Why ethernet?

[therealseebs]

Yeah, and on the other side, if they had a laptop otherwise identical to the rMBP, but it had an ethernet port and cost $100 more, I'd buy that instead of the dongle. Even if it was thicker and heavier. Because convenience matters to me.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Speak for yourself. It's much better in my office for some applications, e.g. videoconferencing (which I do a lot of), and it's much easier for me to use the printers when on the wired network.

Different people have different needs. But if Apple were to release a laptop I couldn't connect to a wired ethernet then it would be "bye bye" from me, no matter what else it did.

That is what the dongle is for.
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Yeah, and on the other side, if they had a laptop otherwise identical to the rMBP, but it had an ethernet port and cost $100 more, I'd buy that instead of the dongle. Even if it was thicker and heavier. Because convenience matters to me.

Then that is what you need to do instead of griping. There isn't something that is identical to the rMBP with a ethernet...unless ethernet decides to use a different standard port. In which case it may not matter because USB-C can handle that use case as well.

 

[therealseebs]

Then that is what you need to do instead of griping.

I described what I would do if Apple made a different computer. Since they don't, I can't do it. That's why I'm griping; because the thing I'd like to do isn't an option, and I would prefer that it became an option again.

But, as noted, I'm not really in Apple's demographic anymore. (In a way, it's comforting; at least one of the Mac-only apps I rely on right now, the developer is in the same boat. So the app will probably go away, and then I won't be missing out on anything by not using a Mac. Woo, silver lining!)

 

[Gudi]

In practice, there's a reason Macs have "target disk mode", and you need to use it if you want to let one Mac copy files to and from another.

Target disk mode is useful, only if you want to service the HDD in a Mac which doesn't boot on its own anymore. It makes the system drive act like an external drive. It's an emergency option, not the main method of how to connect two computers via firewire. I'm sorry but you're using it wrong!

And it definitely doesn't do well with long distances. Look, I know what firewire is, I know what it does, and I know what it's useful for. And this is not a thing it's useful for. (To say nothing of it being slower than Ethernet.)

May I introduce you to Thunderbolt 1 (10 Gbps), 2 (20 Gbps), 3 (40 Gbps) and the long and thin Thunderbolt™ Optical Cables by Corning. Are 200 ft enough to cover the distances in your three-story building?

Ethernet is really good at "I have a bunch of machines scattered throughout this building, I want to move data between them quickly." Neither thunderbolt nor firewire is actually a good solution to "I need to copy files between these machines while they are up and running normally." They could be, in theory, but that's not what the actual software options on offer do.

Software? You mean like OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which was running on the first Thunderbolt equipped MacBook Pro's back in 2011. All my Macs are from 2010 and earlier, so I connect and disconnect them with a Firewire 800 cable while they are up and running. Never noticed it wasn't a good solution. Nevermind, here's your Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter if you can't let that old port die.
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Different people have different needs. But if Apple were to release a laptop I couldn't connect to a wired ethernet then it would be "bye bye" from me, no matter what else it did.

I'm sorry, but doesn't the rMBP in your signature already have no Ethernet port?

 

[therealseebs]

Target disk mode is useful, only if you want to service the HDD in a Mac which doesn't boot on its own anymore. It makes the system drive act like an external drive. It's an emergency option, not the main method of how to connect two computers via firewire. I'm sorry but you're using it wrong!

Silly me, following Apple's instructions and help manuals which described target disk mode as a useful feature, and suggested it as a way to do file transfers.

May I introduce you to Thunderbolt 1 (10 Gbps), 2 (20 Gbps), 3 (40 Gbps) and the long and thin Thunderbolt™ Optical Cables by Corning. Are 200 ft enough to cover the distances in your three-story building?

Stays pretty irrelevant since not all the machines in question have thunderbolt ports.

Software? You mean like OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which was running on the first Thunderbolt equipped MacBook Pro's back in 2011. All my Macs are from 2010 and earlier, so I connect and disconnect them with a Firewire 800 cable while they are up and running. Never noticed it wasn't a good solution. Nevermind, here's your Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter if you can't let that old port die.

Honestly, I've never had trouble hot-plugging firewire drives, but I have seen enough people report catastrophic failures that I don't do it anymore.

And for all I know, maybe this really would be viable, if any two of the heavily-used machines had ports in common. As is, I have one with thunderbolt but no firewire, one with firewire but no thunderbolt, and one with neither firewire nor thunderbolt. But I've never had a situation where I had a compelling reason to try the thing, or even a practical option. Meanwhile, everything I use has Ethernet, except the rmbp, so I plug in a dock and everything has working ethernet, and I'm done.

 

[Howard2k]

They're different technologies for different purposes. There is some overlap but they're not competitors. There are not organizations out there saying "We have all these computers that need to talk to each other. Do we build our network with Ethernet or Thunderbolt?" There are no telcos considering upgrading their networks and saying "Thunderbolt vs Ethernet, that's a tough call".

 

[Gudi]

Silly me, following Apple's instructions and help manuals which described target disk mode as a useful feature, and suggested it as a way to do file transfers.

A useful feature for emergency file transfers. But you're not supposed to shut down a running computer every time you do a file transfer, that would be silly.

Honestly, I've never had trouble hot-plugging firewire drives, but I have seen enough people report catastrophic failures that I don't do it anymore.

I've had catastrophic failures with USB drives, can't really recommend USB to anyone.

And for all I know, maybe this really would be viable, if any two of the heavily-used machines had ports in common. As is, I have one with thunderbolt but no firewire, one with firewire but no thunderbolt, and one with neither firewire nor thunderbolt.

Always put the newest port on the machine and sell dongles for the rest. If you're not willing to drop old ports, you are condemned to keep them all. I showed you a picture, here's another one.

But I've never had a situation where I had a compelling reason to try the thing, or even a practical option. Meanwhile, everything I use has Ethernet, except the rMBP, so I plug in a dock and everything has working ethernet, and I'm done.

You're done with drowning your home in cables. The damn network has to adapt to new ports and protocols as well. The next Airport Express must drop all the Ethernet ports and only connect via TB3/USB-C. It's a shame we're not already living in a world where one port is the right port for everything. But the machines who are build for the future must not have Ethernet ports anywhere on them, otherwise we are doomed to repeat the past.

 

[xmonkey]

Am I in 2012 again?

 

[RetinaFarts]

Yep. I have an 802.11 AC based UniFi AP AC Pro sitting maybe 5 feet away from my desk on the ceiling and it's still a lot slower than Ethernet on my 2015 MBA. The problem is when I run my external monitor and I am stuck with wifi only due to there only being one thunderbolt port. Very annoying.

You know you can get a small hub that has ethernet and displayport/video out right?