Apple's Mac Shipments Increase in Q2 2018 as PC Market Sees First Growth in 6 Years [Updated]

[Detektiv-Pinky]

That's a tad melodramatic, don't you think?

What is on the other end of that USB-A cable to the micro-controller? Is it an RS-232 port, Micro-USB, Mini-USB, completely proprietary? Genuinely curious, because you can get any of these standardized (RS-232, Micro-USB, Mini-USB), non-proprietary cables with USB-C on the other end by doing a simple Google search or a product search on Amazon. Even with a proprietary cable, you should be able to use a USB-C to USB-A dongle without issue.

Flash sticks with USB-C and USB-A on them are now pretty common (I have a SanDisk Ultra one myself - $12.99). Anyways, there's also a little something called AirDrop on Macs, iPhones and iPads. Sure, not everybody is part of a Cloud-based system, but don't most reputable Universities have systems for helping student communicate with each other?

Honestly, if there are students that have been accepted to study electrical engineering that cannot find simple cable solutions by Googling or searching Amazon to find a USB-C substitute for the USB-A cable they need, perhaps they should consider a different field of study altogether.

I would like to think that if these students are smart enough to get into an Electrical Engineering school and are there to learn to build the next generation of ICs, CPUs, wireless modems, etc, that they would already possess some basic electrical skills like soldering, reading schematics, working with bread boards, reading a Fluke meter and some of them might even be able to cobble together a cable all on their own, but I digress.

If the next generation of Electrical Engineers cannot figure out how to move past the humble, ubiquitous USB-A port into the bold new future of the USB-C port, then we are all well and truly screwed.

If we want to go into the discussion of students abilities, we will be here all day
I don't know what the situation is like in the US. Here in Germany there is a dearth of people that want to study 'hard' subjects. My college gets about 1000 applications for 100 places in business administration and architecture, whereas the electrical engineering can only fill classes to about 70%. So we take on everybody who applies and for many (the majority?) of them electrical engineering has not been their first choice of subject.

What to do? You can't take any skills for granted and the digital revolution has made the gap between HW & SW ever so wider. The current student generation has been nurtured on smartphones. Where should they have had the opportunity to pick up skills like soldering? And even if they had. Take a look at current silicon - it is tiny. We live in an age of 'disappearing electronics'. It does not lend itself to easy home-soldering. You need a reflow oven and considerable skills to use it correctly.

As to the question of picking a computer for studying: There was a time when I whole-hardily recommended a Mac. A full blown Unix-Machine, that was actually usable out of the box. I no longer do this.

When I buy my tools, I expect them to work instantaneously in the configuration at hand. Adding additional dongles and cables that may or may not be supported by Apple only creates another failure point and makes life difficult.
I usually have to use a VM, for many tools like flashers, that are not natively supported on MacOS. And more often than not, it does not work right from the start. Adding more stuff, that may break, not work as expected (e.g. after a software update), or that you simply forgot to bring to class today, is not high on my agenda. And besides, the new Macs are expensive here in Germany. The 13'' with 512 GB Flash and 16 GB RAM checks out at 2500 Euro. Minimum wage is 8,84 Euro. And just recently I had a master student working as an intern for Volkswagen (VW) and getting paid exactly this much

Sorry, I can't answer your question if USB-C adapters and gear works on a current Macbook, because I have no machine with a USB-C port. To me it looks as if Apple in on a way to become a clould-only company, doing away with physical connectivity altogether.
This is not my way of doing computing, so if they do not change their lineup, I will not buy another computer from them.

 

[latweek]

Gosh, people believe that...

There are billions of specks of dust in air everywhere.

If that's true, why aren't all MacBooks and MBP's broken?

And why it's appearing only now? Apple has been using that keyboard since 2014 I believe, and nobody complained about it before recent years.

Sorry, your screen name just makes your copious defensiveness risible. Mebbe get a new one and your posts will have some cred.

 

[dan110]

There was a time when I saw a lot of people coming to class carrying a Mac. This seems to be over now.
If you study electrical engineering you very likely have to program micro-controllers and stuff. This requires at least a USB-A port. The same goes for USB-Sticks that students hand around in class. Not everybody is part of the same cloud system. So the next generation of engineers are lost to Apple.

This!!!!!

 

[Digital Dude]

Way too little and far too late. I used to be the first in line to buy the latest and greatest that Apple had to offer. This modern machine with 32gb RAM is where Apple would have been last year, had Steve not passed away. That is what USED to make Apple special. Today, Apple produces expensive common tech with limited options.