MagSafe won't work with a laptop that light.
It just dawned on me that without MagSafe, we won't be able to get a quick glance to see if the computer is still charging or fully charged. Bummer!
I guess that aspect will have to be treated like an iPad or iPhone... turning it on to check battery life.
Kilamite, I don't know why you don't have a million up-votes for this post. Super insightful! I think you are absolutely right...
Magsafe worked with big, heavy laptops, were the inertia of the machine would keep it in place and allow the magnet to break away. I am now certain, thanks to your post, that with this one, testing showed that with magnets of any strength, the whole machine would be jerked off the table anyway.
You answered my one big question: "Why would Apple stop using their awesome, massively proprietary, connector?" And the answer is, "Things have changed, and what used to be an advantage is no longer."
USB A to A connection cables have existed since the late 90's. They required software/drivers to do it but yes, you could transfer files from one to another.
A few years ago everyone whined about the loss of ports and connections on the MBA. Yet, most non-geeky humans love it today. Let's see the opinions of the rMB in a few years (although I'm sure by then it will have 2 USB-C ports)
Yeah I have to agree here. I had the 1st gen Air as well, and I could boil eggs on that thing. The 3rd party app Coolbook eventually saved my lap, but not many non-geeks knew about that solutionI know a few non-geeks who purchased the very first Macbook Air (2008) and had quite a few issues with it. After that, they never want to buy anything Apple again. Everybody loved the revised Airs however.
Though I agree with you that the next reiterations of the Macbook will probably have two USB-C ports and they will call it revolutionary.
I'm not happy or nonchalant to see MagSafe go...I just think it's a victim of physics (not enough surface area for the magnets to work) and (probably primarily) Apple's design criteria being that this is an iPad with a keyboard...and all the use cases for the iPad are successful with a hard connected Lightning for power, so this has it that way. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. The market has decided that for iPads...they're right, but with the new Macbook, we'll see.
The annoying thing is that it's not physics: The height of the new Macbook is much greater than that of the Magsafe 2 or even Magsafe adapters. The sole reason why they had to get rid of traditional USB connectors as well as Magsafe was because of the "Form over Function" design decision to taper the edges of the Macbook. Pretended thinness over practicality. This was already the reason why they had to have the flimsy drop-down ports on the original Air. I bet some higher-ups within Apple are responsible for this clinging to these bad design ideas for many years. It was the same with the small iPhone screens they refused to change against all market research, and giant bezels on their laptops. It takes them years to admit bad ideas, simply because they can take years because there is no meaningful competition.
The reason they ditched MagSafe was because the chances of it working on a two pound laptop are nearly nil. I've owned 11" MBAs and you can pull the computer around with the MagSafe charging cable. There's a big question whether MagSafe is worth the expense on any laptop, even though it's definitely a cool piece of engineering. On a computer as light as the rMB, it's pointless.
You're wrong. Magsafe much easier to plug in and take out than digging a stick into your laptop. Magsafe is more elegant than USB-C. The only reason they left Magsafe (as well as USB ports) out is because they valued dishonest design over functional one, and decided to taper the edges so pretentious people could could pretend that their laptop is even thinner than it is.
Read my post. I didn't say anything about elegance or ease od use. It won't work reliably. I had a MBA 11" for a couple of weeks recently. It weighs almost half a pound more than the rMB and on low-friction surfaces it doesn't disconnect reliably. Unless they put sticky rubber feet on the rMB, MagSafe wouldn't accomplish the goal.
It has sticky rubber feet. And whether it slides or not, it's always better to have a magnetic connection than a tight fitting plug in connection.