8 ms·

I too wish they would abandon an open standard like USB-C for a cornucopia of proprietary and legacy plugs.

mancerayder 8y ago
Yeah, that proprietary sdcard technology has no place on the side of a new computer in 2018. Instead, we should use a generic USB-C hole which leads to cable which leads to this sdcard thing.
- bumholio 8y ago
  SD Card is legacy. Legacy: (noun) a useful, established technology that Apple's designers feel it makes their computers less pretty.
ianai 8y ago
It’s great on paper but rife with problems of its own.
izacus 8y ago
There's enough space to have both. You know, like on 2015 model. Remove Thunderbolt 2 and Magsafe, add TB3/USB-C. But don't make me look for dongle every time I want to plug in a mouse, USB stick, YubiKey or any other of literary thousands of USB-A devices. The user experience of this device is objectively worse. It made me think less of Apple - they decided to constantly annoy me to earn more money on dongles.
- monocasa 8y ago
  And those new USB-A devices exist for a reason. There's a formal ban on female USB-C to male USB-A adapters because they're afraid of someone making an A to A cable with two dongles. So if you want to follow the spec, and want to support hosts that don't have a USB-C port, then all you can ship is a USB-A device.
  - praseodym 8y ago
    Like any of the USB A male to male cables that you can use to transfer files between to machines, or the USB A female to female adapters you can use with one of these cables to create an extension cable? If they’re banned, I wouldn’t expect them to be as widely sold.
    - amluto 8y ago
      You mean the A to A cables that warn that you may damage your computer if you connect two computers? Or the A to A “cables” that are actually a tiny device that relays data between two computers?
    - monocasa 8y ago
      The male to male cable to transfer between machines probably has a device with two slave ports in it. There's EE reasons, as well as protocol reasons why just plugging two hosts into each other is a bad idea (and fixing that was most of the work behind USB OTG). Female to female is fine, because there shouldn't be a host with a male end that isn't OTG. And beyond that, there totally exist the banned adapters (C female to A male) but that has more to do with the fact that you can get anything from China, regardless of trademark infringement.
- rosege 8y ago
  I wish they could do a magsafe/USB-C combo - love both shame they couldnt make a USB-C on either side somehow do magsafe too.
  - dwaite 8y ago
    The problem is that there isn't a lot of wiggle room in the USB-C spec to make a compliant plug thats attached magnetically rather than mechanically, and the contacts are recessed rather than surface contacts (so it has to be 'plugged in' rather than 'resting on') Griffin sells a magnetic USB-C cable - that winds up being a magnetic dongle to a charging cable. Apple doing this would have been considered a hack against their design and would have required them to include a lower quality data-only cable rather than the data+charging USB-C cables they currently include.
    - rosege 8y ago
      Yeah I can see that - too bad Apple has the patent on magsafe so it couldnt be incorporated when USB-C was being designed.
gnicholas 8y ago
Hm, USB-A and SD aren't proprietary, so I guess you're considering them legacy? SD certainly hasn't been replaced, and I've yet to see a memory stick that isn't USB-A. Ditto for hard drives, though I'm sure they exist. I understand that thickness perhaps knocked out the USB-A, but the same can't be said for SD. And since the ultra-thin keyboard hasn't worked out that well, then perhaps the MBP is a little too thin for its own good?
- gnicholas 8y ago
  An explanation/rebuttal would be more helpful than just downvoting!
fraudsyndrome 8y ago
On one hand, my xps at work goes through to a dock that uses usb-c/tb3, everything goes through to the dock and nothing except the connector to my laptop. I get why they only had so little usb-c ports. I hope it wasn't as a decision to look "minimal" and thus less practical, meaning they took little is more a bit too literally. Thing is, to take my work laptop home, I don't want to have to shell out for a dock just to use it at home too so on that hand, I'm happy the xps gives me options to not have to be reliant on a dock, as much as I love the use of a dock at work.
jonhendry18 8y ago
I think the last truly proprietary connector on a Mac was the Apple Display Connector from the G4 Power Mac days.
- dwaite 8y ago
  Magsafe is still on the MacBook Air.
  - jonhendry18 8y ago
    Ah that's right. I guess I've found video adapter dongles more annoying than the proprietary power connector.

Yeah, that proprietary sdcard technology has no place on the side of a new computer in 2018. Instead, we should use a generic USB-C hole which leads to cable which leads to this sdcard thing.

bumholio 8y ago
SD Card is legacy. Legacy: (noun) a useful, established technology that Apple's designers feel it makes their computers less pretty.

ianai 8y ago

It’s great on paper but rife with problems of its own.

izacus 8y ago

There's enough space to have both. You know, like on 2015 model. Remove Thunderbolt 2 and Magsafe, add TB3/USB-C. But don't make me look for dongle every time I want to plug in a mouse, USB stick, YubiKey or any other of literary thousands of USB-A devices. The user experience of this device is objectively worse. It made me think less of Apple - they decided to constantly annoy me to earn more money on dongles.

monocasa 8y ago
And those new USB-A devices exist for a reason. There's a formal ban on female USB-C to male USB-A adapters because they're afraid of someone making an A to A cable with two dongles. So if you want to follow the spec, and want to support hosts that don't have a USB-C port, then all you can ship is a USB-A device.
- praseodym 8y ago
  Like any of the USB A male to male cables that you can use to transfer files between to machines, or the USB A female to female adapters you can use with one of these cables to create an extension cable? If they’re banned, I wouldn’t expect them to be as widely sold.
  - amluto 8y ago
    You mean the A to A cables that warn that you may damage your computer if you connect two computers? Or the A to A “cables” that are actually a tiny device that relays data between two computers?
  - monocasa 8y ago
    The male to male cable to transfer between machines probably has a device with two slave ports in it. There's EE reasons, as well as protocol reasons why just plugging two hosts into each other is a bad idea (and fixing that was most of the work behind USB OTG). Female to female is fine, because there shouldn't be a host with a male end that isn't OTG. And beyond that, there totally exist the banned adapters (C female to A male) but that has more to do with the fact that you can get anything from China, regardless of trademark infringement.
rosege 8y ago
I wish they could do a magsafe/USB-C combo - love both shame they couldnt make a USB-C on either side somehow do magsafe too.
- dwaite 8y ago
  The problem is that there isn't a lot of wiggle room in the USB-C spec to make a compliant plug thats attached magnetically rather than mechanically, and the contacts are recessed rather than surface contacts (so it has to be 'plugged in' rather than 'resting on') Griffin sells a magnetic USB-C cable - that winds up being a magnetic dongle to a charging cable. Apple doing this would have been considered a hack against their design and would have required them to include a lower quality data-only cable rather than the data+charging USB-C cables they currently include.
  - rosege 8y ago
    Yeah I can see that - too bad Apple has the patent on magsafe so it couldnt be incorporated when USB-C was being designed.

gnicholas 8y ago

Hm, USB-A and SD aren't proprietary, so I guess you're considering them legacy? SD certainly hasn't been replaced, and I've yet to see a memory stick that isn't USB-A. Ditto for hard drives, though I'm sure they exist. I understand that thickness perhaps knocked out the USB-A, but the same can't be said for SD. And since the ultra-thin keyboard hasn't worked out that well, then perhaps the MBP is a little too thin for its own good?

gnicholas 8y ago
An explanation/rebuttal would be more helpful than just downvoting!

fraudsyndrome 8y ago

On one hand, my xps at work goes through to a dock that uses usb-c/tb3, everything goes through to the dock and nothing except the connector to my laptop. I get why they only had so little usb-c ports. I hope it wasn't as a decision to look "minimal" and thus less practical, meaning they took little is more a bit too literally. Thing is, to take my work laptop home, I don't want to have to shell out for a dock just to use it at home too so on that hand, I'm happy the xps gives me options to not have to be reliant on a dock, as much as I love the use of a dock at work.

jonhendry18 8y ago

I think the last truly proprietary connector on a Mac was the Apple Display Connector from the G4 Power Mac days.

dwaite 8y ago
Magsafe is still on the MacBook Air.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  Ah that's right. I guess I've found video adapter dongles more annoying than the proprietary power connector.