Technology

I really don't think it's that stupid. Your particular machine has a lot of ports, yeah. But there are plenty of machines out there, like the 12-inch non-pro macbook, that have ONE USB-C PORT and absolutely no other ports. That's clearly limiting. Like, you can connect it to ethernet, if you buy an additional USB-C ethernet adapter, but if you want to be able to ethernet and have it connected to power at the same time, you need to buy a special power brick that combines the two functions, because they didn't include any other ports.

Plus, there are a bunch of things that still use USB-A. I've got a bunch of old thumb drives that work like that, especially for transferring video files to my TV, which only supports USB-A itself. Wireless dongles for mice and game controllers, which still offer a latency advantage over bluetooth, tend to be USB-A as well. I've also got a wearable pulse oximeter that requires a special cable to load data, and the other end of that cable is USB-A only. Again, you can get an adapter dongle, but that's never as convenient as just having the right port in the first place.

I went a bit out of my way to get a laptop with a decent collection of ports (and it's a bit of a less portable laptop as a result, maybe more like a desktop replacement), but even it has for some reason dropped the SD card reader, which I would have used a lot. I had to get a dongle for that. And I had to get one that used USB-C in particular, because my USB-A ports are usually both filled.

Basically the selection of ports used to be something that laptops used as a point of differentiation and pride in a crowded market; but Apple managed to invert this, making the prestige marker having a slimmer laptop with as few ports as possible, and that was a dumb change. I do the the pendulum is swinging back, as with your Pro macbook, but I don't think it's unreasonable to be frustrated with the way this element of the market went in such a consumer-hostile direction for a while.

Agreed, but I do wish there were more USB - C ports

The recent macbooks are heading back in the right direction.

I think a lot of the complants come from wanting a portable computer/setup, and having a hub or a bunch of adapters takes away the portability.

I think the ideal I/O for me would be;

• Power
• 4x USBc (displayport, high speed, etc.)
• 1x USBA (flash drives are still mostly A, and if you have a wireless USB mouse, not needing an adapter or dealing with bluetooth is great)
• 3.5 headphone/mic combo jack
• Ethernet
• HDMI, at least until more monitors have USBC inputs, although having an adapter cable isn't too bad.

This is where I like framework approach with the customizable IO, but I think they need to shrink the blocks to give 6-8 ports. 4 is simply not enough, with one used up for power.

Exactly, I’m looking at these pics and don’t even have cables to fit any of these other than a USBC anymore. And I love that I can charge with a regular cable and don’t have to bring a charging brick anywhere. Just a phone charger works

My biggest issue is thermals and build quality.

Feels like macbooks need every square mm of aluminium surface area hence less ports, as they barely manage to not reach autoignition temperature. Likewise plenty laptops with metal shells seem to use them as their ground, being too cheap for one tiny wire, and hence the case will slowly retain charge over a long day and you get this weird scratchy/jittery feeling when touching the case. Because ground is haaaaard.

And such shit in laptops costing thousands of euros. Fuck.

I'm by no means an apple fan boy (I only have an air) but the apple m processors are getting faster every gen. My m1 air is fast, has a nice design, great battery life, nice screen, etc. idk what else I would want in a laptop. Obviously not a cheap but it should last me a lot longer than whatever pc I would have gotten for half the price.

I don't follow the laptop industry closely though so maybe I'm being ripped off without realizing it?

I'm usually happy with increased efficiency as it represents an increase in performance in the future. Cost is something that seems much more inevitable to go down than performance is to go up, so the two metrics I look for in the state of the CPU market are peak single core performance and performance per watt. Of course, this only applies to observing the industry from outside, I'm sure if I was actually in the market for a new CPU right now I'd probably be happier with a worse performance per watt chip as long as it was cheaper.

Hey there Mr. Debs!! You're actually one of my heroes. You led a complicated life, but I seriously admire your commitment to a meaningful social safety net for everyone.

That said, I quite dislike Apple, and have never in my life purchased one of their products for a myriad of reasons. But I do believe that Fade is factually correct in what they say. The consolidation of funtions into new ports and communication standards isn't something inherently worth railing against.

Do I think they executed that consolidation particularly well? Hell no. But let's not paint our fellow Blahaj as bootlickers for making and presenting a factually sound argument.

With love,

• a fan

i wouldnt discount the function of having four thunderbolt ports with equal capability, you can plug a charger into any of them and it's pretty common to see thunderbolt docks being used with any brand now if an abundance of ports is the goal. External SSD's can be hooked up with usb-c and most users don't need usb-A anymore. All that is really missing for the average user is HDMI in my opinion, and that requires a simple adapter if the first party dock is too expensive.

basically it's very practical for the target user,it's not lacking in function just because it's missing ports that most of its users wont care about