While I don’t disagree per se, imagine being a professional with your USB-C only laptop ready to give a presentation but don’t have the necessary dongles as well? If you’re a professional, you will have the necessary equipment to do your job.
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If Apple thought the future of ports is USB-C, why is Apple bringing back more types of ports?
- Thread starter Kung gu
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So for me:
1x usb-c external monitor + power
1x usb-c external ssd
1x usb-c mouse
Sometimes I need to connect another usb-c drive...
So with 4x usb-c it is fine... With 3x usb-c and hdmi and sd card reader it is worse for me...
Another huge step back would be if only magsafe allows charging... (I have so many usb-c chargers for Mac and iPad...)
1x usb-c external monitor + power
1x usb-c external ssd
1x usb-c mouse
Sometimes I need to connect another usb-c drive...
So with 4x usb-c it is fine... With 3x usb-c and hdmi and sd card reader it is worse for me...
Another huge step back would be if only magsafe allows charging... (I have so many usb-c chargers for Mac and iPad...)
That's true of pretty much any type of USB device ever created.
Maybe I'm misreading what you meant... but did you actually think USB-C was going to replace ethernet?
Not really. When I plugged in my magewell directly into 2015 USB-A, it just worked. People at work and I am sure on this forum have had issues with the USB-C dongles. This is less of an issue if it’s plugged directly in. Sure, dongles are not 100% reliable, but it certainly doesn’t build a lot of trust in that solution for non primitive peripherals
No, I was expecting to eventually be required to replace all my cables to USB-C with the assumption that the industry was deprecating the other USB connectors. I would prefer they just stick to one connector instead of keeping all these different ports around.
I'm not sure you understand what I was saying.
I didn't say that device is universally unreliable. I'm saying that USB devices in general, vary greatly in quality, regardless of whether they're type-A, type-B, type-C or any other type.
The USB-IF, has deprecated type-a ports. It's not part of USB4, and has seen no technical improvement since 2013 (USB 3.1)
USB3.2 (2017) introduces higher speed modes that don't apply to USB-A ports/cables.
USB4.0 doesn't even define a type-a port.
It's hardly surprising that vendors still ship stuff with type-A ports, just 8 years after it last saw improvements.. Vendors still ship PCs with PS2 and Serial ports, two decades after USB was introduced.
USB-C is the only connector supported by the current USB standards. The problem is that the abundance of older equipment for which USB3.1 is more than sufficient creates a chicken and egg problem. As we are moving to USB4, the obsolete USB-A will gradually die out completely.
I'm completely with you on this one. I don't know why people think that nixing ports is worth it. I know there are dongles, but those dongles add a good $20-100 to the cost of an already expensive Mac.
The question:
"If Apple thought the future of ports is USB-C, why is Apple bringing back more types of ports?"
Fishrrman's answer:
Maybe Apple's assumption that USBc was the [only] future, was wrongheaded from the start.
Seems to me that USBa ports are as ubiquitous as they were 5 years ago...
"If Apple thought the future of ports is USB-C, why is Apple bringing back more types of ports?"
Fishrrman's answer:
Maybe Apple's assumption that USBc was the [only] future, was wrongheaded from the start.
Seems to me that USBa ports are as ubiquitous as they were 5 years ago...
I still think that it's a red herring, that the leaked schematic is an old design or whatnot. I believe the redesign will keep the trend of 4 USB-C ports. The iMac is an example, Apple went completely USB-C.
Or, Apple could be doing a "Special Edition" MacBook Pro, maybe a last intel version, with the leaked schematic setup, to commemorate the successful transition to Apple Silicon, as the "last hurrah" for intel MacBook Pro. I'm sure many people will still buy it, which means more money for Apple. Meanwhile the "next gen" MacBook Pro will remain USB-C.
It's really difficult seeing Apple backtracking a lot here. Plus, dongles = more money for Apple. The MacBooks has gone USB-C only for how many years now? And it's not like people stopped buying them.
The clutter/dongle excuse is weak as most Windows Ultrabooks are doing the same thing. Most premium ultrabooks use dongles as well, only having USB-C, with maybe USB-A at best. Heck, I have an old Lenovo laptop, and it only has two USB-A port (one for the charger) and a micro-HDMI port. So regardless, I would still need a dongle or specific cable, and this is like from 2015 or so.
I'd rather see put more USB-C ports, like 6 total, 3 on each sides. There's plenty of room, especially for the 16" version.
Or, Apple could be doing a "Special Edition" MacBook Pro, maybe a last intel version, with the leaked schematic setup, to commemorate the successful transition to Apple Silicon, as the "last hurrah" for intel MacBook Pro. I'm sure many people will still buy it, which means more money for Apple. Meanwhile the "next gen" MacBook Pro will remain USB-C.
It's really difficult seeing Apple backtracking a lot here. Plus, dongles = more money for Apple. The MacBooks has gone USB-C only for how many years now? And it's not like people stopped buying them.
The clutter/dongle excuse is weak as most Windows Ultrabooks are doing the same thing. Most premium ultrabooks use dongles as well, only having USB-C, with maybe USB-A at best. Heck, I have an old Lenovo laptop, and it only has two USB-A port (one for the charger) and a micro-HDMI port. So regardless, I would still need a dongle or specific cable, and this is like from 2015 or so.
I'd rather see put more USB-C ports, like 6 total, 3 on each sides. There's plenty of room, especially for the 16" version.
They called it the future of ports to sell it. That's it. I am perfectly happy with USB-C but there are cases even after 5 years where we do need the compatibility with USB-A and HDMI. A laptop is supposed to be portable, on-the-go device, so while Sir Ive has blessed us with a lot of lightness, he was dead wrong to not give us ports.
I can tolerate dongles on a desktop. Never in a portable. That is where he was wrong. Laptops should be as complete, self-sufficient and liberated as possible.
6 ports are likely to give a heart attack to Tim and would certainly send Steve spinning in the grave.
The issue isn’t room, it’s bandwidth. It would be difficult to produce a processor capable of saturating a bus at 240Gbps. Such a processor would necessarily suffer from other trade offs.
It isn’t revisionist history. Your brain simply didn’t process the word ‘almost’. It is 100% true that once USB took off that most companies dropped serial port peripherals very quickly.
I didn’t say what my premise is of USB-C. I didn’t say one port should rule them all. I clearly said USB-C isn’t ready for what HDMI, DisplayPort etc are going to be capable of soon.
The problem is you read a post.
Without actually reading the post.
Then your knee jerks up and down.
Then you quickly reply something something that contradicts everything I posted.
And you do all that because humans these days can’t think slowly and have to check their 5000 notifications and multitask 4 devices at the same time. ???
Data? How about the lived experience of almost everyone alive at the time?
Or we can waste the next 24 hours of our lives listing devices released by manufacturers in the period between 1998 and 2000 to see how many parallel port and serial port devices were no longer shipped and were replaced with updated USB versions.
You really think anyone wants to waste their time doing such a stupid thing to convince you?
You said this:
expectations from who?
the only people I see making claims that USB-c was expected to “replace all the others” is from people complaining that it hasn’t happened.
DisplayPort 2.0 runs at up to 80Gbps over USB-C and will support 3 10K 30bit HDR displays at 60Hz on a single cable.
I’m not really sure what you think is coming “soon” that’s higher than that and won’t work over USB-C, and is likely to be relevant to a laptop?
And I meant to reply to this specifically: you alluded to that concept (ports being replaced) and others have literally used the phrase “one port to rule them all”.
I guess it’s meant to be a jab at the thunderbolt 3 marketing phrase “the USB-c that can do it all” (or something similar? I can’t find a reference to it now, I think they changed the slogan for 4)
This has been my #1 wish for the Pros. Instead we’re probably losing 1. Tragic.
I would prefer it if Apple stuck to their guns and stay with USB-C connections. If I have a peripheral that requires another connection cable, I'll buy a cheap dongle. But caving to people who want this port or that simply encourages 3rd party manufacturers to keep producing devices with those connection ports.
I would rather pay a slight bit more for a display or storage drive and not have to deal with multiple port connectors and just worry about "do I have enough USB-C ports to use this?"
I would rather pay a slight bit more for a display or storage drive and not have to deal with multiple port connectors and just worry about "do I have enough USB-C ports to use this?"
User expectations are the main problem with USB-C. As long as people expect that USB-C ports are fast, computers will only have bandwidth for a handful of them, and USB-A will remain necessary.
In most applications, USB 2 is already fast enough. You can reasonably expect ~30 MB/s transfer speeds, which is comparable to a decent WiFi or a good internet connection. When a device needs a few more ports but it does not have the bandwidth for additional fast ports, the current answer is USB-A. It could also be USB-C, but that would require a way of telling people that not all USB-C ports are fast general-purpose ports.
I once heard an idea that established technologies tend to die in reverse order. The longer something has been around, the longer it will probably remain. I would not be surprised if USB-C died out before USB-A.