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> Headphone jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy disk drive? Gone. Also the parallel port. I remember the drama! It goes the other way, too

> Headphone jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy disk drive? Gone. Also the parallel port. I remember the drama! It goes the other way, too. When Apple put cameras in all of their laptops, the press relentlessly bashed them for wasting BOM on something so useless and expensive. Then the industry realized it was a good idea and followed suit. Similar for retina displays -- the term "High Definition" had become synonymous with "good enough" and ground PC monitor advancements to a halt for a decade. Phones were coming out with higher resolutions (not pixel densities, resolutions) than full-size monitors. Then Apple figured out how to market higher resolutions, the press mocked them for wasting money, but word got around that HD might not be the end-all of display technology and consumer panel resolutions started to climb again. Here's a counterexample, a niche that could really use the Apple Bump but hasn't gotten it and probably won't get it: 10 gigabit ethernet. 1GbE became synonymous with "good enough" and got so thoroughly stuck in a rut that now it's very typical to see 1GbE deployed alongside a handful of 10 gigabit USB ports and a NVMe drive that could saturate the sad, old 1GbE port many times over. Sometimes taking risks results in a Touch Bar or Butterfly Keys. That's just the nature of risks. The only way to have a 100% feature win rate is to limit yourself to copying features that someone else has proven out, but if everyone does that then the industry gets stuck in a rut. I'm glad Apple exists, even if I don't personally feel the need to fund their experiments.

birdman3131 5y ago
The scary part? 1GbE is older than I thought. A couple weeks ago I replaced a 1GbE switch (gs524t) at my work and got curious. Said model came out in 2001 or 2002.
- jagger27 5y ago
  Copper gigabit Ethernet is about as old as USB 1.1.
bluedino 5y ago
>> Also the parallel port. I remember the drama! Printers I can see. An entry-level HP LaserJet was $600 back in 2000, something not as easily replaced as a serial mouse or gamepad. >> a niche that could really use the Apple Bump but hasn't gotten it and probably won't get it: 10 gigabit ethernet. They stuck it on the Mac Mini
- my123 5y ago
  As a $100 additional option... (which granted, isn't too bad compared to the price of a new 10GbE card, but still...)
Sebb767 5y ago
> 1GbE became synonymous with "good enough" and got so thoroughly stuck in a rut that now it's very typical to see 1GbE deployed alongside a handful of 10 gigabit USB ports and a NVMe drive that could saturate the sad, old 1GbE port many times over. This has a few reasons: - 10 GbE was, until quite recently, pretty power intensive and it still is more expensive and hot than gigabit - Devices in LAN, especially those with high bandwidth usage, have become far rarer. A lot has moved to the cloud and the bandwidth of most people can't saturate 100 Mbit, not to speak of Gigabit. - LAN as a whole has become rarer. A lot of people now only use WiFi with their phones or laptops, up to the point that most people now have (theoretically) faster WiFi than LAN. Combined, there are few reasons to take the expense of putting a high-speed ethernet port on a device. Luckily, the introduction of 2.5GbE and 5GbE has decreased the jump a bit and you see those ports on a few consumer devices now.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  > Combined, there are few reasons to take the expense of putting a high-speed ethernet port on a device. Luckily, the introduction of 2.5GbE and 5GbE has decreased the jump a bit and you see those ports on a few consumer devices now. I think the only thing driving 2.5/5/10GbE at all is that WiFi Access Points need it.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    Compare the cooler for a 2.5GbE card [0] to that of a 10 GbE card. The fact that WiFi (which is what most consumers use) now supports those speeds surely helps, but 2.5GbE is also simply far easier to integrate and power. [0] https://www.amazon.de/XIAOLO-Netzwerkadapter-Unterstützung-Low-Profile-Halterungen-XL-I225V-2-5G/dp/B09C3BBX5B/ https://www.amazon.de/XIAOLO-Netzwerkadapter-Unterstützung-L... [1] https://www.amazon.de/XG-C100C-Netzwerkkarte-RJ45-Port-802-3an-Base-T/dp/B071JR2ZW8 https://www.amazon.de/XG-C100C-Netzwerkkarte-RJ45-Port-802-3...
    - cptskippy 5y ago
      I agree that 2.5GbE is easier, and I still think AP backhauls are the primary driver for it. AP makers cannot sell multi-gigabit WiFi APs without a back haul that can support them.
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
Lumping the headphone jack in with VGA and floppies is a tired, bullshit tactic. Speakers (and our ears) are driven by ANALOG signals. The phone, as long as it produces sound, will need to contain a D/A converter and an amp. Removing the headphone jack is simply a petty, anti-customer denial of electrical access to something that the device is already doing. Now we have to have redundant D/A converters in every sound-reproduction device. The result is totally unpredictable (and often shitty) sound quality, the opposite (but totally predictable) result from what apologists were touting when defending this rip-off.
cletus 5y ago
> ... a niche that could really use the Apple Bump but hasn't gotten it and probably won't get it: 10 gigabit ethernet 10GbE was a bit of a mistake on several fronts. We had become used to these 10x iterations with Ethernet from 10Mb to 100Mb to 1Gb such that 10Gb seems like a natural extension. But running that bandwidth over copper remains a significant technical challenge. For awhile I was using a Thunderbolt 10GbE controller and it was huge (basically the size of an old 3.5" external HD) and most of it was just a giant heatsink, basically. In commercial situations, the issues with copper often result in using fiber instead. At that point there are less barriers to even higher speeds (eg 25Gb, 40Gb, 100Gb), which make a lot of sense in data centers. Added to this, there's not a lot of reason to run 10GbE in a home setting or even in many small corporate settings. Even in larger corporate settings, you can go really far with 1GbE using switches, bridges and routers, possibly using higher speed backhaul connection technologies. What should've happened is what has started to happen in the last few years: interim speeds (eg 2.5Gb and 5Gb). Hopefully these become more widespread and become relatively cheap such that someday they just displace 1GbE naturally. On top of all of this, Ethernet is an old standard that uses 1500 byte frames. This actually starts to become an issue at 10+ GbE such that various extensions exist for very large frames (eg 9000 bytes) but this runs into issues with various hardware and software. Probably largely because of the 1500 byte frames of Ethernet, the de facto standard for TCP/IP MTU is pretty much 1500/1536 bytes and this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy as more and more infrastructure is deployed that makes this max MTU assumption.

birdman3131 5y ago

The scary part? 1GbE is older than I thought. A couple weeks ago I replaced a 1GbE switch (gs524t) at my work and got curious. Said model came out in 2001 or 2002.

jagger27 5y ago
Copper gigabit Ethernet is about as old as USB 1.1.

bluedino 5y ago

>> Also the parallel port. I remember the drama! Printers I can see. An entry-level HP LaserJet was $600 back in 2000, something not as easily replaced as a serial mouse or gamepad. >> a niche that could really use the Apple Bump but hasn't gotten it and probably won't get it: 10 gigabit ethernet. They stuck it on the Mac Mini

my123 5y ago
As a $100 additional option... (which granted, isn't too bad compared to the price of a new 10GbE card, but still...)

Sebb767 5y ago

> 1GbE became synonymous with "good enough" and got so thoroughly stuck in a rut that now it's very typical to see 1GbE deployed alongside a handful of 10 gigabit USB ports and a NVMe drive that could saturate the sad, old 1GbE port many times over. This has a few reasons: - 10 GbE was, until quite recently, pretty power intensive and it still is more expensive and hot than gigabit - Devices in LAN, especially those with high bandwidth usage, have become far rarer. A lot has moved to the cloud and the bandwidth of most people can't saturate 100 Mbit, not to speak of Gigabit. - LAN as a whole has become rarer. A lot of people now only use WiFi with their phones or laptops, up to the point that most people now have (theoretically) faster WiFi than LAN. Combined, there are few reasons to take the expense of putting a high-speed ethernet port on a device. Luckily, the introduction of 2.5GbE and 5GbE has decreased the jump a bit and you see those ports on a few consumer devices now.

cptskippy 5y ago
> Combined, there are few reasons to take the expense of putting a high-speed ethernet port on a device. Luckily, the introduction of 2.5GbE and 5GbE has decreased the jump a bit and you see those ports on a few consumer devices now. I think the only thing driving 2.5/5/10GbE at all is that WiFi Access Points need it.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  Compare the cooler for a 2.5GbE card [0] to that of a 10 GbE card. The fact that WiFi (which is what most consumers use) now supports those speeds surely helps, but 2.5GbE is also simply far easier to integrate and power. [0] https://www.amazon.de/XIAOLO-Netzwerkadapter-Unterstützung-Low-Profile-Halterungen-XL-I225V-2-5G/dp/B09C3BBX5B/ https://www.amazon.de/XIAOLO-Netzwerkadapter-Unterstützung-L... [1] https://www.amazon.de/XG-C100C-Netzwerkkarte-RJ45-Port-802-3an-Base-T/dp/B071JR2ZW8 https://www.amazon.de/XG-C100C-Netzwerkkarte-RJ45-Port-802-3...
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    I agree that 2.5GbE is easier, and I still think AP backhauls are the primary driver for it. AP makers cannot sell multi-gigabit WiFi APs without a back haul that can support them.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago

Lumping the headphone jack in with VGA and floppies is a tired, bullshit tactic. Speakers (and our ears) are driven by ANALOG signals. The phone, as long as it produces sound, will need to contain a D/A converter and an amp. Removing the headphone jack is simply a petty, anti-customer denial of electrical access to something that the device is already doing. Now we have to have redundant D/A converters in every sound-reproduction device. The result is totally unpredictable (and often shitty) sound quality, the opposite (but totally predictable) result from what apologists were touting when defending this rip-off.

cletus 5y ago

> ... a niche that could really use the Apple Bump but hasn't gotten it and probably won't get it: 10 gigabit ethernet 10GbE was a bit of a mistake on several fronts. We had become used to these 10x iterations with Ethernet from 10Mb to 100Mb to 1Gb such that 10Gb seems like a natural extension. But running that bandwidth over copper remains a significant technical challenge. For awhile I was using a Thunderbolt 10GbE controller and it was huge (basically the size of an old 3.5" external HD) and most of it was just a giant heatsink, basically. In commercial situations, the issues with copper often result in using fiber instead. At that point there are less barriers to even higher speeds (eg 25Gb, 40Gb, 100Gb), which make a lot of sense in data centers. Added to this, there's not a lot of reason to run 10GbE in a home setting or even in many small corporate settings. Even in larger corporate settings, you can go really far with 1GbE using switches, bridges and routers, possibly using higher speed backhaul connection technologies. What should've happened is what has started to happen in the last few years: interim speeds (eg 2.5Gb and 5Gb). Hopefully these become more widespread and become relatively cheap such that someday they just displace 1GbE naturally. On top of all of this, Ethernet is an old standard that uses 1500 byte frames. This actually starts to become an issue at 10+ GbE such that various extensions exist for very large frames (eg 9000 bytes) but this runs into issues with various hardware and software. Probably largely because of the 1500 byte frames of Ethernet, the de facto standard for TCP/IP MTU is pretty much 1500/1536 bytes and this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy as more and more infrastructure is deployed that makes this max MTU assumption.