing their wireless routers?
- dagw 10y agoAnd yet they don't offer wireless charging.
- dmode 10y agoWho offers true wireless charging ? I have the so-called Samsung Galaxy wireless charging, which is no different than just plugging in. I don't even bother
- wingworks 10y agoI used to use wireless charging every day with my old Nexus 5, I loved it! I had a wireless charging puck at work where I would sit my phone on whenever I was at my desk, it was so easy that I could do whatever I wanted with my phone whenever and not worry about battery, ever (I also rarely needed to charge when I got home). I'm now using a Oneplus 2 phone and miss the wireless charging feature every time I need to plug in a cable, if I can, my next phone will support wireless charging again, I miss it so much.
- raverbashing 10y agoGood luck charging your phone wirelessly
- mtw 10y agoUnified vision was nice. What interested me first in the Apple ecosystem was its use by high-end pros. Photographers, creatives, filmmakers. Then they announced MacOS X, built upon NeXT/BSD, and the mac pro products. Now Microsoft has dedicated products for high-end creatives (Surface studio won't sell but still shows interest in pros), Linux Bash shell in windows 10. Meanwhile Apple wants pros to use a 9" tablet instead of a laptop.
- qyv 10y agoIf 2017 turns out to be the year the VR starts to hit the main stream, which it could be, it will be interesting to see what Apple's response will be.
- user5994461 10y agoWhat's hitting the market? Didn't hear anything.
- qyv 10y agoWindows 10 Creators Update along with a slew of headsets from major PC vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) starting at $300.
- seanp2k2 10y agoThe problem I see is that VR would be great with dual 2K screens and 120+hz , but we don't have the GPUS to push that many pixels today (in any remotely affordable way...maybe quad TitanX would work). Cheaper, lower-quality VR headsets will leave a bad impression on consumers. I don't think that's the direction we should be going. I'd rather see HTC and Oculus release higher-res, faster refresh rate HMDs, but I doubt they'd do that with no single GPU able to run those today.
- tekromancr 10y agoWhen you get to scale, you can start doing things like manufacturing displays with higher PPI near where the lenses are centered. That way you have the same number of total physical pixels but a higher resolution contributing to the image. You can further reduce the computational costs by using foveated rendering(http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/johnsny/papers/foveated.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/johnsny/papers...). You can use low-latency eye-tracking to spend more time rendering the portions of the frame that the user is actively looking at. I think the combo of falling gpu prices, and clever hardware design means we will probably see headsets with effectively higher and higher resolutions sooner rather than later.
- yurymik 10y ago> She cannot connect her phone to her computer to charge without a dongle. Is it still a valid point once USB-C to Lightning Cable is out? http://www.apple.com/us/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-lightning-cable-1-m http://www.apple.com/us/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-ligh...
- a_carbon_rod 10y agoDoes Apple include that cable with either the iPhone or the MacBook though? I consider it to be unreasonable to expect consumers to fork over more money to connect two devices from the same company to one another.
- chrisabrams 10y agoNo, the current expectation is the consumer to buy it :/
- fiddlerwoaroof 10y agoYou don't, though, iPhones will sync with the macbook over wifi: the only real problem is that the iPhone won't charge without the usb -> lightning cable or a power adapter.
- wil421 10y agoThe point is people don't want to carry a bag of dongles with them everyday. Especially the Pro model consumers. It's fine for reduced ports on an Air or MacBook, you're going to make sacrifices for portability. For a flagship laptop consumers expect options.
- yurymik 10y agoMeh, I have exactly the same problem with Nexus 6p. I need one USB-C/USB-A cable for data transfer, another USB-C/USB-C for fast charging from the power brick that came with the phone, but back again to USB-C/USB-A to charge from the car. And don't get me started about the lack of good car charges that that support USB 3.1 PD. It seem some friction to be inevitable when new physical connector is introduced.
- rimantas 10y agoUnified vision is wireless. What I widh were gone it's this kind of comments.
- no_gravity 10y agoIs there no Lightning to USB C cable?
- deelowe 10y agoBuy an iphone. Buy a macbook. Now try to connect the two. That's what he meant. It's possible with additional accessories, but that's not the point.
- izacus 10y agoWell, this seems to be a trend. Buying a new power adaptor for new macbook: * Buy adapter. * Buy extension cord. * Buy USB-C cable. Those aren't packaged together anymore so now you get 3 separate boxes full of packaging just for a power adaptor. It feels wasteful... not to mention annoying if the apple sales person forgets to tell you you need to buy USB-C separately! And the correct one at that.
- sbuk 10y agoReminds me of using an iMac 20 years ago...
- orbitur 10y agoBut most people aren't buying an iPhone 7 and a MacBook at the same time, and Apple only had one laptop with USB-C ports until a month after the iPhone's release. An iPhone 7 buyer is far more likely to find a USB-A port to plug into. Your idea would be to make the masses buy a dongle, instead of the minority who own brand new laptops.
- stinky613 10y agoI think you're missing the point that it's fundamentally un-Apple-like to have two new products that out-of-the-box can't connect with each other.
- 10y ago
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoI don't follow how this is an example of what you conclude. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we never been able to connect iPhone's to computers without a special cable. It's baffling, but not new.
- lachm 10y agoSure 30-pin and Lightning to USB-A cables are both "special." But in the past users have been able to connect the phone to the current MacBook lineup out of the box. Now users of the current MacBook lineup have to buy a new Lightning to USB Type-C cable as it is not included. It is certainly an example of disunity among their product lineup.
- chrisabrams 10y agoThank you, this is exactly what I meant.
- pier25 10y ago> The unified vision at Apple is gone. My theory is that something happened and Apple felt it was forced to release the new MBP 6 months or maybe 1 year before the whole line was ready.
- bsder 10y agoMicrosoft Surface happened and was being more Apple than Apple.
- johndubchak 10y agoI purchased and received my new 15" MBP over the holidays as well (already have the new iPhone 7) and it blew my mind that the MBP had the old headphone jack.
- saurik 10y agoI would say it "gets better": I have the 12" MacBook. I only have a USB-C port. I have an iPhone. I need a USB-C cable to connect my MacBook to my iPhone. So far, so good! But, I only have one USB-C port. I also want to charge my laptop. So I have a ludicrous dongle from Apple that lets me plug HDMI, USB, and power (over USB-C) at one time. But, the USB port on the dongle is USB-A, and I need to use the USB-C port to charge, so I would have to use a USB-A cable to connect my iPhone if I am using that dongle. Yes: I could always use the dongle and the USB-A cable. But that dongle is so annoying to bother with that I actually carry around all three: two cables and the dongle.
- throwaway413 10y agoWow. Now that is hell.
- kayoone 10y agoI hear this argument a lot but for some reason i never plug my iPhone into my laptop for charging, mainly because its a lot slower than using an outlet. 95% of the time i charge it at night and that's fine for the day. In the rare cases where i need to charge on the go i use an outlet or a small powerbank i always have with me.
- saurik 10y agoI do not understand your comment as I almost never plug my iPhone into my laptop for charging: I plug my iPhone into my laptop as USB is a much faster and more stable transfer conduit than bluetooth (for tethering) and is essentially required for doing most development work.
- kayoone 10y agoAh ok, i didn't think about the mobile developer usecase, thats a valid point. Tethering works fine for me via Bluetooth but i don't use it very often, so that might be valid too. But then a simple USB-C -> Lightning cable will solve your issues right ?
- orbitur 10y agoIt wouldn't make any sense to provide a Lightning/USB-C cable instead of Lightning/USB-A. Far more people own laptops with USB-A ports, and far more people never even plug their phones into anything besides their wall charger. The iPhone isn't just for Mac users.
- dogma1138 10y agoThey could've provided one cable with an adapter. USB type-c to type-a doesn't require an active dongle.
- shams93 10y agoThe irony is that say she has a macbook pro and a google pixel phone, its trivial to plug the pixel phone into the usb c port on the mac book pro without any dongles, using the cable that came with your phone.
- crusso 10y agoThe headset jack issues on the iPhone 7 make me more angry about a product I own than anything I can recall in recent memory. Utterly frustrating.
- megablast 10y agoWow, I love this being trotted out every single time. Unless the latest macbook and the latest phone are released at exactly the same time, this was always going to happen. They could have added 2 cables, which is a huge waste since most people only need one. Or they could have kept a shitty USB-A port on the macbook, which is not progressive enough for Apple.
- valarauca1 10y agoOr you put a USBC-Thunderbolt cable in the new macbooks box
- threeseed 10y agoIf a Lightning to USB-C cable (which has existed for a while now) is a dongle then what is the USB-A equivalent ? How do you think people have been charging their iPhones to date ? And you realise you still need a "dongle" if Apple used USB-C on the iPhone ? And why does your girlfriend need two sets of headphones when there is an included 3.5mm adapter with the iPhone ? So many questions. Because literally nothing you wrote seems to make much sense.
- frik 10y agoThat the new MacBookPro doesn't at least ship with two dongles (for USB and Lightning) is pure arrogance from Apple. That MacBookPro 13" without touchbar comes with just two USB-C and an old-school audio port (gone in iPhone7) is just stupid, as one USB-C port is used to charge the notebook. Steve Jobs vision and his personal testing of products is missing. He would have prevented such things leaving the factory. Beside that little ports and touchbar fiasco, the MacBookPro is a good notebook. (though I wished Intel would get their act together and finally release a chipset for 32GB RAM)