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Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

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Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#411

Post by OkGoDoIt »

ricardobayes wrote: post #374
p_l wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on site at a client fresh after they started upgrading people to USB-C/thunderbolt MBPs/Airs... Very quickly meetings started with question of "who has a laptop with real HDMI/DisplayPort? We would like to start in 15s instead of 15 minutes of fighting with dongles..."

Only companies with disfunctional IT departments who didn't bother to install streaming devices to the big screens.

I worked in multiple companies that used streaming rather than physical connections for meeting presentations, and they were always so much worse and less reliable than just using a cable, dongle or not. Best case scenario it worked but there was a several second lag. There were a few meeting rooms that had the old fashioned physical hookups and those were always fought after because at least they worked reliably.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#412

Post by Godel_unicode »

p_l wrote: post #365
BlackFingolfin wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotes are not data. I can easily counter yours with mine: I use such a dongle a lot whenever I am presenting on conferences etc, and have been doing so for many years (even before the all-out for USB-C/Thunderbolt on MacBooks, there were no VGA ports, while many projectors still were; now I see a lot of HDMI, but still need the adaptor). And I habe yet to have a single issue caused by that! Sure, damaged VGA cabl…

HDMI to VGA conversion, even through displayport connector, is much simpler topic than properly handling USB-C feature negotiation, and as I mentioned in another comment, it was common for USB-C dongles to exhibit problems, especially on macOS (non-Apple branded dongles tended to have better success rate on non-mac systems, Apple-branded dongles were consistently problematic on everything). Usual case was that with d…

My org has an entire batch of OEM USB-C to HDMI dongles which work great on Dell, Lenovo, and Microsoft laptops but will reliably cause Macs to crash and reboot within 5 minutes.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#413

Post by foobarian »

plussed_reader wrote: post #293
veridies wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cameras are used for multiple professional purposes, including videography and commercial photography. SD cards are also used in devices such as Zoom audio recorders, which I often use for recording music. Especially right now, I'll loan a Zoom and a nice mic to a musician so that they can record tracks for me remotely. They're also the standard boot device for computers like the Raspberry Pi. Basically, they're a pr…

Apple stopped catering to that kind of professional when Jobs died.

Apple is taking away ports so their devices will be more likely to survive falling into water. That is the kind of "professional" Apple is catering to.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#414

Post by OkGoDoIt »

csomar wrote: post #357
jimnotgym wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since 2015 we have had all this clutter in the meeting rooms with different chargers, adaptors for monitors, projectors etc. In fact every mac user I know has a little hub to run everything! I'm currently using a Thinkpad and I have never felt that I had too many ports! I don't carry any adaptors.

Isn't this the reason to push for no more ports than the USB-C. After the Macbook become USB-C only, manufacturers started to move to USB-C instead of USB-A and some of them include an adapter. The quicker we move, the better. It'll be a little painful at first, but then we'll have only USB-C for everything.

I’ve been hearing this argument for years now. Years of pain, and I still don’t feel like we’re any closer to this supposed future. Maybe it was a mistake?

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#415

Post by Godel_unicode »

p_l wrote: post #358
JohnBooty wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very quickly meetings started with question of "who has a laptop with real HDMI/DisplayPort? We would like to start in 15s instead of 15 minutes of fighting with dongles..." I don't understand this. There are plenty of arguments against against going all-in on USB-C and forcing people to buy/carry multiple dongles. I don't like dongles myself! I still use a (pre-USB C) 2015 MacBook Pro, partially for that reason. I g…

The reality was that quite often the dongles did not work properly. Using official Apple USB-C AV dongle (with USB-C, USB-A and HDMI) had people scrambling for "oh, maybe this one will work", screens randomly not displaying, etc. I personally strongly suspect that they had a broken batch of dongles, seeing as how trying to use them on other systems often resulted in display detection issues too. Then there was of cou…

Apple dongles normally work really well, which combines with the RDF to make people not believe stories like this until it happens to them.

Paraphrasing what I said in another comment, dongles are flaky. If yours aren't, congratulations, but that doesn't mean other people are lying or that they don't know how things work.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#416

Post by thefunnyman »

stirner wrote: post #400
BluSyn wrote: post #14

My controversial hot take-- I have never needed an SD card, and have gone all-in on USB-C. I will be very disappointed if they add back in USB-A/HDMI/SD ports, or remove USB-C charging in favor of proprietary charge port. Sounds like unnecessary feature bloat. Please just do MagSage + USB-C, so I can maintain my one-cable-for-everything, making traveling lighter and simpler. Here's my counter argument to all those th…

I’m with you. Maybe it’s something specific to being a techie and having a ton of peripherals, but being able to connect power, display, keyboard, mouse, webcam, backup drive, Ethernet, etc. with a single cable when I sit down at my desk was absolutely worth the somewhat pricey TB3 dock, especially when switching between work and personal devices. I’m fine with them adding ports back as long as they still let you do…

My biggest wish would be for them to embrace standard display adapter technology and stick with usb c. I have a lot of thunderbolt docks that only work on Windows because of Apple’s outright refusal to support MST [1]. I recently switched to a Mac for work and this has been a major pain for my docking setup. Funny enough, it all works fine if you bootcamp your Mac since Windows supports MST. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251444928

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#417

Post by agumonkey »

BluSyn wrote: post #14

My controversial hot take-- I have never needed an SD card, and have gone all-in on USB-C. I will be very disappointed if they add back in USB-A/HDMI/SD ports, or remove USB-C charging in favor of proprietary charge port. Sounds like unnecessary feature bloat. Please just do MagSage + USB-C, so I can maintain my one-cable-for-everything, making traveling lighter and simpler. Here's my counter argument to all those th…

But MagSafe solves a clear problem IMO, DC connectors are fragile and tripping on the cable will either harm the solder joints or make the whole machine fall.

Maybe a magsafe like adapter for usb-c then ?

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#418

Post by rbanffy »

Arainach wrote: post #380
oblio wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDMI will probably be around for TVs, but with USB 4 I imagine we're 5-10 years from most of the current ports going away completely, except for a collection of USB C ports of different levels (3, 3.x, 4).

Other than storage, no peripherals care about USB 4. We can't get away from USB-A because all of the devices that MATTER use it and its variations. Even today no one that I've seen makes a USB-C to USB-Micro (or USB-Mini - yes, I still have multiple products that use that) cable. I have no interest in having to chain multiple adaptors off all my computers for everything I do. Keyboards, mice, printers, cameras, micro…

> Even today no one that I've seen makes a USB-C to USB-Micro (or USB-Mini - yes, I still have multiple products that use that) cable

Here. You don't need a special cable - you need a small adapter: https://www.wish.com/product/5ae06f0a7ddb0672b9a704b9?share=...

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#419

Post by rbanffy »

yarcob wrote: post #353
oblio wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDMI will probably be around for TVs, but with USB 4 I imagine we're 5-10 years from most of the current ports going away completely, except for a collection of USB C ports of different levels (3, 3.x, 4).

Importantly, HDMI will be around for projectors. Almost every meeting room and every class room everywhere in the world has a beamer and an HDMI cable on the desk. I don't think this is going to change in the next 5 years. It took more than 10 years for most of the world to upgrade from VGA to HDMI cables, and HDMI works fine technically, so there's less pressure to upgrade to USB-C. So for the foreseeable future, if…

It was like that with VGA and now it's not. It may not change in 5 years - it took longer for VGA to finish dying.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#420

Post by alistairSH »

agumonkey wrote: post #417
BluSyn wrote: post #14

My controversial hot take-- I have never needed an SD card, and have gone all-in on USB-C. I will be very disappointed if they add back in USB-A/HDMI/SD ports, or remove USB-C charging in favor of proprietary charge port. Sounds like unnecessary feature bloat. Please just do MagSage + USB-C, so I can maintain my one-cable-for-everything, making traveling lighter and simpler. Here's my counter argument to all those th…

But MagSafe solves a clear problem IMO, DC connectors are fragile and tripping on the cable will either harm the solder joints or make the whole machine fall. Maybe a magsafe like adapter for usb-c then ?

Maybe a magsafe like adapter for usb-c then

That would be my preferred solution. USB-C port on the laptop, small MagSafe adapter, and then the charge cord with the other half of the MagSafe.

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