Do you really all forget the first iMac from 1998? The one were Steve Jobs threw out virtually all legacy ports in favour of USB? There weren't even dongles back then. You were left with a heap of completely incompatible peripherals if you came from an older Mac.
A little memory is a dangerous thing.
USB was a
major step forward from the ADB (Apple proprietary) and RS423 (may as well have been proprietary) ports offered by previous Macs. - and for
domestic users who just wanted to connect a Zip drive, scanner or suchlike it was far more practical than SCSI (and was quickly supplemented by Firewire). Many PCs already had USB (although it wasn't used much) and the iMac gave that the kick it needed, and rapidly brought about the end of the bad old days when Macs and PCs needed physically different peripherals.
(Oh, and yes, there
were USB-to-X dongles)
Floppies were already pretty much obsolete - 1.4MB was pretty much useless, email had decimated the need to transfer files of that size and CD-R was the nearest thing to a standard replacement. Hard drives were large enough that everybody had all the files they used regularly on HD and you certainly couldn't practically back-up or transfer your hard drive contents to a new machine using floppies. Apple had been phasing floppies out of laptops for a while (they were already an optional extra for the G3 Powerbook). PCs kept floppies for ages because BIOS boot-up was floppy-centric (fun fact: booting a PC from CD - where available - was a kludge involving a floppy disc image on the CD) and you needed them for firmware updates, OS installs etc.
Oh, and the iMac wasn't really designed for existing Mac power users anyway - if you had a stack of peripherals you could get a G3 tower with PCI slots and stick a SCSI controller in it. The iMac was aimed firmly at the new generation of internet users, and if it replaced anything it was the Mac Classic that had been discontinued 5 years prior. Also, things were developing far more rapidly back in the 90s and if you had a 3-year old hard drive you could probably get a new one with twice the capacity for half the price.
Then we get to 2012 and the demise of the optical drive. Well, that's simple: the optical drive took up 20% of the space in a laptop, and those slimline drives (whether they were in a Mac or a PC) were horribly unreliable. Good riddance. There was still a place for an optical drive in 2012 - and for most people that was at the bottom of a drawer against the once in a blue moon time they needed it. Plus, if you
disagreed with that its worth remembering that, at the same time as the rMBP launch, Apple updated the classic MBPs (which had already been updated the previous year) to the same processor as the rMBP, kept the classic 15" around for a year and the 13" around until fairly recently.
So how does that compare to USB-C? Well, it doesn't. The USB-C connector may be a nice replacement for the horrible MicroUSB connectors (esp. the USB 3 version) that were already getting used as multi-protocol connectors on
phones and tablets that only have space for one or two ports. But, bizarrely, that's the one place that Apple
haven't used USB-C. On a laptop/desktop it's pretty pointless.
All USB-C does is bundle together several existing technologies that worked perfectly well on dedicated cables: charging, USB 2/3.1 (and yes, folks, you can do 10Gbps 3.1gen2 on a USB-A connector - several PC motherboards do) and DisplayPort. The
only advantage of doing that is to save space - otherwise, its a darned nuisance that just means you have to buy multiport adapters. Thunderbolt 3 could either have been implemented over TB2/mDP connectors or (better) a new connector that recognised that, if you're connecting 6 massive RAID arrays via a single connector then
it better jolly well have some sort of locking device. The reason that Intel uses USB-C is that they're trying to force TB3 adoption by making their TB3 chipset the go-to USB-C/3.1 controller as well (and thereby have helpfully knobbled the adoption of DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 because they only support 1.2a).
It hasn't even produced a standard cable: instead we have a confusing array of cables which might
physically fit but either won't work or will throttle performance - charge/USB2-only cables, full-featured USB 3.1 cables in at least two power-delivery flavours, Thunderbolt 3 passive cables (with USB3.1, and two power options), Thunderbolt 3 active cables (no USB3.1), fake cables that fry your computer, USB-C to DP cables that may or may not work with your Mac - oh, and coming down the pike, when HDMI alt mode takes off, we'll have old HDMI cables that convert from DP
and new HDMI cables that use HDMI alt mode...
As for USB-C single-cable docking - that might have been a good idea in the days of 2k displays but USB-C (especially when limited to DP1.2 by current controllers) simply can't run 4k@60Hz while also supporting USB3.1 speeds. TB3 docks do better, but you're still burning 25-50% of your I/O bandwidth by forcing your display output over the same cable as your PCIe, just to avoid plugging in a second cable.
Except, maybe, for the 12" rMB, which is specifically designed for those who value ultra-portability over all else, USB-C just doesn't solve problems that laptop/desktop users have beyond the horrible indignity of having to plug in an extra cable when you "dock" (
if you buy a dock). Meanwhile, I have bought several USB-A peripherals (for which there were no USB-C equivalents) in the last 12 months, whereas most USB-C peripherals that
are available not only work perfectly well via USB-A but
come with a USB-C to USB-A cable in the box.
...add to that the inconvenient truth that development is slowing down so that people's 3-year-old peripherals are no longer obsolete museum pieces. I mentioned that I'd bought USB-A stuff this year - frankly, some of those things don't even need USB 3. Of course, that's part of the game - trying to get people to replace perfectly good stuff.
At least the iMac kept the USB-A ports and just changed the TB2 to TB3 - which would have been the sensible thing to do with the MacBook Pro (while, maybe, creating an ultra-slim 14" rMB to complement the Pro range).
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As for phones - the problem is not the iPhone X/iPhone 8
per se but the fact that Apple are putting all of their money on the small subset of deep-pocketed customers who want to run 3D games or AR, fancy themselves as pro photographers/filmmakers or want a music studio in their pocket. They've completely neglected their "entry level" offerings, instead relying on old models at not-very-discounted prices... and Apple's "entry level" has never exactly been cheap.
When the iPhone came out, it re-defined the smartphone and delivered something completely different, and superior to, the competition. It was worth every penny of the premium. Now, Apple have a highly credible competitor in Android (with far bigger market share), all they are offering is incremental improvements and price hikes (oh, yes, and late delivery).
My old phone was faulty, nothing in the current high-end (Apple or Android) offered anything exciting enough to pry open my wallet, so I've just bought a £200 Huawei... So is it as good as an iPhone 8+ for a quarter of the price? No, don't be daft, of course not. However, it looks and feels the part, has a half-decent 5.2" screen, a fingerprint sensor, it makes calls, sends messages, fetches my email, browses the web, does maps and GPS, will play casual games, takes OK snapshots and accepts a cheap SD card for extra storage. If it gets lost, stolen, broken or packs up after a year because its junk then, hey, £200 vs. the thick end of £1000.
So do I expect a £200 phone from Apple? Again, don't be daft. But lets look at what my Apple alternative is: I want a 5"+ screen, and need more than 32GB storage - so the cheapest Apple has to offer me is a 128GB 6s+ at
£700 for a 2-year old design that failed to loosen my wallet when it was brand new.
I've been buying Apple stuff for years, and they have always been expensive, but that is just ridiculous. Offer me a £500 iPhone
that has been updated this year and I'd consider paying the premium for Apple quality and UX, but this is getting ridiculous (Samsung and Google aren't much better - I think those three are looking at each other too much instead of the big picture).
Apple need to start
designing some entry-level products that include at least
some of this year's sexy features instead of keeping last year's products at last year's price. They're heading out onto a limb in which their only "growth" comes from diehard followers who will pay ever-increasing premiums to stay with the brand or avoid switching ecosystems. Its hard to see how their current range will attract
new customers. At best, the pool will gradually shrink - at worst, a change in fashion (especially for phones) could wipe it out. Their main salvation has been that their competitors (Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Apple) are playing the same game. That's always what happens in a bubble... as long as the results keep going up (even if its because they're selling fewer products at higher prices) nobody will
dare look beyond the next quarter...
