That's not the main point I was trying to make, which is a cable that can handle TB is going to be considerably more expensive than a USB-C cable intended primarily for power delivery. There isn't the same easy to see visual distinction as there is between a USB-2 cable and a USB-3 cable, but the same is not necessarily true between a TB cable and a USB-C power cable.
Umm, that’s not right. The rumoured mini M4 is supposed to get up to 5 USB-C ports.
There is a distinction between a normal USB-C cable and a thunderbolt one, TB cables should have a lighting bolt on them.
Ten years plus of USB-C is not “early on”, that’s silly technobabble for “I’m going to cling on to USB-A forever”. USB-A 3.0 compared to its predecessors (serial and parallel ports, SCSI, FireWire) is so much better at being
All the desktop PCs I have owned since I got my first computer in 1996 have always come with 1 disc drive, I think. I don't know what was so unusable about that.
I swear they should just change the name of this site to Mac Whiners
Bollocks to the horrible USB-A ports and all who whine about them!
Apple's redesigned Mac mini will not have any USB-A ports, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
The current Mac mini with the M2 chip features two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports, while the M2 Pro variant has four USB-C ports and two USB-A ports. Writing in his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman explained that the new Mac mini with the M4 Pro chip will have a total of five USB-C ports, but no USB-A ports. Three USB-C ports will be located on the back, while two will be present on the front of the machine, similar to the Mac Studio. There will continue to be ports for ethernet, HDMI, and 3.5mm audio. The power supply will apparently continue to be internal.
Last month, Gurman reported that the next-generation Mac mini with the M4 and M4 Pro chips will feature the first major design change to the machine since 2010. The new Mac mini will apparently approach the size of an Apple TV, but it may be slightly taller than the current model, which is 1.4 inches high. It will continue to feature an aluminum shell. Individuals working on the new device apparently say that it is "essentially an iPad Pro in a small box."
Gurman says that suppliers in China are scheduled to begin shipping the new Mac mini models with the M4 chip in early September. The M4 Pro model will not begin shipping until October. The M4 generation of Apple silicon will purportedly be the first time that Apple has used the same chip generation across all of its Macs, with refreshes to add the M4 chip to the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro planned to take place over the next year.
Article Link: Mac Mini to Lose Its USB-A Ports Later This Year
Could have sworn the one that I had for my MS Office Keyboard was purple, but it could have just as well been green. Still have the keyboard, the dongle is in a drawer somewhere.
Their form over function criticism is warranted. It took about 10 years to better the functionality of my 2014 MacBook because bad thin keyboards and fewer ports isn’t always better. Bluetooth on a Mac mini has sucked for 15 years. How about adding a $1 antenna or just make it a bit bigger so there is less interference. As I type on my $1000 iPhone 15 that is obsolete after 6 months because it doesn’t have enough ram to run the new AI stuff because it save them $5 makes me mad. But they have made me enough $ in my portfolio so I guess we are even.All the desktop PCs I have owned since I got my first computer in 1996 have always come with 1 disc drive, I think. I don't know what was so unusable about that.
I feel what this all shows is that Apple still retains some degree of influence in the PC market, in part because they are the only (legitimate) provider of Mac computers. This means that if they decide to come up with a controversial design (like the 2016 MBP where they removed a whole bunch of ports from MagSafe to usb-a to sd-card), users often have little option but to hop on board and make do the best they can, if they want to continue using macOS.
Think back to when Apple dropped support for flash, when the iMac lacked a floppy drive, when the MBA dropped a bunch of ports to achieve that incredible thinness, to when the iPhone removed the headphone jack...the thing I have always loved about Apple products is how their vision of a possible future of computing came through in their opinionated design, and that sometimes, if you just pushed hard enough, that vision could well become a reality.
In contrast, it's the PC manufacturers who lack any real ability to influence the state of affairs in the market, because there are so many of them, each peddling the same filling as everyone else. If an OEM sold a laptop lacking usb-A ports, a customer would simply switch to a competing alternative. Where's the equivalent of a windows AOI? And because of this, every windows computer tends to look and feel the same. Remember how staid and boring windows PC design was before Apple demonstrated that there was money to be made in the marketing a well-designed product to the mass consumer market?
It doesn't always mean that I liked all of Apple's design decisions or that I was never inconvenienced by them, but again, I saw it as "part of the deal" of embracing the Apple ecosystem in its entirety. That no matter what Apple did, I would embrace, and adapt to the best of my ability, and I trust that things will ultimately work out for the best.
And this is something I wished I could see more here in this forum. Like for a group of supposedly more tech-savvy users, I see a lot of resistance to change. Like it's easy for people to argue in favour of more (free) ram and storage because that's an incremental change that everybody can get behind. Less so for radical paradigm shifts such as removing ports or a drastically different form factor that challenges users to rethink their existing workflows, where suddenly, a dongle is now too much to bring around.
But several magnitudes worse in USB-C world since port shape is unified, but cable and wiring is not.
For a desktop? Absolutely. If MacBook Pro can, so does a DESKTOP.
I'm just taking a swing here. If the cable is USB then the other end has to be USB of some sort I think. That means you cannot have a two prong charger. Everybody has a 2 prong outlet to plug into. With USB you have to convert a two prong charger with a USB adapter with 2 prongs. Similar to how you have to plug in a Homepod Mini. Now I could be way off here, but are there USB cables on one end with a two prong brick on the other? I'm guessing Amazon might feel going totally USB they would have include the adapter in the box and that would be an expense for them (no matter how small) Maybe it's cheaper for them to be proprietary. It might be a nickel, but they probably think of a nickel x 20 million units sold.
Well I personally feel Apple cripples products by removing useful ports. I have a 2018 MBP with 3 usb-c ports if I want to use an external monitor I had to buy a $100 dongle so tac that on to the price of the MB and Also I’d prefer a Mini with more connectivity on the front.
A lot of Mac minis go in server racks, where external PSUs would be obnoxious at best and more likely a nonstarter.
