> in design terms, this was low-hanging fruit that was lying around for years. Nobody gets paid for innovations like that, That is perhaps not the best example

> in design terms, this was low-hanging fruit that was lying around for years. Nobody gets paid for innovations like that, That is perhaps not the best example. Auto-MDI/X was pretty expected after auto-duplex and auto-speed. It was available in switches for years before it was available in NICs. This wasn't an Apple initiative. They probably sourced the autosensing NIC in your Macbook from some established vendor. What held all three standards back, apart from the additional components and cost, was mainly compatibility issues. Early on, vendor incompatibilities caused autodetection to misfire sometimes, link drops made for a frustrating experience.