MBP vs. R MBP: Difference other than screen and size?

[avalys]

Yeah, it's all a big scheme for Apple to sell you $10 adapters. Give me a break. And I am sitting here on my MacBook Air looking at the ports. MagSafe 1 is clearly taller than the USB port right next to it, by about 25%.

Regarding all the other whining, you are essentially complaining that Apple is not supporting legacy ports and technology forever. Bringing up Steve is in bad taste, not to mention totally wrong - Steve was all for eliminating obsolete technology slightly ahead of the curve. And he only died 8 months ago, he probably saw the prototypes for this.

You want to feel like a techno-badass because your laptop is upgradeable and has lots of ports? Get a Thinkpad. I think they still have big fat VGA ports on the side. That should get your juices flowing. :roll eyes:

What more could you _possibly_ ask for in a portable?

Well, let's see. I want it to be thin and light. I don't want to lug around an optical drive I never use. And I want a Retina display.

Hey, holy ****! What do you know!

 

[dagamer34]

I can put an USB 3.0 card in an ExpressCard slot. I cannot put an ExpressCard in a USB 3.0 port.

An eSATAp port is a combo eSATA/USB port with power.

ExpressCard does 2.5Gb/sec, USB 3.0 does 4.8Gb/sec. The reason why ExpressCard does USB 3.0 is because there are lots of older computers with ExpressCard slots and USB 2.0 ports and even a USB 3.0 port that's limited to 2.5Gb/sec is faster than a USB 3.0 port at 480Mb/sec (a 500% speed increase).

There are no USB 3.0 to ExpressCard adapters because ExpressCard wasn't popular to begin with, plus a chip that converts from a USB 3.0 protocol back to raw PCI-Express would be expensive and have no benefit.

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No, they really haven't. USB 3.0 isn't even remotely comparable to ExpressCard. And it's not really a competitor for eSATA, either.

Look, I know people like Apple. Heck, I mostly like Apple. But this thing of insisting that anything Apple didn't include must be worthless, and that USB is somehow a replacement for high-performance buses and interfaces, is ridiculous. USB is not a credible alternative to any of FireWire, eSATA, or ExpressCard. It cannot do what they can do. It does not replace them. It does not provide functional alternatives to them. It's a suitable way to attach a lot of things where performance isn't important.

ExpressCard 2.5Gb/sec, not very popular.
eSATA 3Gb/sec, more popular than ExpressCard, but never really took off.
USB 3.0 4.8Gb/sec, built into every new computer today.

ExpressCard and eSATA were never really used for non-storage based peripherals that required very low timings. That's what FireWire was for, and will slowly be replaced by Thunderbolt, especially in the high end.

Did I miss anything?