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Thunderbolt 3 Ports on Right Side of 13-Inch MacBook Pro Have Reduced PCI Express Bandwidth
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We finally live in a world where we have a reversible, small, high-speed, versatile and universal port that can be used for I/O charging, I/O communication, and video out. The fact that Apple has used 4x USB-C ports should be lauded, not discounted as being a bad move for customers.
You're right that we don't need 4 ports that support TB3 (hardly anyone will use more than ) but we also don't need 4 ports for charging or 4 ports with DP, but we that's the beauty of USB-C supporting 3.1—you can use any port you want on the 15" MBP. I've been waiting for this day for decades, and when USB-C was ratified I knew it was only a matter of time before Apple goes all in. Now, we just have to wait for the rest of the PC market to catch up. Luckily many smartphone OEMs have been using USB-C already because micro-USB is crap, and USB-C will cost a little less for vendors so there is that benefit.
We'll finally be able to charge our MBP with the same cable used for someone to charge their Lenovo notebook without having to bring our Mac's PSU with attached cable. Or, we can spend $5 for a USB-to-USB-C cable that can be used for charging and data. This is a beautiful thing!
Fair enough. It's going to take a bit of getting used to I suppose. Will you ditch Apple over it though?
Hopefully the touch bar will be able to do some wonderful things. I just wish they still included a SD card slot. I use my Gopro on a daily basis so the SD card slot always comes in handy.
That's one of the few port reduction complaints that is valid since many devices still on the market use SD cards that need to be removed to copy data.
Well there are alternatives in the Windows world. You can buy a Lenovo with an i5 new for less than $300 with Windows and 10. Enjoy!
Really? I haven't used the SD card slot once - just plug it in via USB...even got a micro USB to USB-C for my MBr...only one port, and not even TB enabled...USB 3.1 Gen 1 5 Gb/s only...pretty dang fast anyways!
Apple should have put a few ports on the power brick. An Ethernet and 2x USB-A would've been perfect for me.
I don't know that Apple has 25% market share even if you count tablets as PCs, but you are right that they simply won't abandon it. I doubt MacOS will go away for a very long time. It is simply too useful and versatile to be replaced by iOS and I believe Apple has indicated as much in their repeated statements of commitment to the Mac.
Apple is, however, trying to push *average* users towards the iPad. Perhaps I am too much of a power user? I have an enormous library of home photos and videos plus iTunes. I do NOT like waiting forever to download things from the cloud. I would *prefer* to have everything in onboard memory to my MacBook Pro Retina 13" Late 2013. Apple refuses to provide that memory at a reasonable price even though it is available at a reasonable price elsewhere. Instead, I have to rely on external drives to store most of my content. That's a step backwards in my world. I use photos far less often than I would otherwise simply because it is not convenience to pull out the drive, hook it up, wait for it to load and then get to work on organizing and editing it. Then I see the gimped up MacBooks that sell for the price of a pro laptop and scratch my head. What is Apple thinking? As someone else pointed out, they are using buyers to the iPad. Deliberately. Sigh.
I've toyed little with Windows 10, but the mere fact that I, for the first time, have an interest in learning more about it is a shrill warning sign. The spell Apple cast on me back in 2008 is breaking. It used to be a very good fit for me and still mostly is, but I see much of the road ahead if I stick with Apple and I'm not yet certain I want to take it.
Probably I'll stay around, but man is it going to be expensive.
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I appreciate the compliment. We live in an age of technological magic. The devices we use should be an enhancement of our lives, not a point of frustration. Apple seems to excel at delivering both at times
Neither have I, and those with newer cameras copy photos wirelessly, but that's still one thing I still see an abundance of users using since they tend to take photos that fill up a card. Sure, it's not a huge deal to have an adapter if that's the case, but unlike other adapters (like a mDP-to-USB adapter that you can keep attached to your monitor if you have a new MBP) this is still something commonly used, even 'we' find it unusual.
Personally, I've only ever used the SD card once when they were first added so I could test out Apple's Fusion Drive* setup via Terminal to test the SD card using `diskutil coreStorage` as a way of adding another layer of security to my MBP as it wouldn't boot without the SD card installed. Result: It worked, but it was way too slow. They would need to add an option to coreStorage that would indicate the SD card was to be used solely for security.
* This was well before Apple had coined and marketed the Fusion Drive with their iMac.
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OWC has an option that's brilliant.
Personally, I don't want all that on my PSU as it will increase the price and size. It also adds a single point of failure to the PSU and dock. That said, it's not a bad idea and since the future is using USB-C for power I do expect someone to come out with that very solution.
The beautiful thing about USB-C is that it don'ts have to be from Apple, but can be from a 3rd-party component maker without Apple's approval (like with their Lightning port and MFI Program), and can even be from a WinOEM that you buy separately. The future is bright because of USB-C.
Stop bothering. They maybe don't know how it is to work with many devices that requires different ports. And with all dongles and docks and adapters and @#$@ it would be so frustrating for people like us.
But it's easy to say NOW that usb-c is just fine...when you just have your macbook and your starbucks coffee and post @$!% on blogs and forums
.Ok. I just said NOW because Apple has "forced" everyone to use USB-C but look at music industry for example. Most of the USB Cards are on USB-A ports. Look at photographers- SD Cards everwhere. We still need those ports and to carry around dongles and docks it's not a solution. The technology and the other products/devices must adopt USB-C first
EVEN IPHONE 7 MUST HAVE A USB-C CABLE WITH IT BUT NOOO. Buy a dongle
And this thing is frustrating me. Why would I want to buy dock? It destroys all the portability and everything. Apple struggles so hard to make the macbook pro thinner and lighter but BOOM a wild dock appears xD. So ironic.
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What's an rMB? Is there such a thing still?
Actually a few of our clients had no wifi or hardwired network in their conference rooms. I've got one now that I'm retired that doesn't want wifi anywhere in the building, yet I see where some of their employees are using ad-hoc wireless. I made sure it was as secure as it can be, given the circumstances.
But carrying dongles, and adapters, and other detritus is ridiculous, I'll give people that.
I got a panicked call from an old client that was 'shaking the trees' looking for a MacBook adapter for a presentation they were doing locally. I can't remember the adapter at the time, but I had nothing to help them. Playing 'adapter roulette' when you take your MBP out on the road isn't funny. Do you have the adapters you might need. Do you have it charged up enough in case you need to use it away from power for the presentation. What if a dongle doesn't work. What if they have HDMI, or VGA as you pointed out. What if they have nothing. A friend of mine took to carrying around a projector and a box of adapter/dongles, and still ended up having to use the flash drive, or dvd in their system a surprisingly large number of times.
And the whole 'presentation on flash' problem. Are the graphics and any animation going to work. In the early days, one had to wonder if the site would have a system with a dvd drive in it. Doing presentations/conferences/whatever is a rough way to make a living... One memorable tech conference I went to, I talked with the presenter afterwards. They traveled with 5 notebooks, a projector, and adapters up the butt. TSA always give them crap over the number of notebooks they were carrying in their carry-on bag. Once they had to check them, and one didn't survive the trip. They used them for demonstrations of networking and using virtual machines. Their stories made me cringe. 'You never know what you will find when you get there'...
But anyway...
Apple seems to be wandering off in a different direction, and it's not one that looks to be a good one, so far. Who knows, in a year we might be saying that Apple is once again 'leading the industry', or that 'Apple lead their users down a dark alley, and abandoned them'.
But not Apple. They give us Lightning and the need for yet another adapter cable. Apple doesn't think twice to set "standards" by removing all ports and standardizing, yet, they don't thave the "courage" to get rid of the "redheaded stepchild" Lightning connector and use USB-C on the iPhone 7.
Not so quick. While a few PC Ultrabooks use USB-C connector for charging (like Dell Latitude 7370), their power supply is only 45W. Not near enough wattage to charge either the 13" (61W) or 15" (85W) MBP.
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Well done Apple for publishing this before the product reaches end users, I've ordered the 15" model to have the quad core, I have a surface book which has an issue that you can't run 2 4K displays at the same time, but Microsoft were not forthcoming about it and the users had to bring the problem to them. Can't wait to get the new MacBook
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Apple are pushing USB C and I for one am delighted they are, if you don't have your adapter that's poor preparation!
Yes, there are certainly drawbacks to Lightning now that USB-C exists, but we need to look at it from Apple's perspective. Consider the recent story where 90% of the Apple "certified" accessories on Amazon were fake. These were even stored, packaged and shipped directly from Amazon. If you've bought a Lightning accessory that stopped working after awhile it may not have MFi certified. This has a huge benefit to the user and Apple. It also is a disservice to the customer if they have to pay more and not be compatible with every other smartphone or tablet on the market, but there is a reason for it beyond Apple making a small profit on each accessory sold.
Personally, I'd prefer if they dropped Lightning for USB-C but it's not my company and I understand the benefits. So far, I've only bought my wall adapters from Apple because of the potential for being electrocuted from knock off and cheap devices. There are a couple teardowns of Apple's PSUs that show why they are better. Now, if I was saving $10 on a PSU with USB-C from Lenovo, ASUS, and other great OEM vendors that would work with my new 15" MBP I'd certainly not buy from Apple. That's one of the reasons I'm happy about the future of USB-C.
1) It'll still work, just slower.
2) Win OEMs and 3rd-party PSU makers will come out with new machines with higher capacity PSUs soon enough. How much is Apple's 61W and 85W PSUs by themselves? I'm guessing well below the $79(?) they charge for their current PSU with an attached cable. The future is bright with USB-C.
It is very necessary if you need more than 5 GB to backup your devices. Unless your an Apple fanboy who wants to pay the iCloud backup tax. Get a clue ....
Allow me to introduce you to the wonders of WiFi. Luscious, WiFi. WiFi, Luscious.
Try putting an iPhone or iPad into recovery mode and restoring a backup via WiFI. See how well that works. Kiss Apple's rear end all you want. At the end of the day sometimes you need a USB port and these new Mac's don't have them. If a standard USB port is now obsolete then why does Apple ship their flagship devices with a lightning to USB cable? Why not lightning to USB-C? Have fun in dongle Hell. I won't be paying thousands of dollars to sign up. If USB-C is the new standard then why don't the latest iPhones and iPads have USB-C ports or cables that can connect to them? The answer is simple. The one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. iPhones and iPads are Apple's life blood. Desktops and laptops no longer matter and it shows.
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Apple must have their reasons for not implementing USB C in iphones, Everyone thinks they know what Apple should be doing, but the iPhone 7 and 7 plus are the best phones in the world right now, I have an edge s7 and iPhone as I like to use all products for comparison but in my opinion the android is for mobile is like what windows is to the pc, sure it's more open, but in a lot of ways it just sucks!
I am sorry but Apple is out of control. It is one thing to have a premium it is another to rip your faithful customers off. I have waited for 2 years for this laptop.. I don't care about the under powered specs, I don't even think I would ever come close to the PCI transfer limits even when reduced but the price is unacceptable.
I will gladly move back to Dell/windows, waiting for the next XPS with kaby. This is the last straw.
I will gladly move back to Dell/windows, waiting for the next XPS with kaby. This is the last straw.
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You've never done it before? It's very easy to do. I'm concerned by you're insinuation that this is a frequent occurrence for you. How often are you doing this? More importantly, why would you pay well over $1000 for a new Mac and then get too cheap to spend $5 on a cable or adapter to connect your iPhone physically to your new MBP if you're this concerned?