I didn't give a dollar amount when I said it's cheap. Compared to the alternatives and the general price of computing at the time, which is all that matters when you're talking about user adoption, it was indeed cheap.
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High-End Mac Mini Said to Feature Thinner Design With 'Plexiglass' Top, Magnetic Power Port
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I wouldn’t define “two ports exactly the same but the drivers for kb/mouse respectively are hardcoded to one specific port” “ain’t broken”.
That and you can't plug in either one after it boots. Or sometimes you can, idk how it works. PS/2 sucks.
They’re not designed to be hot pluggable, although sometimes you can swap a keyboard and the new one will work.
It throttles at full load because of laptop form factor. And having to plug in external screen, interface, and midi keyboards in to it makes it pain to use as laptop, so I'm paying for screen I can't use. I want to separate screen and keyboard from the CPU, connect them with one thunderbolt cable (or ideally, wirelessly). What benefit comes from jamming them together for me?
Maybe Apple could continue to sell a version of the Mini without a battery, for people heavily invested in UPSes that can't afford the $50 or however much more it will cost to put a battery in it.
It makes no sense to complain about a $50 USB hub (even though they actually can be had for $20) and then talk about the good ol’ days when USB hubs were “cheap”, and only cost $80.
No fan, no dust, no moving parts! Make the case a heat radiator, it's OK if it gets hot because it won't be on my lap.
Define cheap.
Lets, see, looking at that 1998 ad I'll have the scanner at $130, the inkjet printer at $279 and the 1GB SparQ drive at $250, so that's $660. Oops, I now need a 4-port USB port, that's another $80 - that will add 12% to the price.
Fast forward to 2021: HP colour inkjet £99. Canon LIDE 400 colour flatbed scanner: £69. Sparq drive... hmmm... tricky... how about a 10 pack of 32GB flash drives for £39.99 (how many SparQ cartridges does that equal?)
(Yes, those are UK prices not dollars but UK tech prices have always tended towards the dollar price with a pounds sign added - anyway, I'm looking at the % spent on the hub, so it all comes out in the wash)
Total: £208
USB 4-port hub: well, there's an Anker one here for £20, comparable to the $20 you quoted: that's 10% extra...
So, is 10% of the cost of a set of 3 roughly comparable peripherals "cheap" but 12% "not cheap"? Or is the point that the total bill 2021 bill is just £230 c.f. (after inflation) about $1000 in 1998?
I could add the floppy drive: $179 in 1998, about 1/10 of that in 2021... but that might be stretching the point because the real point is that the question is virtually meaningless. Maybe you should compare the price of a USB hub in 1998 to the monthly rent for a flat in London or San Francisco, the price of a Mars bar (don't laugh - major economic tool!), an Apple share or a 4-way Centronics parallel switch box...?
What I remember was that, by about 2000, USB meant that Macs and PCs could now use many of the same printers, scanners, mice, modems, storage devices etc. (USB also brought UHCI driver standards that helped) rather than more expensive SCSI or Mac-only ADB, RS423 or Localtalk devices. $80 for a hub then didn't feel expensive c.f. the number of peripherals you'd need to buy to need one...
Yeah, I agree... especially with your points on iOS 7 (and your signature). I hope UIs can continue to recover!
I hope the correction trend continues, but I wonder how long before some of the damage done to the App eco-system gets corrected, if ever? And, I'm not necessarily against thin, but against poor tradeoffs in order to accomplish something I'm guessing few care about anymore. When it's big and bulky, thin is nice. But, when it's already thin, even more thin doesn't have much appeal.
I tried so hard to go the laptop route for years, and gave up. I'm back at the desktop / iPad/iPhone combo now which seems to be working reasonably well. Ironically, we're now at a point where a single laptop could do it all, and do it pretty well. That said, once we see the new desktops, I think we'll be changing our tune a bit. Desktops will always be superior, because physics.
Amen! They finally had the cooling systems worked out pretty well in the iMac Pro, mini, etc. and now they are starting into the ridding themselves of thermal dissipation capacity. I guess the thermal properties of the chips are so vastly different, they can get away with that... as long as they don't take it too far. It would be sad if they put themselves right back on that edge they were fighting so long with Intel chips.
It isn't just an academic debate either. I've broken a couple Apple boxes over the years because I tried to use them for more professional stuff than they were obviously designed for (MBPs). I guess that's why the Mac Pro exists, but there isn't a good reason one shouldn't be able to have a more mid-tier or even lower one that has proper cooling so it doesn't break if you run it hard.
I'm glad to see the Apple Silicon, as it makes this much easier for Apple than with Intel. But, once they create higher performance versions, they could paint themselves right back into trouble if they prioritize tiny-as-possible over performance/reliability.
Yeah, and part of the problem is that there just weren't any USB-C hub options. What were being called hubs were really docks. So, you have this shiny new USB-C port but everything you have to plug into isn't USB-C, and even when you get new USB-C stuff (or adapters), you don't have enough ports to plug it all into anyway (and no real hubs).
Hopefully this is going to get better soon. Fortunately, between my mini and eGPU, I have plenty of ports. But, if you have a laptop (like my son's MBP) it is a real pain and unnecessary expense. the laptop is already expensive, and then the peripherals, and then docks/hubs. If that's just the way things have to be, then fine, but it kind of sucks when previously, all that extra expense just wasn't necessary. One cable to the laptop is nice, but I'm not sure it has been worth the tradeoffs so far.
One was green, the other was purple. Are you suggesting that some significant percentage of the population suffer from,, I suppose you could call it a "blindness to colour".... Oh, wait...
But frankly "Bring back PS/2!" is not a hill I was planning to die on... or even get slightly short of breath trying to walk up. Just pointing out some reasons why old tech hangs around for ever on PCs, but that, sometimes, Apple go a bit too far in the other direction.
Maybe it was cheaper than some alternatives at the time, but that doesn’t mean it was cheaper than it is now, which is what the poster was claiming when complaining about how expensive USB-C hubs are now, compared to how “cheaply” they could be had when the first iMac came out.
If one said something like “it was relatively cheap compared to certain alternatives in 1998” then fine, I would probably not argue that one too much. But comparing it to current prices and claiming it used to be cheaper just isn’t true. And we’re not even factoring in inflation. I believe inflation from 1998 to now is about 50% for things like gas, meat, etc… so you’re looking at an inflation-adjusted price of about $120 for a 4-port hub. If one wanted to consider that cheap, well let’s say you don’t have the same standards as I do. And as for it being cheaper than current USB-C hubs, that’s just plain false.
Yes, a battery is essential. It's the jamming the cpu and screen all together that creates compromises. The battery can be split apart into a screen battery and a cpu battery.
LOL, but if I still worked in IT, I'd probably join some kind of major protests to make it go away! I spent years crawling under desks trying to figure out how to plug in those stupid keyboards and mice. And, color-blind wasn't so much the issues as it's too dark to tell the difference (assuming the manufacturer color-coded it properly).
I think the issue is more that people got used to just buying a computer and plugging most everything in. Now, it is buy the computer, then figure out all the adapters and accessories, including possibly expensive docks/hubs you might need. And, if you're just running to BestBuy or wherever, each piece there can be rather pricy... so you might end up spending $100s in addition to what you've already spent, just to plug in your darn peripherals. That's highly frustrating (unless you're tech-geek who goes, YAY just one cord into the computer).
When I bought my iPhone 12 mini, I had to spend another $100 plus just to make it do what my original SE did out of the box. In that regard, this new found 'convenience' ends up not seeming all that convenient to many. And, I still haven't figured out how my 12 mini is better with less ports.
I didn't say good ol' days, nor did I say a USB hub back then cost less as an absolute $ amount vs now. I just said the transition to USB-A didn't have similar problems as the transition to USB-C. This started because someone was likening modern day complaints to alleged 1998 iMac USB complaints.
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And I say your facts are wrong. The transition to USB-A was an expensive transition for many. The USB-C transition is cheaper and far less problematic because: 1) people plug fewer things into their Macs today 2) the hubs are cheaper 3) most hubs have USB-A ports, so legacy devices just need the one hub for conversion to the new standard. Converters from USB to SCSI and parallel and ADB ports and serial ports all had to be bought separately. It was a mess. Folks who actually remember it can tell you how much easier this transition is.
I use a desktop too, for more tracks and less latency, but being connected to mains causes hums and computer noise that go away when I use my Air unplugged. I have been waiting for battery powered Mini Pro for years, to finally have usable studio.I tried so hard to go the laptop route for years, and gave up. I'm back at the desktop / iPad/iPhone combo now which seems to be working reasonably well. Ironically, we're now at a point where a single laptop could do it all, and do it pretty well. That said, once we see the new desktops, I think we'll be changing our tune a bit. Desktops will always be superior, because physics.
The original quote as "same complaints," referring to the iMac not having enough USB ports. Those are different complaints. I believe that everything was harder back then, but then again most people didn't own a PC back then. Adapting USB to SCSI or RS-232 was a pain that I remember.
Anyway, point is, the USB-A transition had its difficulties but was going to a clearly better standard. A to C is a less natural transition that people have been resisting, and probably will continue to resist, until hubs are cheap. And the people involved are just average people, unlike in 1998 when computing was much more niche.
Hmm, there must be some other solution. Don't most audio pros use desktops? I can't imagine Apple ever making a battery powered mini, so you shouldn't be waiting on that.
PC sales were about 100 million a year then. They are 250 million a year now. Although a lot more people have PCs now, it’s not true that most people didn’t have PCs at that time… 100 million a year is still a lot.
And hubs already are cheap. And they almost all support USB-A which has been around for over 20 years.
There is near-zero difficulty with this transition. I got a 16” MBP with USB-C only, and got a USB hub with Ethernet, SD card, HDMI, USB-A, and USB-C… for about $30. This is NOT expensive, and allowed me to connect all my legacy devices. Let’s get real. It plainly isn’t worth complaining about at all. Less than half the price of a 4-port hub in 1998/99 and far more connectivity. The situation is way better now.
Exactly, you got the hub to get more legacy ports, not more USB-C ports. That doesn't mean USB-C is being adopted, that means it's being adapted. And the peripherals use USB-A, which is totally fine cause you've got plenty of those ports.
I remember one early line of PCs on which plugging in a keyboard once it had booted could blow the motherboard.
Plus, many of the machines I was thinking about had their PS/2 sockets at the rear. Which is not convenient for desktop placement. And yes, they usually had at least two USB ports on the front.
That was common but not universal.
Being hesitant to change is one thing. Being obstinate and discounting any other use-case but their own as either made up or not worth considering is a whole different thing.
A number of the posts I see these days would be the equivalent of someone saying in say 2002 "**** your USB ports, bring back parallel. Who needs three USB ports anyway. Parallel printers are far more common than USB".
In both cases there's a really simple solution if the person chooses to avail themselves of it. But they don't want a solution.
The PS/2 colours were not helpful when trying to plug in by reaching round a PC.
Let's face it, some USB hubs are no larger than a parallel plug on its own!
And just how long did it take for many printers to come out with any form of network connection (wired or wireless) as standard? Not some add-on. Which was a far better approach than serial, parallel or, in many cases, USB.
If you're connecting it to one single computer (which most home users do), I don't see any benefit to it being network based. You're just adding failure modes, for no benefit.