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Exactly my point in my comment above. Don't post stuff if you don't understand what you're talking about.

Just becuase YOU don't use it, doesn't mean it's dead. And because YOU don't use it, you can't comment on its usefulness. So stop speaking rubbish about things you don't know about.

usb 3 c = no need for thunderbolt, it does everything thunderbolt does, better, cheaper
 
If there were 2 usb-c ports in any usb-c cable mac there wouldn't be a problem. If there was a usb-c and a separate power port there would be less of a problem. But if there is only one usb-c port, there might occasionally be a problem.

I agree 100%, that is why I will not get the MB. Hopefully the Next MBA or MBA are designed more to my needs, if not I may have to go back to windows.
 
If the teens just want to look cool why don't they buy the 11" Air. It'll look even cooler and also save them $400 to buy more cool toys with?

Because the MacBook is the new thing, is the new product with a unique design! The air is just a processor bump of an old product.
 
I'm really excited about the prospect of a universal connector that can handle all tasks.

In a few years (and revisions) it could reach 2x or 3x speeds. A Mac Pro can come with 6 ports for displays, storage, ect.

I hope we aren't disappointed like with Thunderbolt.
 
Second, you really do have to think of the new MacBook as an iPad design brought to the laptop.

But why is that a sensible thing to do? One of Apple's successes thus far has been understanding that tablets are tablets and laptops are laptops, while its competitors try and fail to do both.

The point of a tablet is that you can use it hand-held like a book, while moving around or lounging in a comfy chair. Connecting even one cable to it ruins that. When my iPad's battery runs down, my inclination is to do something else while it recharges. You sacrifice a lot of precision and functionality in the UI by going touch screen - but attaching a keyboard wrecks that hand-held portability.

The point of a laptop is it has a proper keyboard, a more precise pointing device and more connectivity. You typically use it on a desk or table, so having it 'tethered' isn't such a big deal. With my laptop, my inclination is to plug it into the power wherever power is available so you don't have to worry about the battery, and don't have to have over-zealous display dimming and auto-sleep settings.

If you want a tablet with a keyboard, get a keyboard case for your iPad, or buy an Asus Transformer or MS Surface - so you can discard the keyboard when you don't need it. Personally, I had my iPad in a keyboard case for a while, but took it out when I realised that I wasn't using my iPad any more, because it made it more cumbersome and without easy 'comfy chair' use using a full-size computer was a nicer prospect.

The single USB-C slot in the MacBook only makes sense if you really believe the "all day battery life" claim, and if you wait for a decent range of USB-C cables and peripherals to emerge.

Apple already has other computers that are fairly lightweight if you need or want a larger screen or more ports built in. I realize that people are frustrated that the existing Air lineup didn't get a screen update, but it seems fairly likely that Apple will update the rest of their laptop lineup in the not-to-distant future in a way that will clear up their overall strategy.

accept that you may need to keep a lightweight adapter in your bag. It's really not that big of a deal - it's similar to carrying around a usb stick!
Well, actually, make that the $85 Digital AV adapter which includes a USB-C passthrough port for charging as well as a regular USB socket. Unfortunately, the HDMI port seems to be gimped and only does 1080p screen mirroring rather than the full dual display capabilities of the MacBook.

If you need something more powerful, get the 13" rMBP which is considerably smaller in overall footprint than the 13" Air, yet 'only' 1/2lb heavier.

Agree that the 13" rMBP is the new Air (and will probably replace it ~2016).
The MacBook would still be an infinitely better machine with a second USB-C, though (I'd have dropped the headphone port and sold a USB-C to headphone dongle).

Hmmm. So people trip over their MagSafe cable saving their laptop, but never seem to trip over a USB, DVI, FireWire, Thunderbolt.....hmmm. Quite a mystery.

Well, the USB/DVI/FireWire devices are usually on the same table as the computer, so those cables are much less likely to be trailing over the floor. Also, for a laptop, having the power suddenly disconnected is no big deal, whereas having a disc drive yanked out mid-write is not a good thing, so you have to balance the risk of accidental disconnections vs. cable trips.

Can't apple just continue to include an adapter like they do now?

I think the EU regs specify micro-USB (and now we're seeing why that was a stupid idea vs. just mandating a USB-A connector on the wall-wart so that the power supplies were universal). They're more likely to revise the spec to allow USB-C than Lightning - but knowing the EU, by the time the paperworks done, our devices will charge themselves from zero-point energy (or if the whole civilisation thing doesn't work out, a donkey on a treadmill)
 
I was actually replying to the far more snarky comment that you made.

You see, my comment made a point. Yours said 'rolleyes'.

Maybe grow up a little bit and argue a proper point instead of ill thought out, one sentence digs at people.

Go back and read your own posts. Talk about throwing digs at people. That's why I "rolleyes". Calling people dense etc. Perhaps you should follow your advice once again instead of throwing more insults? It comes across as quite rude, Cupcake.
 
You mean just ONE thing. Yeah, you're safe as long as you don't want to connect anything to it that uses regular USB (or anything besides USB-C), and if you want to connect something that uses USB-C, you can't be charging your laptop at the same time. I don't have the numbers, but I think the majority of users would need a dongle.
The lack of USB3 and earphone jack bothers me. However I also thought when they deleted the optical drive it would be a disaster. You can buy an adapter that outputs HDMI + USB3 + another USB-C ($80) but who want to carry that crap around. If they had just add ONE USB3 on the right ride and an earphone jack I would be on board with this when my MBPr dies.
 
It's in the sense that, like the iPod and original iPhone, the Watch isn't a standalone connected client. They get their music, apps, and all kinds of other resources not from the source but though another device.

The Watch is tethered to a greater degree than the iPhone was but the teather is wireless, automatic, and available almost all he time.

The teather isn't ideal, but isn't anything close to a fatal flaw in the Apple Watch. It's on par with the water resistance: it's an issue in a few specific situations. The battery life seems like a bigger issue, where I think you want it to be more like 30 hours in medium-to-heavy usage. (18 hours is fine for most days, but if your Watch is letting you down 3-4 times a months, that's a lot. We all have our "whirlwind" days whether it's travel or social or parenting.)


It is not a proper comparison, how far can we stretch this out, if we move down the Gruber logical chain he can say his Macbook Air is tethered to the electrical socket in his wall because it needs to be recharged every few days.
 
Woulnd't be the same problem with data transfer over (i.e. unreliable) WiFi as the Apple vision to wireless future?

Unplug a usb or thunderbolt disk during a write is likely to corrupt the file system. Interrupting a transfer over a network just means you need to restart or resume the transfer. The operating system expects a network transfer to be unreliable and deals with it appropriately.

I am not suggesting this is why Apple decided not to use MagSafe. I have no idea. Just pointing out why network transfers are different..

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The lack of USB3 and earphone jack bothers me. However I also thought when they deleted the optical drive it would be a disaster. You can buy an adapter that outputs HDMI + USB3 + another USB-C ($80) but who want to carry that crap around. If they had just add ONE USB3 on the right ride and an earphone jack I would be on board with this when my MBPr dies.

Adding a USB3 port would allow manufacturers to sit back and not update their new peripherals. That and of course there was no room for it.
 
No, the statement was "completely different uses". Clearly this is not the case.

Also when something like the 11" Macbook Air or Mac Mini comes with Thunderbolt and you can hang a VGA monitor off it saying it is limited to the pro market makes no sense either. In fact you can't buy a Mac today which doesn't have Thunderbolt which demonstrates Apple using it as a highly versatile expansion port.

It caters for the whole market - including pro.

Thunderbolt is faster and hanging off the PCI-E bus, other than that, the common uses for both are extremely similar.

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USB-C and Thunderbolt can both be used to connect displays.

So just because Apple makes a VGA connector for Thunderbolt its now for consumer use too?!? Weak argument at best.

If Thunderbolt is also for consumer use why don't we see any mouse, keyboards, webcams?!? Or a wide range of consumer products. Pretty much 99.9999% of products for Thunderbolt are in the prosumer/professional range.
 
Well, I hope it doesn't make its way to the 15" MBP, or rather I hope the mag charger isn't dropped. I've never been in a situation where I needed it, but should it happen I'd rather have an easily detachable mag port!
 
The lack of USB3 and earphone jack bothers me. However I also thought when they deleted the optical drive it would be a disaster. You can buy an adapter that outputs HDMI + USB3 + another USB-C ($80) but who want to carry that crap around. If they had just add ONE USB3 on the right ride and an earphone jack I would be on board with this when my MBPr dies.

There is an earphone jack. Get these facts right and you will at least look like you know what you're talking about ;)
 
The lack of USB3 and earphone jack bothers me. However I also thought when they deleted the optical drive it would be a disaster. You can buy an adapter that outputs HDMI + USB3 + another USB-C ($80) but who want to carry that crap around. If they had just add ONE USB3 on the right ride and an earphone jack I would be on board with this when my MBPr dies.

It has both a USB 3.0 port and a headphone jack.
 
Make it magnetic and it's the perfect replacement for MagSafe, truly all in one.

I've had my laptops saved too many times by MagSafe to think about giving it up.
 
Are you sure about that? My understanding is that when you are plugged in, you're actually taking charge from the battery for power while continuously topping it up from the mains. On that basis I don't see how keeping the laptop plugged in all the time saves on battery life.

What costs battery life is the fact that the battery is discharging. While the Mac is plugged into the charger, the battery isn't discharging, so it doesn't cost any battery life.

It is possible that your laptop uses so much power that the charger cannot keep up, for example if you run all 4 cores of a rMBP at full speed and use the wrong charger. In that case the battery will be used, but it will get discharged over many hours, and not over a very short time.

So the rule is: Unless it is inconvenient, have your MacBook plugged in. You have 1000 complete charge cycles on your battery, and you don't want to waste them for no good reason.

My understanding also, backed up by my battery discharging while mbp plugged in but under heavy load on cpu and gpu (gaming in Windows). The charger is not providing enough juice to keep the battery topped up.

It would obviously be stupid of Apple, or another manufacturer, to destroy your battery pointlessly.

When your MacBook is plugged in, it first gets all the power for its operation from the charger, and if there is capacity left and the battery is not full, then the remaining available power is used to charge the battery. Most of the time your Mac only uses a few percent of watt the charger supplies, so your battery will get charged.

In the rare case that your Mac needs more power than the charger supplies, it will take additional power from the battery, which will uncharge. But that is very, very rare. Most of the time a MacBook that is plugged in won't touch the battery at all.
 
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Unplug a usb or thunderbolt disk during a write is likely to corrupt the file system. Interrupting a transfer over a network just means you need to restart or resume the transfer. The operating system expects a network transfer to be unreliable and deals with it appropriately.

That's why you use a journaled file system - the file system should be unharmed, or only harmed to the point where it recovers automatically. However, individual files may be corrupted.

As a software developer, you almost always use "atomic" write calls, which guarantee that a file is either written completely, or it is not written and any previous data is there unharmed.

SSD drives are more critical due to the way SSD drives work. There are three possibilities: Good drives have a little capacitor that stores enough power to finish all unfinished writes. Less good, but still good quality drives run slower because they make sure the drive is never in a state where loss of power would cause damage. Cheap drives designed to give the best possible benchmark results will cheat, and losing power at the wrong time makes all the data on the drive unreadable.
 
Given that the USB Type-C connector is not that much bigger than the Apple Lightning connector, don't be surprised that the 2016 model of the iPhone--I'd call it the iPhone 7--ditches the Lightning connector for a real USB Type-C connector. This especially in light of EU requirements very soon of all cellphones sold in Europe must have a true USB connector on the phone itself.
 
However, do we know for a fact it doesn't have MagSafe? I guess with a strong enough magnet, you could pull and seat the cable properly in the port. Anyone have more info on this? I don't want to think MagSafe is gone.

I don't see how it couldn't be gone. As others have stated, the easiest way to remove a MagSafe connection is to tip the connector up or down. If you try doing that with the USB-C plug very many times, you'll likely end up with the male connector being broken off in the port. Also, I'm sure if MagSafe was part of the USB-C connector, they would've mentioned that during the keynote.
 
What costs battery life is the fact that the battery is discharging. While the Mac is plugged into the charger, the battery isn't discharging, so it doesn't cost any battery life.

It is possible that your laptop uses so much power that the charger cannot keep up, for example if you run all 4 cores of a rMBP at full speed and use the wrong charger. In that case the battery will be used, but it will get discharged over many hours, and not over a very short time.

So the rule is: Unless it is inconvenient, have your MacBook plugged in. You have 1000 complete charge cycles on your battery, and you don't want to waste them for no good reason.

Its actually a lot less than a 1000, more like 500 full charge cycles. The reason you think you have 1000, is that most people don't do complete discharge cycles. If you charge on average at 30%, you get 800 cycles, 50%, 1200, 25% 2500. To be true, you must not stray too far away from that average and have the laptop temp at about 0 Celcius. At a higher temp, you lose battery life more as the battery is near 100%.

Keeping the battery at 100% is also not so good for the battery if the battery is heating due to external temp or because of heavy use.

If you had 500 full cycles, after one year, always at 100%, you approx would have about
- 425 full cycles at 18C (-15%)
- 400 full cycles at 25C (-20%)
- 300 full cycles at 40C (-40%) a
- 0 full cycles at 60C (-60%/3 months).

At 40%, you'd get : 490 (-2%), 480 (-4%), 425 (-15%), 0 (-25%/year)
Which is much better.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

Putting those two info together. The best thing for the battery is to let your laptop discharge to 60% and then plug it in, especially if your doing something intense on it (gaming, compiling, etc).

Completely discharging a laptop that lasts 10h to 0 on a regular basis would take some doing; traditional laptops lasted 3-4h max. So, you're still going to get probably 1000 cycles without plugging it in at all, especially if not doing a lot of intense stuff. Something you couldn't do before.

USB ports are usually a lot easier to disconnect than the traditional chargers with a brick transformer. So, even there's less change of pulling your laptop down, or you could do what I do, simply loop the cord around some a table or chair leg thus making sure it is the wall connector that will give and not the other side.

PS: Laptops are supposed to be mobile BTW, so being tethered was mostly an artifact of the crappy battery life.
 
Apple invented the mini DP spec and gave it to the standards association, if Apple did make this and gave it away like they did Mini DP I think they would have been more vocal.

What about Thunderbolt? I'm pretty sure they didn't go around bragging they made that. They gave it to Intel. I know Thunderbolt isn't an open standard but they did create it.
 
It is not a proper comparison, how far can we stretch this out, if we move down the Gruber logical chain he can say his Macbook Air is tethered to the electrical socket in his wall because it needs to be recharged every few days.

You evaluate (and compare) tethers based on how restrictive they are: how often and for how long they make you do something you otherwise wouldn't have to do or prevent you from doing something you want to do.
 
What about Thunderbolt? I'm pretty sure they didn't go around bragging they made that. They gave it to Intel. I know Thunderbolt isn't an open standard but they did create it.

Thunderbolt is intel technology, Apple did not make it or give it to anyone. The thunderbolt connector is based on the Mini DP standard which means displayport devices work when plugged into a thunderbolt port.
 
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Given that the USB Type-C connector is not that much bigger than the Apple Lightning connector, don't be surprised that the 2016 model of the iPhone--I'd call it the iPhone 7--ditches the Lightning connector for a real USB Type-C connector. This especially in light of EU requirements very soon of all cellphones sold in Europe must have a true USB connector on the phone itself.

And this is why standards are always a day late and a dollar short.

The EU wanted the standard based on the micro USB, which is a turd. Apple was the only holdout. Would the EU be amenable to remake the standard around USB Type C? Perhaps that was Apple's interest in remaking the connector as a derivative of Lightning.

There was also an exception that allowed a plug adaptor, so Apple was never really in any difficulty anyway.
 
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