Thunderbolt 3 Ports on Right Side of 13-Inch MacBook Pro Have Reduced PCI Express Bandwidth

[DudeDad]

We also read what Microsoft announced for office regarding the touch bar. It'll improve workflows.
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Lol little wannabe Hitler would like to tell us what to if we don't like his Apple-god.

You may win the internet today with such a stupid comment. Get over yourself. I like macOS; if you want to go to Windows, feel free to do so...I find it funny that those who want to leave because of the lack of magsafe will get a windows machine without magsafe.

 

[Tycho24]

[doublepost=1477921067][/doublepost]Thanks, Tim for taking time out of your busy schedule schedule to respond. Now go back to focusing on watch band development.

Thanks, Kevin Hart for taking time from your comedy tour to come here & share that VERY clever and awesome original joke. That's comedic gold! I hope that one makes it into your next HBO special.

#tiredandold

 

[manu chao]

For those of you who think the time of USB-C has come, just note three very simple things:
MacBook Pro isn't iMac. They'll never achieve the original iMac's popularity, nor its sales numbers. So the argument that MBP 2016 or even Apple's entire laptop lineup is a vehicle to usher in that future fails. Miserably.

The iMac was a big success for Apple, but Apple's market share of the PC market is noticeably higher today. At its peak, during the first full year of iMac availability in 1999, the ratio between PCs and Macs was as low as 27.6x, ie, for every Mac sold, 27.6 PCs were sold. That number increased to 33x already the next year and kept on rising every year to over 56x in 2004.

In 2015, that number was 13.8x. This means Apple's market share is twice as high as at its peak during original iMac era and even 2.4x as high as during the second full year of the iMac and 2.8x as high as during the third year of the original iMac. And if you think the iMac dominated Mac sales more back then than Mac laptops do today, think again. In laptops, the PC to Mac sales number ratio is as low as 8.7x. And we all know that all Macs will get USB-C sooner or later, this has happened with the original USB, it happened with Firewire, it happened with DVI, mDP and TB.

And that is before taking into account that USB-C, until last week, actually had a noticeably higher share on PC laptops than on Mac laptops.

The advantage of USB-C over TB2 and USB 3 isn't as great as USB 1, 2 and 3 over Serial, Parallel, PS/2, ADB, Game Port and SCSI, especially to casual and prosumer users. So going all USB-C with the entire laptop lineup is progress for the sake of progress, rather for improving user experience.

Don't kid yourself. Most people probably own more than half a dozen different USB cables (my count is six: USB-B, USB-mini, USB-micro, USB-3, USB-Sony, USB-Panasonic). Adding one more variant (USB-C to USB-C) won't break the bank.

The more likely candidate to quicken a USB-C future is Apple's best-selling product: the iPhone. Sadly and paradoxically, the iPhone wants nothing to do with USB-C (and MacBook with Lightning). So given that this is the case, what's preventing Apple putting at the very least one USB 3 and one TB2 port on MacBook Pro 2016? Poor decision-making and arrogance.

Well, Apple is caught between a rock and a hard place here. It bringing out its own proprietary connector for the iPod first and then the iPhone was a big improvement over the multitude of for a while equally proprietary connectors for different phones, which then changed to USB-mini, then to USB-micro and now to USB-C for other phones. When Apple switched to Lightning in 2012, there was no USB-C available yet. Now USB-C is out but a) Lightning is still a better connector for phones (it is smaller and more robust), b) switching the iPhone to USB-C now after only four years of Lightning would also be seen as Apple 'forcing' everybody to buy new cables or adaptors.

Apple takes away something most users rely on and find extremely useful without offering something better or even a compelling roadmap in return

That is how Apple has always operated and despite the huffing and puffing (and bold text) in the days after a new product is released, things calm down pretty quickly and this becomes largely a non-issue or simply the cost of doing business.

How long is the transition to USB-C going to take piggy-backing solely on Apple's laptops and desktops?

I don't know in which world you are living but USB-C is being widely adopted in PCs as well (in particular laptops), as well as in smartphones. My friendly neighbourhood online retailer lists 650 PC laptops with USB-A 3.x and 200 with USB-C 3.x. I think you should reconsider the use of the word 'solely' here.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

There is nothing they could have done to provide 4 full bandwidth TB3 ports except use a quad-processor which they have never done in the 13" model since it would require a much bigger battery and a lot more than a few millimeters. This is more bandwidth than the outgoing model. A lot more.

I agree -- I don't see an issue with the reduced bandwidth on the 13" and I understand why.

The old 15" had 2 Thunderbolt 2 at 20 Gbps and 2 USB 3.0 at 5 Gbps. The "compromised" ports on the 13" are both TB3 with 20 Gbps.

It is also far from the first time Apple dropped a port or accessory before everyone else did. The DVD drive. Ethernet. FireWire. All of those were dropped and generated the same level of complaints that this move did. And guess what. People got over it.

And, it still doesn't make sense to drop ports that people will need when they pull out their machine in a random conference room. Today, that means HDMI (thankfully, VGA is finally dead). HDMI done right means 2.0a with HDR. And, for many of us, RJ-45 Ethernet. Displayport. USB-A ports for memory sticks. Could I live with a portable docking station? Sure, where is it? When Apple dropped the builtin DVD drive, they came out with the portable outboard drive. This new ecosystem is missing a lot of parts.

Back at the desktop, a full up powered docking station with all the missing ports. Where is it? And, since someone brought up the Razer -- years ago there were rumors of Apple selling an outboard like the Razer Core with high-end GPU slots. Interesting idea, never happened.

 

[Judas1]

The iMac was a big success for Apple, but Apple's market share of the PC market is noticeably higher today. At its peak, during the first full year of iMac availability in 1999, the ratio between PCs and Macs was as low as 27.6x, ie, for every Mac sold, 27.6 PCs were sold. That number increased to 33x already the next year and kept on rising every year to over 56x in 2004.

In 2015, that number was 13.8x. This means Apple's market share is twice as high as at its peak during original iMac era and even 2.4x as high as during the second full year of the iMac and 2.8x as high as during the third year of the original iMac. And if you think the iMac dominated Mac sales more back then than Mac laptops do today, think again. In laptops, the PC to Mac sales number ratio is as low as 8.7x. And we all know that all Macs will get USB-C sooner or later, this has happened with the original USB, it happened with Firewire, it happened with DVI, mDP and TB.

And that is before taking into account that USB-C, until last week, actually had a noticeably higher share on PC laptops than on Mac laptops.

Don't kid yourself. Most people probably own more than half a dozen different USB cables (my count is six: USB-B, USB-mini, USB-micro, USB-3, USB-Sony, USB-Panasonic). Adding one more variant (USB-C to USB-C) won't break the bank.



Well, Apple is caught between a rock and a hard place here. It bringing out its own proprietary connector for the iPod first and then the iPhone was a big improvement over the multitude of for a while equally proprietary connectors for different phones, which then changed to USB-mini, then to USB-micro and now to USB-C for other phones. When Apple switched to Lightning in 2012, there was no USB-C available yet. Now USB-C is out but a) Lightning is still a better connector for phones (it is smaller and more robust), b) switching the iPhone to USB-C now after only four years of Lightning would also be seen as Apple 'forcing' everybody to buy new cables or adaptors.


That is how Apple has always operated and despite the huffing and puffing (and bold text) in the days after a new product is released, things calm down pretty quickly and this becomes largely a non-issue or simply the cost of doing business.


I don't know in which world you are living but USB-C is being widely adopted in PCs as well (in particular laptops), as well as in smartphones. My friendly neighbourhood online retailer lists 650 PC laptops with USB-A 3.x and 200 with USB-C 3.x. I think you should reconsider the use of the word 'solely' here.

Actually, most people only own micro USB to usb-a wires. If you use mostly Apple, you might have additional dongles or hubs. But the rest don't have nor need additional dongles.

 

[manu chao]

Actually, most people only own micro USB to usb-a wires. If you use mostly Apple, you might have additional dongles or hubs. But the rest don't have nor need additional dongles.

I guess you are not old enough. Before printers got wireless, they all used USB-B. My Motorola Razr used USB-mini (as did my original MiFi and almost all my 2.5" external HDDs). The USB cable for my Sony camera has a custom connector as does the one for my Panasonic camera. And everybody using a USB3 external drive will have a special USB cable for that as well.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

Actually, most people only own micro USB to usb-a wires. If you use mostly Apple, you might have additional dongles or hubs. But the rest don't have nor need additional dongles.

Yeah, my other laptop runs Windows. It is light and thin, and, it has no need for any dongles. It even has RJ45 gigabit ethernet. (I could go on about all the ports it has.) Amazing. It only has one problem -- it runs Windows.

 

[Carlanga]

Aside from specially marking this, there isn't much Apple can do beyond what they did (i.e. putting it up on their website), and hopefully in the official product documentation.

Based on what we know, the ports on the right will still achieve Thunderbolt 2 speeds, which are still twice as fast as USB 3.1 Gen 2 (and fast enough for any legacy Thunderbolt device that a current MacBook Pro owner is using). What's silly is that some people are suggesting that Apple should have made those ports USB 3.1 Gen 2 if they couldn't provide the full Thunderbolt 3 PCIe bandwidth. That would make no sense since it would place even more limitations.

we just had an announcement for devs w free streaming video and they preferred to let it come out later in a support page after news of the new devices were out by the reporters.

 

[Judas1]

I guess you are not old enough. Before printers got wireless, they all used USB-B. My Motorola Razr used USB-mini (as did my original MiFi and almost all my 2.5" external HDDs). The USB cable for my Sony camera has a custom connector as does the one for my Panasonic camera. And everybody using a USB3 external drive will have a special USB cable for that as well.

You're seriously defending a 2016 notebook for dropping ports by saying it's equivalent to you having really old peripherals? I'm looking at only recent ones. Usb-b is gone. Usb mini is gone. What's still here is micro usb, usb -a, and HDMI, which this notebook doesn't have.

 

[Sedulous]

Eventually iPhones will ship with USB-C cables, but only when USB-C becomes ubiquitous on the PC side. Apple has never waited for the PC side to catch up. They dropped native Ethernet before the PC side. They dropped PCMCIA, and DVD drives as well. Heck they went all in on USB-A before anyone else.

The transition to new ports does create a short-term inconvenience. But Apple has always taken a "rip the Band-Aid off quickly" approach. For someone spending $1500-$4000 another $25 cable isn't going to phase them, particularly when there are third party options. USB-C isn't a flash in the pan. It is the new industry standard.
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Accessories are high margin but Apple's Thunderbolt 2 adapter is actually one of the lowest priced on the market. For other adapters there are plenty of third party options. And in any case they are a one-time cost. USB-C will be around for a long time.

TB3 and USB-C enable universal docking stations for desktop setups. Plus it lets you use any USB-compliant charging cable and power supply provided it supplies sufficient power. There is no more need for proprietary cables for that. If you need a second charger, you can buy one from Google and it would work just fine.
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And then they released last year's MacBook with a single port, which has been popular.

The MacBook Pro has 4 ports that are more powerful than any other port it has ever used.

Reasonable, but given this MacBook Pro is a Pro machine, would it not have made more sense to include some of the major conventional IO ports. Sure, five/six years down the line those "conventional" ports would then be legacy ports but by then you would have 1: replaced that 2016 MBP after 2: having enjoyed many years of being able to use both "legacy" and modern USB-C devices (hey, they can daisychain off of even a single port!) without dongles.

 

[KPOM]

You're seriously defending a 2016 notebook for dropping ports by saying it's equivalent to you having really old peripherals? I'm looking at only recent ones. Usb-b is gone. Usb-b mini is gone. What's still here is micro usb, usb -a, and HDMI, which this notebook doesn't have.

What notebook has Micro-USB? As for HDMI, there are USB-C to HDMI cables and an official spec. The longer Apple keeps USB-A the longer it takes for the superior standard to be adopted.

Adapters cause short term pain, but they are better in the long run because they encourage the new standards to be adopted. It's ludicrous that my 2014 HP work notebook has a built-in VGA port. VGA has hung around for way too long because PC makers kept it in. It's a vicious cycle. Apple is the one company who can break that cycle for the rest of the industry because they design the hardware and the software. They should be applauded for advancing USB-C and Thunderbolt 3.
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Reasonable, but given this MacBook Pro is a Pro machine, would it not have made more sense to include some of the major conventional IO ports. Sure, five/six years down the line those "conventional" ports would then be legacy ports but by then you would have 1: replaced that 2016 MBP after 2: having enjoyed many years of being able to use both "legacy" and modern USB-C devices (hey, they can daisychain off of even a single port!) without dongles.

But those other ports also take up space and would actually reduce the functionality. If they put legacy ports on one side and TB3 on the other, you wouldn't have the flexibility of charging from either side (now a bigger deal since they dropped MagSafe). If they did a mix-and-match with 1 TB3 on each side and legacy ports next to them, they'd be left with the decision of which ports to include. 1 USB-A and 1 TB2? 2 USB-A? None of that is very Apple-like. Going all-in with TB3 should not have surprised anyone.

 

[Sedulous]

Where do you get this stuff? Thunderbolt is not proprietary to Apple. Anyone can make dongles. Why are you doing this?

May not be proprietary but Apple can and does sniff the cable to ensure it is an approved cable.

 

[KPOM]

And, it still doesn't make sense to drop ports that people will need when they pull out their machine in a random conference room. Today, that means HDMI (thankfully, VGA is finally dead). HDMI done right means 2.0a with HDR. And, for many of us, RJ-45 Ethernet. Displayport. USB-A ports for memory sticks. Could I live with a portable docking station? Sure, where is it? When Apple dropped the builtin DVD drive, they came out with the portable outboard drive. This new ecosystem is missing a lot of parts.

Therein lies the rub. VGA still isn't dead even though Intel doesn't natively support it in Skylake or beyond. My office has lots of monitors set up that connect with VGA or Displayport (no HDMI).

Let's face it. If you are a traveling presenter, you already have to take several adapters no matter what you have since you never know if your client has VGA, HDMI, or Displayport. TB3/USB-C is an improvement since there are readily available cables for all 3, and multiport docks from various parties that support 2 out of the 3. At least they are industry standards as opposed to the "mini-HDMI" and various sizes of DisplayPort that are out there. It will be great when there are more USB-C monitors out in the wild.

My 2014 HP work notebook has VGA and Displayport (it's always fun arriving at a client with HDMI and then scrambling to figure out a solution - usually VGA as DP to HDMI converters aren't as common as they should be).
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May not be proprietary but Apple can and does sniff the cable to ensure it is an approved cable.

All it has to do to work is fit within the USB-C specifications. TB3 is an alternate mode of USB-C. I use a Monoprice USB-C 3.1 data cable with my MacBook and have never had a problem.

 

[manu chao]

You're seriously defending a 2016 notebook for dropping ports by saying it's equivalent to you having really old peripherals? I'm looking at only recent ones. Usb-b is gone. Usb mini is gone. What's still here is micro usb, usb -a, and HDMI, which this notebook doesn't have.

Yet, I still need to keep all these cables around as I still have peripherals that use them. Adding one more cable really isn't breaking the bank or will make my junk drawer overflow.

 

[LordVic]

Thunderbolt is proprietary and if you want to make a dongle, you have to pay Apple, increasing the dongle price. And if you already have a thunderbolt cable, guess what you can't just use it anymore becsuse you need that dongle.

Where do you get this stuff? Thunderbolt is not proprietary to Apple. Anyone can make dongles. Why are you doing this?

Thunderbolt is actually Proprietary to Intel, who developed the standard. To make Thunderbolt accessories, you do have to license in, and get development approval from Intel.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

Therein lies the rub. VGA still isn't dead even though Intel doesn't natively support it in Skylake or beyond. My office has lots of monitors set up that connect with VGA or Displayport (no HDMI).

No VGA around me, thankfully, but, DVI for sure. And, though I'm not a gamer, DVI seems very much alive in the multi-display gaming world. DisplayPort--yes, but, DP is current and still outperforms everything else. But, lately, all conference rooms have had HDMI at least. HDMI usually works well over the distance required.

Let's face it. If you are a traveling presenter, you already have to take several adapters no matter what you have since you never know if your client has VGA, HDMI, or Displayport.

True. But, I don't have to walk around with them plugged in from room to room in the office or my own house.

My 2014 HP work notebook has VGA and Displayport (it's always fun arriving at a client with HDMI and then scrambling to figure out a solution - usually VGA as DP to HDMI converters aren't as common as they should be).

Strange that a 2014 professional model would have had VGA but no HDMI. As I said, I see HDMI everywhere. How is the trackpad on the HP?

All it has to do to work is fit within the USB-C specifications. TB3 is an alternate mode of USB-C. I use a Monoprice USB-C 3.1 data cable with my MacBook and have never had a problem.

I find it odd that these USB-C power designs are so dependent on the power supply and cable to not damage the expensive devices. Seems to me that the devices should be safe with a wide variety of power supplies. By analogy, it is safe to plug a lower-power Mac laptop into the higher power 85W magsafe power supply.

 

[KPOM]

No VGA around me, thankfully, but, DVI for sure. And, though I'm not a gamer, DVI seems very much alive in the multi-display gaming world. DisplayPort--yes, but, DP is current and still outperforms everything else. But, lately, all conference rooms have had HDMI at least. HDMI usually works well over the distance required.



True. But, I don't have to walk around with them plugged in from room to room in the office or my own house.



Strange that a 2014 professional model would have had VGA but no HDMI. As I said, I see HDMI everywhere. How is the trackpad on the HP?



I find it odd that these USB-C power designs are so dependent on the power supply and cable to not damage the expensive devices. Seems to me that the devices should be safe with a wide variety of power supplies. By analogy, it is safe to plug a lower-power Mac laptop into the higher power 85W magsafe power supply.

The trackpad is not great but not bad. It still has separate buttons. As for USB-C power, you can use anything within the power specs. However, the USB-IF has been tinkering with the specs, which created issues with some of the earlier devices. There should be no issues using the higher powered MacBook Pro charger with the MacBook. It just won't charge any faster. With the higher wattages it's important to make sure the cable has the proper fuses. That's also an issue with traditional chargers, but since they weren't interchangeable plugging into a shady cable wasn't as easy to do.

 

[Vash108]

I am surprised they just don't come out with their own docking station at this point.

 

[Jack Burton]

It's currently tricky to get most non-Razer Windows machines working... you need specific port drivers and a chunk of technical fiddling.

It flat-out won't work, with either Alienware's or Razer's. There's an outside chance it might with Bootcamp in a few years, Given Apple's Bootcamp driver update history... but even that's unlikely.

I really don't want to buy a mac and run windows on it..The current e-GPU situation on the mac is a bit daunting for me. The existing TB2 external boxes are weird, some people are cobbling together this stuff, and at least one vendor is selling marked up versions of another company's models.

I don't need it to drive a display. I just need it there as a compute unit with an external power supply to render. I'm hoping it gets figured out sometime soon, with a TB3/USB-c enclosure for more bandwidth.

 

[Mac 128]

I'm not sure. But perhaps it wasn't a great idea to go all-in on thunderbolt-3/USB-c. Even Intel apparently wasn't ready for it. Some of the ire about the new MBP has to do with the lack of any other ports. I could be wrong here, but usually Apple has maintained some transitional ports. These could have occupied the right side if Apple didn't decide to make the computer thinner. Likewise, MagSafe could still be used freeing up that precious USB-c port.

I don't disagree with this. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the 2 port 13" MBP which is essentially the same performance as the previous 13" MBP but costs more. Since it doesn't have the TouchBar, it's basically only offering TB3 -- which is great for the future but not particularly useful now, and in a "budget" Mac. So why not make this budget Mac a transitional Mac with USB-A on the right as you suggest, since that wouldn't substantially change the engineering requirements for the model.

The reality is, since the performance is essentially the same, anyone who needs "legacy" ports are going to buy the older Macs and TB2 to USB-C adapters to future proof it. That's my plan with my current MBP, as I don't need Tb3.

It's ok. Just hard to keep up with the deluge of messages. We likely are more in agreement than disagreement. For example, I think making a thinner pro device meant the loss of MagSafe also meant the loss of battery size, reduced range of GPU options, etc... just so the Pro device could be thinner. I just don't get that at all.
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True, but the iMac wasn't a professional machine. I had a tangerine model (if memory serves it did have ethernet). Desktops (powermacs) of that same era mostly had expansion slots (except for oddballs like the G4 Cube... which I still have) with built in common IO options, several BTO options (I was thrilled to get an internal a Zip drive on my Quicksilver), and the PowerBooks (I still have parts of my Titanium PowerBook) of that same era had serial port, Ethernet, VGA out, s-video out, USB, express card slot, user serviceable parts... all while being comparatively powerful and shockingly thin (at the time).

Again this is cherry picking --

I had the first "modern" PowerBook, and it very much was a Pro Machine. Not only did they drop ADB and Serial in 1999, they dropped SCSI in 2000. There was never a PowerBook that shared SCSI and FireWire, and believe me, that was a major one for anyone who used external drives -- which was all pros. ADB & Serial was a major hit too, though not as bad, and still, no PowerBook shared those ports with USB.

Jump to the G4 PowerBooks and you won't find a 13" configuration with both Frewire 800 & 400, not to mention VGA never shared DVI on any PowerBook. Then something odd happens, when Apple released the MacBook Pro, they removed the FW 800 port from any model, and when it finally came back, it replaced 400, not in addition to. Thunderbolt replaced mini-DVI, so not really a transition. Most Mac users don't use TB drives, and still use FW via a dongle, so this ones moot.

No I have to completely disagree that no Apple laptop has ever made much of an effort to provide legacy ports.

 

[deevey]

Holy macro... those are amazing specs, everything the MacBook Pro should be at it's ridiculous pricepoint. I'm not in the market for a laptop, but that Razer laptop makes things really easy.

Except carrying it, plugging in 2 full speed thunderbolt 3 devices and running it on battery for more than 6 hours


... and then theres Windows

 

[iChrist]

Apple really screwed people who wanted the 13in.

And a 15". And the Mac Pro. And the iMac. And the Mini.

Basically anyone who wanted a computer.

 

[Zdigital2015]

Reasonable, but given this MacBook Pro is a Pro machine, would it not have made more sense to include some of the major conventional IO ports. Sure, five/six years down the line those "conventional" ports would then be legacy ports but by then you would have 1: replaced that 2016 MBP after 2: having enjoyed many years of being able to use both "legacy" and modern USB-C devices (hey, they can daisychain off of even a single port!) without dongles.

Five or six years down the line? And this is the reason that Windows-based computers still have VGA, PS/2 and (very, very few) a serial port (or at least a header on the motherboard). Well, I'm tired of seeing a sleek Windows laptop junked up with ports that are only kept around because someone doesn't want to give up their 15" NEC 4FGe from 1993. Or that ancient click-wheel, two button mouse circa MS 1997. Honestly, I think Intel, Dell and others are tired of having to keep these ports alive well past their expiration dates as well.

Apple tried moving us to high speed Serial I/O with Thunderbolt 1/2, and was excoriated for it. The cables were too expensive, the devices cost too much, the licensing was too expensive. When it became time to update the USB spec to accommodate faster speeds and a smaller form factor (something micro-USB and Type-A will never do), with consumers demanding ever smaller devices, it was sheer genius or pure luck that somebody said, "Hey, Thunderbolt is cool, too, but we can't seem to get people to use it, what's the answer?", and then somebody else said, "Use this connector that we're using for USB-C!" and the other person cried, "Hallelujah!"

Yes, it's going to be painful for a while, but if we use VGA and PS/2 as our guide, five or six years will turn in 10 or 12 then 20-24. Everyone will have a different opinion of how long the USB Type-A port should stick around, Apple told us it was going away all the way back in March of 2015, when they released the MacBook. After last week, they're saying we all have it about another 12-18 months. Frankly, it can come soon enough...

It all boils down to the Band-Aid analogy...it almost always hurts, but the short term pain is better than leaving on that old dirty scraggly Band-Aid, because we almost always get too comfortable leaving it on and don't really move on.

 

[iChrist]

People here are complainih about all the Thunderbolt bandwidth missing that they will never even come close to using.

On it's own it's no big deal. But every day there is a new reveal on corner cutting by Apple on notebook with a huge price premium. Add it together.

 

[NT1440]

On it's own it's no big deal. But every day there is a new reveal on corner cutting by Apple on notebook with a huge price premium. Add it together.

That's funny, it's a limitation on Skylake. But go ahead and blame apple for Intel delaying their upgrades....