USB-A installed in new equipment is a travesty. It’s not forward thinking. Use a dongle for old tech as you mentioned.
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Satechi's New Mac Mini Hub Solves the Power Button Problem
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Yes, if after dropping money on a hub the user wanted to also have to buy and use additional adapters. And some will.
Yet more proof that Tim Cook is not a product person.
Nice. Hundred bucks? Worth it. I'm not usually impressed by these docking accessories but this one looks very nice.
I believe Apple makes such inconvenient decisions intentionally so that the accessory manufacturers can sell more of their products.
The benefits that USB provided over Serial, Parallel, PS/2, and the other standards that it quickly replaced were always pretty obvious. Outside of the small hiccups that came with early implementations, USB quickly proved itself to be much easier to use, much faster, and much more expandable, than the standards that came before it. That's why RS-232 and the like are now only used by specialty/industrial hardware and nostalgia freaks nowadays. As early as 1998, even with the limited number of USB devices on the market at the time, it was quite easy for me to answer the question of "why should I use USB in place of <insert legacy connection here>"?
The same isn't true of USB-C. The benefits that USB-C provide over USB-A are, comparatively, pretty incremental outside of a few specific areas (1 - fast-charging and other higher power-delivery applications, 2 - where plugging and unplugging devices often is needed, 3 - very high-bandwidth applications). Looking at the 13 devices I currently have plugged into my PC via USB-A right now, there is only one that might see some kind of an improvement if it were to be updated to use USB-C at its full specification - a TASCAM Model 12 mixer (which actually has a USB-C connection on the back of it, but it only communicates using USB2). For the vast majority of USB-A connected devices out there, moving to USB-C is very little more than change for the sake of change.
Power button - I always shutdown my computers, or any electrical device for that matter. Therefore I need a power button to turn it on again.
USB-A : They are still used widely, and new products are still being made with USB-A.
WiFi signal: This is what I'm not sure about. The signals get passed thru the bottom of the mac, and now there will be a metal base there, not a wooden or glass table. I wonder if any testing has been done on this.
USB-A : They are still used widely, and new products are still being made with USB-A.
WiFi signal: This is what I'm not sure about. The signals get passed thru the bottom of the mac, and now there will be a metal base there, not a wooden or glass table. I wonder if any testing has been done on this.
If they want USB-A, they can buy a used Intel Mac mini on the cheap. Or, they can buy a used power Mac cube and get a disc drive as a bonus.
Biggest issue with the Satechi hub was the BT/wireless connection being significantly diminished when using the hub. Was unable to use my Apple wireless keyboard or mouse from 10 ft away. Not sure if this M4 version hub is any better.
Would be better if there were some USB-A connections on the back of the hub as well. Thumbdrives and dongles being able to plug in the front is nice, but cabled devices (like hard drives, printers, etc.) would make more sense plugged in the back.
For you it is not a problem - some people (like me) actually turn things off when not in use. I know the Mini draws little power so I could leave it on forever, however it's plugged in the same power multi socket as my monitor and I don't want to leave that on all the time.
It depends if you like powering things off when not in use for a few days. Also having wall sockets with switches makes that a lot easier.
my mac mini sits behind my screen out of reach.
this doesnt change a thing. other than another spot for dust to collect.
From the Joshuaorange glossary of computer terms:
Backwards thinking: Plug your device into your new computer and just continue using it like before without any noticeable change in speed, convenience, user interface, or functionality.
Forward thinking: Buy a new cable or a new dongle or a new device altogether. Then plug your device into your new computer and just continue using it like before without any noticeable change in speed, convenience, user interface, or functionality.
Actually it's true, not forever. Just a really really really long time if new devices have to continue supporting both USBA and USBC until all devices that only support USBA are totally gone (maybe several decades). In the meantime, all new devices will be bigger, less elegant, and with added cost because they have to support two standards. The smaller, more elegant, or cheaper the type of device, the more of an issue this is, but it will always be an issue to a degree because these are three things that the market tends to demand. That's why although there have necessarily been devices that do support both, it's decreasing and will only decrease more.
I agree that if USBC is superior to USBA, then it will naturally replace it in over time. But "naturally" doesn't mean "smooth/ideal transition for everyone". It means that despite conflicts--and there are always conflicts in times of transition and for some more painful than others--eventually the superior standard will win out without anyone needing to artificially force it to be the winner with for example a law (like in the EU). The purpose of my post was not to try to artificially declare it the winner (not that anything we say here determines anything; only the market does), but merely pointing out the somewhat obvious fact that a transition would take an insanely long time if we have to wait for all devices with an existing standard to die out everywhere completely before making a device with only a new standard. I think everyone can agree this is not a realistic expectation since the market won't allow for this. But also one of the reasons the market won't allow this is because there is a relatively easy workaround with inexpensive adapters, hubs, and replacement cables.
Not a Mac user currently, but considering it for a second computer. If I were to (hypothetically) use a Mac Mini in place of my current PC, I would likely need to permanently use at least three ports on the Mini:
One directly connected to my USB mixer / audio interface (requires a dedicated USB channel).
One to a hub to break out to a number of other devices that I currently use (two label printers, a USB webcam, wired keyboard, UPS, Stream Deck, and a Busy Flag). I currently have two USB-A hubs for this, as the printers are on a table behind me so I have those connected to a separate hub and one long cable back to the machine. The other hub is under my desk for the other peripherals I listed.
One would go to my coding monitor (an LG Dual-Up). I also would need to power a third monitor somehow (likely through a dock of some sort). That dock may be able to take the place of my desk-hub, so I could possibly still get away with only using three of the USB-C ports permanently.
In addition to those three, I have a few devices that I have to plug in periodically, but they would normally be for very short periods of time and then unplugged and put away (external HD's and thumb drives, a barcode scanner, a really old but still used Topaz signature pad)
With the years, I’m getting the feeling that there’s a team at Apple in charge of reducing the perfection of the products: their most notable works have been getting rid of magsafe (now reverted, luckily), removing the boot chime (also reverted), hiding the great 3-finger drag gesture into accessibility settings (still very hidden there, sadly), moving the upper button to the side so that the iPhone no longer can stand still by the side for watching content, the notch in MacBooks, making it impossible to clean the fans in the Mac Studio and new Mini, and, of course, the power button in the new Mini.
Why this team is there, is mystery to me, but it’s clear they are there and working hard. I suppose that before a new product is ready for release, Tim addresses this team asking for making it less perfect. Don’t ask me why, but they obviously do it.
Why this team is there, is mystery to me, but it’s clear they are there and working hard. I suppose that before a new product is ready for release, Tim addresses this team asking for making it less perfect. Don’t ask me why, but they obviously do it.
There aren't too many end-devices that have had to be adapted to support both USB-A and USB-C - they usually just support whichever standard provides the capabilities that are needed to run that device. Monitors are probably the only exception to this, and that's only because most monitors have always supported multiple competing standards.
On the PC side of things, sure, adding support for multiple standard connections means adding more ports to a computer. This is really only a concern for those PC manufacturers whose main focus on designing a PC is making it as small and thin as possible. For most others, this also isn't much of a concern, either.
Two Time Machine drives? There is an NVME slot in the hub that will work fine for Time Machine.
The power button on the TV in on the top right and is used anytime I'm closer to that than the remote.