I actually appreciate it, so thank you. It's good to get this discussion going, especially as I know Apple is actively reading this forum. I don't know if they'll see this particular thread, but it really allows both of us to get our points across in a meaningful way, and that's important.
And besides, you're debating constructively, which is good.
Fair enough. And I did the same thing again... this is now possibly my longest post anywhere ever. lol...
And I repeatedly said the future just isn't arriving, and it isn't going to. The reason is that USB-C simply does not have any great advantage over USB-A. I guess it's reversible, so that's nice, but other than that it's really no better or worse at all, so why bother?
We might just have to respectfully agree to disagree on this one.
Firstly, your statement "it isn't arriving" ignores the part where I said give it another 2-3 years. And ignores the fact that there are a lot more USB-C devices on the market now than there were 2 years ago. It's coming. Yes, it is. At least it certainly is in the USA. Maybe not where you are (Denmark?).
Secondly, it is better. It just is. It's smaller (USB-A on a phone, or ultraportable? no. USB-C on a phone or ultraportable? yes). And it's reversible, and it just goes in a lot more easily. Doesn't sound like a big deal (you kinda shrugged that off) and in theory it isn't, but in practice, at least for some of us (maybe not you) this
is a big deal. As I say, maybe not you, but please account for the possibility that for at least some of us, this is an improvement.
And thirdly, the USB-C port is more than just USB. That port is
everything now. No I don't mean physically but it can carry every protocol and so we come back to my point of now I have
four thunderbolt ports,
four USB ports, and effectively
four of everything else. Again, to some people (including me) not to you perhaps, but to me and others, that is another big deal.
I accept it if you don't agree, but you have to accept that to some people, that functionality you just shrugged off does make a significant difference to some of us.
This is quite unlike USB when it came out. USB had the significant advantage of being cheap and being hotswappable, as well as not being configuration hell, unlike Serial and Parallel which needed A LOT of setup to even connect because there were so many competing incompatible standards and the ports couldn't tell one another apart on their own. It was hell. The only alternative hotswappable port at the time was Firewire, which was technically superior, but also too expensive.
By contrast, USB-A works just fine.
Well again we might have to respectfully agree to disagree. To me, the current state is hell too. I described that in my previous post. A million different ports that all do different things and mostly aren't compatible with each other - except where sometimes you can use dongles to make them that way (eg. Thunderbolt 2 to Ethernet, or USB3).
Price? Well, where USB-C is expensive is when it's Thunderbolt 3. The USB-C
port isn't significantly more expensive if it's only carrying the same signal as USB-A 3.1 etc. So yes, the
ports in the MacBook Pro are more expensive, but there's only two more TB3 ports than there were TB2 ports in the old one, and those two extra TB3 ports aren't significantly more expensive than everything else that used to be in the old MBP when you combine them all. But with your new 2018 MBP, you don't have to buy TB peripherals. All your USB peripherals work just fine with USB-C if you spend $5-10 replacing your USB-A to <whatever> cables with USB-C to <whatever> cables. Replace your cables and you don't need dongles.
Well they actually did lose the sysadmin market due to their Ethernet decision. I used to see sysadmins all over the place using MacBooks, but those days are definitely over.
Firewire is a fair point, except Firewire is nowhere near as ubiquitous as USB. It's much easier to replace, essentially because it failed to catch in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reason as Thunderbolt 3 is.
Firewire and thunderbolt can hardly be described as "didn't catch on". That's like saying BMWs didn't catch on. Sure, most of the worlds' vehicles are hyundais, toyotas, or whatever else, but there is most definitely a market for BMWs and Mercedes, and not just for elitist pricks that like a badge. Those cars simply do
perform better and to
some people that's worth something. Likewise, FW and Thunderbolt (all three) aren't catching on to the degree USB ever has. USB is a cheap and inferior commodity protocol. Nothing wrong with that. It caters to its market - the very large market of people that just need a connection, bud don't need it to be fast or whatever. But among the users that could benefit from what FW offered in its day (it moved digital video forward among other things) it most definitely did catch on. And today, among the users that can benefit from what TB offers, it again has most certainly caught on. Perhaps it's not useful to you, but to some people 5K displays and 40Gbps transfer speeds provide productivity never before experienced. To some people (you know...
Pros) that productivity is worth a lot more money than they're spending on the tech to get it.
TB3 is a large part of why these machines are pro machines. Everyone whining about these machines not being Pro machines don't get it. If TB3 is too expensive for you and you don't need it, then get a MacBook. Or a previous generation MBP from the refurb store (warranty and all). Or a PC.
I completely agree with this. It's very nice that MacOS is not bogged down by legacy crap, but I have to tell you that MagSafe, headphone jack, HDMI, SD card slots, Ethernet, and USB-A is not legacy crap. That's why all of those ports are on the iMac Pro, including 10Gbit/s ethernet, which is awesome! People still want them, people still need them. I think the next MacBook Pro redesign will have them back, but we'll have to wait and see on that one, won't we?
But that's the point. It's a laptop. Even if you make it a bit bigger, it's still not going to hold everything the iMac Pro has. Nor can it possibly hold everything that every user might want. Have you seen what goes into an external 10Gb Ethernet "dongle". Whats in there is a lot more than will go in a laptop. But with Thunderbolt, I can add it externally. Without that, I can't add it
at all.
To those of us looking to the future and who need the absolute state of the art, all those things you described either
are legacy crap, or are very easily added.
Question. What
exactly do you need USB-A for that you can't use USB-C for? Like I said above, replace all your cables and you don't need dongles. And if you're buying a $5000 professional work machine and can't justify a handful of $10 cables, then you shouldn't be buying the machine in the first place.
Keyboards and mice? Get wireless ones. Or if you really want a wired keyboard/mouse then get an
adapter attached permanently to the keyboard or the mouse (not carried around with you) and now your keyboard and mouse are USB-C. If it's sitting on your desk the whole time, what's the big deal? Or wait a couple more years until the market catches up, which, remember, it's only going to do when companies like Apple drag it kicking and screaming to do so. What else? Flash drives? USB-C flash drives exist now. What else?
Next. Magsafe. What's wrong with any of these:
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...s-magsafe-magnetic-charging-usb-c-macbook-pro ? Call these dongles, or adapters or whatever you want, but some of these are small enough that you can keep them permanently attached in the USB-C port and you'll never even notice they're there.
Next, headphone jack? That's still in the MBPs. I'm not going to get into the phone debate about that right now.
SD card and HDMI. Sorry, but these are fringe cases, frankly. The number of people really complaining about losing HDMI and SD are a very vocal indeed, but actually small minority. In the real world what percentage of people in the market for which these machines are for (
pro) are actually using these machines for something that
requires HDMI. If it's for your own HDMI monitor then again, replace your cable (USB-C to HDMI) instead of getting a dongle, but what pro users are using this that don't have a monitor with more than just HDMI inputs? Conferences rooms that only have HDMI inputs for their projectors. Fringe case, among
pro users. At least fringe enough to justify not keeping that port
inside the machine, when an external option is still available. And SD cards? They're either just another storage medium for which a flash drive will do the job, or specific applications of SD like cameras etc. In that instance, the future of these is wireless. SD is slow by today's standards. Yes... it's the future, not the present, but again I say that as with every other change Apple and companies like it have forced on the industry, that future will become the present faster, with Apple removing the old options.
Ethernet? That went in 2012, and with gigabit wifi it's quickly becoming a fringe case also.
The point here is two things, what do
most of the target market for these machines actually need all those ports (or dongles) for, here and now, today? Not anywhere near as much as what MR readers would have us believe. And the rest of us that really don't need all those ports are grateful they're not there any more.
My main gripe with Windows is not the fact that it supports and runs legacy stuff, it's the fact that the OS is built like complete garbage and the UI is about as consistent as Android is consistent with iOS. The actual lock screen has 4 icons in the bottom right, and every single one of them opens a menu that has a different look and feel. Seriously, when you notice that, you can't un-notice it. And the worst part is, all of these designs are no more than 10 years old. MacOS can easily run software from 10 years ago, so that's not the problem. Windows just has a terrible UI.
On this we are in complete agreement.
But here's the thing, right... the iMac G3 did NOT only have USB-A. I don't know where you're getting this from, but it just isn't true. It is true that it didn't have Serial and Parallel ports, but it did have modem (by that time a legacy port), ethernet, and 2 firewire ports.
Sorry... incorrect. Check here:
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP136?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
2xUSB, 1x Ethernet, modem, headphone jack. That's it.
And the entire Mac community erupted with outrage at the loss of all the previous stuff, exactly like they are now.
But even manufacturers who make USB keyboards still aren't switching to USB-C. It just isn't happening.
And by the way there are lots of advantages to a wired keyboard, such as backlight; you can't get that (and decent battery life) on a wireless keyboard, so I honestly don't understand why Apple wants to go wireless only on that, but whatever. That's their choice. It's my choice, then, not to buy them.
Addressed above.
IF you need it. That, right there, is the crux point. It's not just that the devices you connect to the port is high end and expensive, it's that the port itself is high end and expensive. Meaning that any laptop with a lot of TB3 ports is going to become expensive, and therefore becomes unappealing unless you actually need those ports. This is exactly what has happened to the MacBook Pro.
No. USB-C isn't expensive. Thunderbolt is expensive. And it always has been. And so was Firewire before it. And so was SCSI before that. Apple has always put expensive ports in its machines, and has always championed them.
Apple's position here is that
pro users need
pro ports. And it's the right position. This comes back to the question of what exactly are people doing with these machines. In the real world, if you really can't benefit enough from the kind of performance those ports offer, then everything else in these machines is overkill for you as well. If you're not the kind of use who is going to benefit from eGPUs, higher speed external storage than any USB can offer, 5K (and soon 8K) displays, etc. etc. then what do you need everything else that's in that machine for? It's not just TB that makes these things expensive. If anything it's the NVMe SSD more than anything else, but it's also the amazingly bright and color accurate retina display, and a bunch of other things, not the least of which is the amazing engineering that makes Macs everything they are that's better than all but the most expensive PC's (by which point we're at price parity anyway).
Other manufacturers seeing this decided not to universally adopt USB-C, which means that manufacturers don't need to worry about USB-C or TB3 unless they're going to make one of these high speed products, and so the port is now used exclusively for those high-end expensive devices, which is exactly why it isn't becoming universal - it does not serve a universal demand.
With all due respect it seems like you're arguing in circles. Manufacturers don't use TB3 or as many TB3 ports in their machines unless they're making expensive high performance machines, and therefore all those machines that don't have TB3 in them are cheaper? Well yeah, no kidding. The MBP is supposed to be a high performance machine for people who need high performance. Back to what I said above. If you really can't benefit from what those ports offer but you really do need the other performance in one of these machines that isn't in a refurbished previous generation model, or a current model MB (non-pro) for half the price then you're in a very very small minority. I just have to ask the question... What exactly do you want to do with one of these things that can't possibly be done by anything other than the exact same thing but with cheaper ports?
Sort-of...
Thunderbolt 3 actually has some nasty properties in regards to display output and other weird incompatibilities. For example, take a look at this wonderful dongle:
https://www.apple.com/dk/shop/product/MMEL2ZM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-til-thunderbolt-2-mellemstik
Sorry about the Danish. This is a very poorly rated TB3 to TB2 connector from Apple. People expect it to output DisplayPort, but it doesn't, and the reason why is because it looks and sounds like it should, but it doesn't, and because of confusing connector standards, people buy this product and get screwed.
A very similar situation is already unfolding with Thunderbolt 3. There are complaints all over the internet about people buying USB-C connected stuff and plugging it in, and then it doesn't work, because it's a Thunderbolt 3 device, and they don't have a Thunderbolt 3 port, and they have no idea.
None of this matters if TB3 is a cheap, universal standard that everyone can use, but it isn't. It recently became the latter, but it is not the former. Until it is, it will not catch on, and people will get confused, and we'll have complaints, etc.
"People expect it to output DisplayPort but it doesn't." That's a problem with peoples' perception, not the product necessarily.
It clearly says in the product description (the english version here:
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEL2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter) "Note: This adapter does not support DisplayPort displays like the Apple LED Cinema Display or third-party DisplayPort and Mini DisplayPort displays."
It's also not a problem with Thunderbolt 3 specifically. If you need to drive a mini-DP display then you don't need thunderbolt, and you don't need any
adapter. You need a USB-C to mini-DP
cable.
Agreed, there is some confusion between all the naming here. Even I've been misusing it. As I understand it when I'm not being lazy: USB-C isn't actually "USB". USB-C is a port & connector, and nothing more. It's a port & connector that, with the right configuration in each instance, can carry almost every version of USB, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, HDMI, and various types of power. The port shouldn't be called USB anything because then people think it's just another form of USB. They should have given the port & connector some other completely different name, and then marketed all the cables, devices, etc based on the protocols they support.
But bad naming has very little to do with the fact that it's still amazing tech and it's the future.
Yes, it beats every other Mac ever made for about 2 minutes, which incidentally is how long a Geekbench score lasts, and then it loses to last year's model, and after about 5 minutes of sustained use it loses to the 2013 MacBook Pro, and if you turn on the GPU at the same time, it might even lose to the 2008 MacBook Pro.
It's a ********. Don't buy it. Seriously, don't. I'm not trying to take the piss here, but I think Apple might be.
Well... if this really is the case then it sucks, but that still doesn't make it a piece of junk. Actually my existing 2017 MBP has the same issue. It slows to a crawl and freezes up (temporarily) under load and I know it's a heat problem because as soon as I put an ice pack under it it speeds up again. It's a pain in the ass, and definitely a flaw in the engineering, and if that's what's happening in the new ones also then yes, that part sucks, and they need to fix that. You've got my support there.
But that's one flaw, and if that's its only flaw then it's a problem, but it's not a piece of junk, and I still want one.
There's nothing universal about that, and USB-C did not pave the way to removing all these connectors, it just added another connector. The reason why this problem happened is because USB could not stick to being universal, and they haven't made it better by adding more types, and they aren't going to make it better by adding yet another one.
This is very much the same thing as all these people making new programming languages because theirs is going to be the definitive one and now we won't have to relearn dozens of languages all the time... nah, they just made another language and fragmented the market further at best.
But again, that's the point. This is exactly why Apple put
only USB-C on all their laptops. And in time I wouldn't be surprised if the desktops go that way too. The whole reason Apple is doing this is to push it as
the one port. If Apple put USB-C in its macs, and kept all the old ports in, then it would be just another port. The fact that they're posing it as
their gold standard at least means hopefully the rest of the world will copy them, like they do with so many other things. There will be some resistance, but Apple's a world leading company now, not quite the niche it used to be. Yes its computers still have low market share, but look at what happened after Apple released the MacBook Air. Everyone else jumped on the bandwagon and built similar machines, when no one significant had built one like it before. Now that style of notebook is very common.
I have no idea why the USB industry in the past made all the B's, AB's, etc. It's insane and I've been saying that for 15 years. Why couldn't all the printer manufacturers put USB-A ports on the back instead of USB-B. Now the mini and micro ones I understand because those were created for where USB-A is too big. Hopefully now USB-C is small enough that no one will feel the need to make another one. And hopefully with a world leading company like Apple, combined with Intel and whoever else is behind it, pushing it as the one standard moving forwards, then no one else will be idiotic enough to create yet another one. In other words, other ones were necessary for various reasons. Now they're not. Regardless, it's not just "another" port. And it's not just another USB port while FW, TB and other things are all going alongside. Its intent, and those designing and pushing it (Intel, Apple, etc.), are trying to steer the industry towards replacing almost all other ports with it. That's more than what has been done previously.
If you disagree, that's ok. Let's not argue about that point. It's the future and we can't predict it. I believe that's the way it's going to go, and as I understand it, that's what Apple's trying to achieve. They'll either succeed or they won't but they can't be blamed for trying.
Well if we're going by this logic, things do get most interesting. Let's look at the 2012 MacBook Pro again.
So the two USB-A ports can drive an HDMI output, and the TB2 ports can be used as DP outputs, which are directly compatible with HDMI, plus we got an HDMI output. So that's 5 HDMI outputs. Whoops, you lose. Also, all of these can be dongled to DVI ports as well, because as it happens HDMI and DVI is the same thing under the hood. There's also USB-A and TB2 to ethernet adapters both, so that's 4 Ethernet ports, and they're full speed as well. How nice.
Ok come on. That's ridiculous. No one wants 5 HDMI, Ethernet or DVI ports. And you could say that's not the point, but yes, it is. If anyone wants multiples of anything it's USB and Thunderbolt. Whoops, you lose.
But it's true that you only had 2 Thunderbolt ports, and now you got 4. And paid a huge price premium. That's nice. Do you need 4 Thunderbolt ports though, or did you just end up paying extra expense for ports and features you don't need.
Answer: I do need them. At the very least I need four USB ports sometimes. So maybe Apple could have given me two Thunderbolt 3 ports as they are, and 2 USB (USB-C) only ports (like the one on the MacBook) and maybe I'd be happy. But the real point is I'm paying extra for the flexibility. With those four ports I can do
anything including a lot more than I could ever before.
It doesn't, because these are dongles. They're very elaborate stands combined with dongles I suppose, but they are dongles. They don't help me on the go at all.
Why don't they help you on the go?
Call it a dock, call it a dongle, call it whatever you like. If you want to call that thing a dongle, fine, but what's the problem? Sure, dongles are a problem if I have to carry 15 of them because nothing in the world is compatible with USB-C yet, which to some degree was the problem in 2016. But that's not the case any more. What do you need to connect to your mac that you can't get a USB-C cable, or replacement for, or that can't be handled by say one or at worst two dongles?
But don't answer that, because here's the real point: Let's think about this for a second. The new 15" MBP is half a pound lighter and significantly smaller than the previous model. That hyperdrive I pointed you to is significantly less than half a pound, and significantly smaller than the volume difference between the two laptops. So why is carrying round a 2018 MBP and that hyperdrive worse than carrying around the heavier and larger (than both of those put together) 2015 MBP?!!
Now you might say you don't want to have to buy all those replacements and cables, but if so then you don't understand the tech world. Things are constantly changing and sooner or later you have to replace everything. If you're not ready to do that yet then it makes more sense for you to hold on to your perfectly good 2015 MBP (or buy one if you don't have one already), and leave the new stuff for us early adopters while you wait for the rest of the world to catch up.
No, I said HD BluRay. That came out last year mate. And it's gaining momentum, not losing it.
Ok... but apple made it very clear 10 years ago that they weren't supporting entertainment via optical media because they want to push the world towards everything being downloadable. And they're succeeding. Maybe HD BluRay is gaining momentum but it's never going to beat out what the iTunes store and the equivalent things from Amazon, Google and half a dozen other companies are doing. It's a niche compared to that direction the world is going and will stay that way. Even if that's wrong, Apple made their intentions clear on that front years before we lost Steve. We can criticize that position if we want but it's pointless to criticize their hardware for supporting that position.
But whatever, I get that we don't all want that port, and I certainly get your point in regards to floppies. I don't want a floppy drive in my Mac. All I am telling you is that low-end but still useful devices are NOT getting USB-C makeovers, because manufacturers simply don't care about doing that, and therefore the MacBook Pro 2016-2018 will always be the donglebook.
Right. Low end. A market that Apple has never catered to, and likely never will. And that's the point. Criticize them for not catering to low end if you want, but there's no point in criticizing Apple for not leaving USB-A in their high end laptops Macs (even the MacBook is a high end consumer laptop and the people using those are only complaining that it needs two USB-C ports not just one, but few care that it doesn't have USB-A), because USB-C caters to high end much better than USB-A so they're going to go that way.
Regardless, the people who want USB-A can buy the MacBook Air, and it's the perfect computer for them. That's Apple's "low end" offering. And until two weeks ago, Apple's "low end" pro offering was the 2015 MBP. But now that low end of the market is so low that now that they're not interested in it, just like they never have been. I'll agree there's something of a gap in their line up right now, with the Air aging, but rumor has it they're updating that soon which will hopefully fix that.
--------------------
Now... All that said... there's one other key point that in a way covers everything here in one argument. And that's this...
The real "issue" if anything here is that Apple is taking laptops in a different direction to the past, and different to most everyone else as well, at the moment. They're adopting a new philosophy. Throttling issue aside (not to ignore it, but to say that it's a separate mistake, rather than an issue with their philosophy), their philosophy is one that makes Pro laptops almost as powerful as Pro desktops, when they're on the desk, while ALSO making them as small and light as possible for carrying around when they're not on the desk.
A few people have commented here about having a set up at home, a setup at work, and maybe other places. The "set up" involves a Thunderbolt 3 dock, with all the ports you could ever want, one or more 4K/5K monitors, potentially with eGPUs, enormous amounts of very high speed storage (I mean hundreds of terabytes at 3+ GBytes/s if you want), power, and whatever else you might need, all attached to your laptop with one cable.
You pick the laptop up and go on the road and with these Mac laptops you have more power than most comparable laptops on the market (I'm not comparing with 7lb gaming laptops). If you're doing photography, video, or other Pro stuff, you can do all the capturing in the field with the laptop, but you can't do all the editing, rendering, whatever else (you can't do that properly on any laptop even if only for lack of screen space), so then you come back and sit down at your desk, connect with one cable, and you have nearly the equivalent of a pro level desktop computer, including all the ports, high speed storage, multiple large displays, whatever else, on your desk for the heavier work, without having to have a second desktop computer. That's never been truly possible before now (even if only for lack of graphics power, now solved with eGPUs).
This is what makes these things pro machines. This is what I use it for and I'm a developer, not even what you might consider truly pro (in the computer industry) the likes of people doing high end video, photography, etc. Those guys thrive on this stuff, and have no trouble paying for it - the extra productivity pays for it very quickly.
This philosophy of "make the core unit small, with core power (stuff you can't do externally - CPU, RAM, etc.) and connect all the big power externally through Thunderbolt", is the direction they're going. They tried that with the 2013 Mac Pro, and for many that worked, but it was kinda pointless because we don't need a pro desktop to be a small box we're not going to carry around all the time. But we do need a laptop to be that way, and so with these things it makes sense.
I for one find the size and weight of the maxed out 15" to be just about right. And I know a lot of others do too. It wouldn't be possible if it was filled up with other ports that to me (and arguably most real pro users) aren't important, without compromising other stuff that to me, is important. I don't need all those other ports inside when either I'd never use them in the first place (in my case) or in others' case, where they can pick and choose only the ones they need outside - which is why there's about seven different versions of that hyperdrive.
The point is, USB-C is a universal docking port, it's one port that can universally carry just about anything and you can universally connect almost anything to (either directly or through an adapter). Even just the USB-C in the MBP that isn't thunderbolt, can handle pretty much anything other than just specifically thunderbolt.
And maybe that's the name they should have given this new port instead of another form of USB. Maybe UDP - Universal Docking Port. Or something.
Rightly or wrongly, that's the point. Rightly or wrongly, that's where the tech world is going. I think rightly. You may think wrongly, but I guess we'll see in a few years who was right. If you're going to criticize it, criticize that direction, rather than the lack of ports themselves.
But that said, let's face it, sure there are a lot of people here on MR jumping up and down saying Apple's lost its way and is doomed and so on, but those are a small vocal minority. In the real world, these pro machines are selling better than anything before them despite being more expensive than ever before, and that's because they really do cater to the market they're aimed at. Apple has a lot of flaws, but that's not one of them.
When they found they couldn't put 32GB RAM in it two years ago without compromising the size and weight then they really should have compromised the size and weight instead of the RAM, and I rather wish it had 64 by now. I'd say the same about this throttling issue. An extra few millimeters is a small price to pay for better cooling if lack of it is truly hampering performance. And there are other issues as well. But ports is not one of them - from the point of view of who these machines are aimed at. To argue with that is like saying BMWs are stupid and BMW the company is doomed because they don't make cars that compete with Hyundai or whatever.
Everything you've said here (as is the case with nearly everyone else on here complaining about ports as far as I can tell) only indicates to me that you're not the target market for these machines and whatever you want to do with you could do just as well with the 2015 model and therefore that model really is the right machine for you, which is why they kept selling it until two weeks ago. (Or possibly you'd be better with a MacBook or MacBook Air) I just don't understand what's in these new MBPs that you could possibly need that isn't in the 2015 model that still has everything else you want at half the price (give or take). And by the time the 2015 one really is too old for you, the world will have caught up with USB-C and hopefully they'll have figured out the throttling issue, or maybe you don't need the top of the line fastest one and so whatever you do need won't throttle anyway.
My point: it's one thing to have an intellectual argument about ports but it's another thing to think about what's really important to each user's needs, practically, in the real world, and that's where I really think MR readers and commenters go off the rails.
If there's one thing I really want to know, from you, and everyone else complaining about ports, but can't upgrade all their peripherals to USB-C, and can't change their workflows so that they just don't need HDMI and SD any more (because there are perfectly good alternative, except maybe SD for photographers right now)... What do you want to do with it that you can't do with a MacBook Air or a 2015 MacBook Pro, with all the ports you want?