My rant about video ports

[morrisman1]

not about the macbooks themselves but the people using them. It seems as though people cant grasp the idea that an adapter is required to plug any macbook into an old-school projector that has a vga port.

sooo many people at my hall go to take their macbook or macbook pro to the common room to put a movie on the projector but cant do it because the port isnt the correct one.

It makes macs look bad when you cant even plug them into a basic projector! I understand why, but to the common computer illiterate person they look and just think thats just cause macs are incompatible with everything. It doesnt help when apple are trying to get their computers recognized as an equally versatile alternative to a pc laptop.

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

To the credit of the critics, it is a mild pain-in-the-ass that with a rather pricey laptop, you have to buy a $30 adapter (cheaper from MonoPrice) to connect to ANY device, other than Apple's own WAY expensive LED backlit Cinema Display. (Unibodies specifically here)

 

[pellets007]

Which is why the adapters should have come with the laptop itself; I don't want to pay another $60 for adapters. Apple should have included this into their costs when they went looking for a new video output. Shame, shame.

 

[morrisman1]

apple want you to buy another adapter, hell they even got rid of the awesomely useful apple remote just so they could make another $20 out of you.

I expect at least a vga adapter comes in the box so people can use their laptops with everything. Everything has vga input options (theres a few exceptions obviously)

 

[spinnerlys]

Fan-boyish defense: Maybe Apple made a study or came to the conclusion, that not many people use those adapters, and the few that do will have to buy their pricey adapters. Adding the remote and one (or two) adapter(s) to the MB/P might be to wasteful in their green eyes (environmental eyes of course, not that other green with numbers on them).

I have had an iBook, for which an adapter might have come with (I don't remember exactly), and I used it twice in the iBook's three years of main use.
For my UMBP I had to buy an adapter, which I used only twice since.
Also I have used the remote, that came with my iMac only five times since 10/2007. The rest of the time it goes into hiding.

And I'm used to working in two-displays environments, so I know of the limitation of a one display world.


Maybe I'm the exception of being able to work with my limited screen real estate, but I think, that people with extra displays are the exception.

We'll never know until a public study is released.

 

[xraydoc]

While I agree that having to carry multiple adapters can sometimes be a pain in the you-know-what, I think that I prefer that to having to find a way to cram VGA, DVI (or HDMI) and S-video, not to mention Display Port, connectors on to a MacBook.

I keep a VGA and a DVI adapter at all times in my laptop bag.

Besides, show me another $1200 laptop that will drive a 30" display at full 2560x1600...

 

[kasakka]

The real problem is that the adapters are Apple proprietary **** for the most part. It's also amazing that for example the DVI and VGA adapters can't be the same thing considering that DVI is equipped to deliver VGA as well with a small dongle attached. Yes, it is another adapter to carry but it's far smaller than a whole separate adapter like Apple do.

The lack of a mini-DisplayPort to regular DisplayPort adapter is also confusing since it should be the cheapest to produce.

Does the Dual-Link DVI adapter work properly even now?

 

[dhuang]

It's also amazing that for example the DVI and VGA adapters can't be the same thing considering that DVI is equipped to deliver VGA as well with a small dongle attached.

Unless the adapter is MDP to DVI-I, which Apple's isn't. It can't deliver an analog signal.

Apple for whatever reason decided that MDP to DVI-D is the best way to go, so we don't use a third-party adapter to go from DVI to Analog...