Too bad a USB-A port is 14mm deep and too thick for the new Macbook. And too bad people like their designs to be symmetrical, meaning you need to add the same amount of space to the other side.
And many of them have similar prices and ports as the Macbook Air, which is a five year old design. So what’s the Apple problem, again?
Again: how is this an Apple problem?
No, it isn’t. So long as people are reasonably rational—and Occam’s razor would suggest this should be our default view—the preferences revealed by their decisions in the marketplace should tell us a lot. If you want to argue that consumers are irrational, and that they’re especially irrational when it comes to Apple products, I think the burden is on you to demonstrate it with more than assertions of irrationality, fanboyism, Steve Jobs reality distortion, or the like.
If I was a fly, no other fly would tell me my lunch stinks. We are humans. Liking the same thing that many other humans like isn’t lunch stinking.
Oh but that’s a removable battery, which according to your logic is just another thing to get lost. It’s also considerably more expensive and 50% heavier than the Air when configured with a 6-cell battery and SSD. Unless you’re going to Australia, flights are rarely 20 hours long, and with their 10-12 hour batteries I think Apple feels they have hit the sweet spot of what people want.
No man is an island, and you’re not self-sufficient, either.
No, you decided to use the USB-C to make yourself look good. We already know that the Macbook can accommodate a USB-C port by virtue of it actually having a USB-C slot, so your back-of-the-envelope calculation to show they can accommodate USB-C accomplished less than nothing. Your entire argument was that they should have legacy USB-A (and ethernet) ports, yet when it came to showing how they could accommodate these ports in their design with minimal compromise, you decided to use the much smaller USB-C.
Speak for yourself about what is too many and what is too few. Don’t pretend to speak for others. I’ve never been frustrated by having only 2 USB ports, but If I was one of the few who had a problem with insufficient ports I would carry a cheap and lightweight (30 gram) USB hub. Especially if I was the kind of guy who thought that carrying external battery packs in a vest was a sensible idea (seriously, how can you do this and object to tucking an adapter into your computer bag?).
I don’t think it’s too thick. Remember the side-by-side photo of the macbook and the Thinkpad Yoga (or so). The latter accommodated the USB-A with comfort.
As of symmetry, a bit of asymmetry never killed anyone. This is exactly the argument that underlines my contempt towards the appearance-first approach.
The X205 is way cheaper, and has similar battery life. For the cost of one fruit you can have almost five of these.
Not exactly the Apple problem, I admit. Their problem is more in choosing a suspect brand as a parts vendor. Don’t trust Samsung that much; they tend to use crappy material for the circuitboards, inter alia, and their reliability is… suboptimal. The cellphones are a good example.
Oh, the old, worn and deeply discredited delusion of the rational-acting markets.
Liking boiled cabbage won’t make it stink any less. Same for cheeses. There’s a reason for the “who cut the cheese” expression.
Yes. But at least it is not a small, easily misplaced easily lost thing. And you can use it as a separate power supply if in a pinch; the sidemost contacts typically give you access to 12V.
You are not counting (intentionally?) the airport waits, and consider the availability of a power socket to be granted. Twenty hours with no power can happen easily.
A good argument for support for standardized connectors of the prevalent kind.
(And this extends to the power connectors. Where is EU to mandate one single kind for laptops? We already have 19V DC, only the mechanics Has To Be Different All The Fucking Time. I have to clown with self-made adapters (tied to the cable to not get lost) to maintain replaceability in the field.)
Besides, in case of bigger trouble the technical skills will be in short supply.
Things got muddy in that debate. Okay, if you think so, I hereby extend the claim that the USB A can fit. Yes, it will require a little asymmetry - no, it is not breaking the world. And even Ethernet socket can fit, because there are flip-out connectors out there.
The won’t-go-below thickness of a USB-A connector is 6 millimeters, I just measured one. Maybe a tenth lower. It does not have to sit on the circuitboard surface; Ethernet connectors come in the form that fits in a cutout and has solder pads on the sides to mechanically hold it and board-offset SMD pads on the back, no problem why USB couldn’t come in the same variant.
To show you that even a RJ45 connector can be less than 10mm high, see here:
That part of the discussion was about more than the just-that-lousy-one USB-C fitting in, if I remember correctly…?
There were two intermingled arguments there. So revisiting it now.
I saw too many problems others had that they thought they would never have.
You wouldn’t have it. It would be in the drawer at home, or on the office desk, or in the car glove compartment… anywhere else than where/when you just need it.
I not only thought it is a sensible idea, I field-tested it and proved the claim. It may insult your aesthetic sensibilities, but I went there and did that and liked it. I found the old battery, I can show you a photo as a proof; it even has an integrated white LED as a flashlight. (Now I am using a smaller, lighter-weight 12V Li-poly battery as my power bank. But the principle stays.)
A battery in a vest pocket, connected with cables to the devices it feeds, will get lost/misplaced/forgotten/loaned-and-not-returned/name-other-loss-processes much less easily than a small gadget. Dependence on such adapters is a high-grade frustration source.
Putting the object into a bag is easy. Keeping it there for prolonged periods, not so. So why not just put the bloody port right to the machine’s chassis…
The yoga is bigger (and doesn’t/can’t have an edge-to-edge keyboard given the inclusion of the ports), weighs 30% more than the Macbook, and gets 2 hours less battery life.
Nor did a Ethernet adapter, but apparently it’s a problem. Humans prefer symmetry. Perhaps because they are symmetrical. Pretty much every computer is symmetrical in design.
I don’t know what is so hard for you to figure out, but the Atom-powered x205 (with 2GB of RAM and a 32Gb SSD) isn’t a comparable computer. Computers that are comparable generally have similar characteristics, issues, and price ranges as the new Macbook or Macbook Airs… yet somehow only Apple is evil.
For the cost of one Yoga 3 Pro you can have 7 X205s. What’s your point?
It’s well accepted that market failures and cognitive biases exist. However, simply asserting that they exist and apply to situations of your choosing is itself not a rational approach. If you have reason to believe Apple-specific biases exist, and evidence to back them up, feel free to supply them.
For example, if you want to say people are acting irrationally by not buying computers with Ethernet ports, find some statistics on how often those ports are needed, the productivity lost in not having those ports, and compare them to the cost savings and productivity gains from not having them.
And only someone with a tenuous grasp of reality would suggest that this makes cabbage or cheese an objectively wrong, morally deplorable food.
Oh, so small is now a bad thing! If only USB adapters were big and heavy, they would be so much less problematic!
I’m guessing that if you run the numbers, the likelihood of this is exceptionally small.
“No man is an island” is an argument for standardization? I don’t know what sort of tortured logic this is, especially since our interdependence is, to a large extent, the product of specialization and individuality.
The original Macbook Air had flip-down ports. This design was very unpopular (as was the use of conventional hard drives), and Apple redesigned them in 2010. This is apparently a phenomenon that simply doesn’t exist in your worldview: customers objecting to Apple designs and Apple responding.
Just like your supplemental battery packs, spare batteries, etc. And it’s not like USB hubs are easily-obtainable commodities that you can get everywhere and every tech desk should have on hand. If, on the rare occasion a problem does pop up, you find it too hard to do your fucking job and provide support to people who have better ways to spend their time than gluing shit onto their computers, that’s a problem with you and your job, and not with how people buy their computers.
You simply miss the point. I don’t doubt that you have it, I just find it extraordinary that you think this is a reasonable response and that other people should do the same, yet you find it unreasonable for those same people to have to carry a USB hub or ethernet adapter.
I mean, in your mind external battery packs are reasonable, glued and soldered LED lights that plug into VGA ports (preventing their use) are reasonable, dremeled notebook housings with chunky bolt on vent assemblies are reasonable, USB ports glued to the top of your computer are reasonable, yet carrying a USB adapter is not reasonable.
Only the keyboard is directly related to the presence of the ports. And why is an edge-to-edge keyboard that much important? Is it a fetish-like something that Just Must Look That Way?
It’s an added annoyance when instead of plugging in a cable and letting DHCP do its job you have to rely on wifi being available and correctly configured. Wifi is nice, but the wired network has advantages of speed and reliability.
News at 11: humans aren’t entirely symmetrical. Full symmetry apparently feels uncanny.
And desiring symmetry-uber-alles on computers and other tools is putting appearance above functionality, again.
Does it get you the mail? The web? The other basics? It’s a computer.
It’s more rational than succumbing to the Wisdom of the Markets fallacy.
I have only a few examples when I witnessed or had to manage a situation when there was a wired connectivity available, and wireless unavailable or misconfigured or clogged. Because my machines so far all have real wired ethernet, I was unaffected (even when traveling I carry a patch cable, just to be sure; paid off a couple times, like in that Brussels hotel with totally abysmal wifi. Or in that BnB-like apartment in Helsinki where there was a wall port but no wifi; the guy renting was pretty amused, apparently it is not common to be prepared. (Sheesh.)
I don’t have full-sized statistics, but the set of anecdotal experiences is supporting my claims, or at least certainly does not contradict them.
Each side has its advantages. (The heavy part, not. The small makes it easier to store and carry, but also easier to lose and misplace. Better make it even smaller and just build it into the bloody machine.)
Like a cross-country train ride? And yes, there are trains with no power sockets, as I found the other day.
Or airport mishaps, where a flight gets cancelled and then all the power sockets get occupied by other hapless travelers? Wasn’t there enough over there just last winter?
“Hey, pal, can I borrow your phone charger?”
Been there done that. Part of the reason why I built a microUSB into my now-decommissioned Nokia E71.
The existence of other people and their equipment, and the interrelations, is a MAJOR argument for standardization and interoperability.
Sure, you could say I could carry my own charger wherever I go. I do so, when I expect things - but the unexpected often happens.
The standardization of the smartphone chargers was one of the best things that happened in the world of technology. We can bitch about the microUSB factor but the fact that there is Just One Standard is highly helpful.
At least I can have supplemental battery packs. As many as I want! Neener neener neener!
See how fast are fruitheads to shift their self-inflicted problems to somebody else?
So you did not push the vendor to give you what you needed and now when the situation I told you would happen actually happens, it’s my fault. Great, oh so great.
This was 15+ years ago. Now these are available off the shelf and called power banks, and even are advertised on this very blog.
Do you want to tell me again that it was an unreasonable response from me to be so many years ahead?
I find unreasonable the assumption that they won’t lose or misplace or forget it. Based on my own experience. Either it is part of fixed or semi-fixed installation, or it will wander away over time.
Any reason why they wouldn’t?
a) Any reason why they wouldn’t be?
b) Also guess why the attachment was via… drumrolls please… removable connector?
It is a reasonable response to the designers being donkeyperforations and choosing unreasonable tradeoffs between appearance and cooling performance. I am not in the wrong of doing this hack; the IBM was in the wrong by not doing things this way from the beginning. The chunky vent assemblies (there are two, one on the back as well) are a hack, but it was the most expedient way of compensating for the air vent not being in places that are easy to block with a blanket.
Isn’t a design change, and addressing the problem at its source, a more reasonable response from me than the usual way of having to deal with putting the machine on a book or other flat thing to facilitate airflow from the bottom?
The machine is here to serve me, not the other way, If a billion-dollar corporation gets the design wrong, it’s on me to make it right.
If the vendor did not put the ports into a sensible location, why not?
Because it will get lost.
Like the various custom cables. My Nikon camera depended on a custom charger with a special connector, and a custom cable assembly for audio/video and USB that was bigger than the camera itself. The solution was to desolder the awful vendor-specific connector, and put in two microUSB (one for USB, one for charging), and one jack for A/V output. Since then, no worries about forgotten or - worse - lost cables, no worries about chargers - I could use the charger for the phone, the phone’s charger for the camera, and my power bank for both.
For the connector, see here: http://shaddack.twibright.com/projects/reveng_NikonS51c/
The camera died after about six years in service, so I now can take it apart and make the missing pictures of the replacement connectors.
I don’t understand why people don’t raise a living hell over the vendor-specific connectors. My hypothesis is that they lack the imagination needed to realize what they COULD have if they asked.
Uhhh… size? When your computer is no wider than a full-size keyboard, you’ve optimized functionality and portability.
Width has nothing to do with weight? And weight has nothing to do with battery? And the Macbook design has nothing to do with either? Are you even trying to make sense?
You have to rely on Ethernet being available, and wi-fi is far more ubiquitous. Wifi is plenty fast for most people. You know what else is an annoyance? Plugging in an ethernet cable every time you want to go online.
News at 11:30: computers aren’t entirely symmetrical, either. Ports on each side differ, and keyboard layouts are asymetrical. On a macro level both humans and computers are symmetrical.
Fine. Then don’t get angry at Apple alone, get angry at every single manufacturer that sells computers more expensive than the X205.
Another well-supported argument. Just throw the word “fallacy” in there and you must be right!
Oh. So carrying an Ethernet cable is a reasonable solution, but carrying a USB-Ethernet adapter as well is suddenly unacceptable and will be left at home.
Every day I encounter situations where wifi is available and Ethernet is not. And anecdotes are not data, even in the plural.
And since people are not rational, but are prone to confirmation bias, it’s possible you are seeing what you want to see. It’s more reasonable than the fallacy of assuming you are rational.
Oh, those business travelers on multi-day trans-ontinental train rides. Good catch.
It’s much easier to find someone else with a Macbook whose charger you can borrow than with any other computer, but earlier this was a strike against them.
At any rate, your argument was not about interoperability and things like Ethernet adapters that plug into standard USB plugs, but about how society would fail without you, the tech warrior who is the savior of blind and useless computer owners. Unless you are self-sufficient, you are equally at the mercy of other people.
Like shops? Or tech support they pay for? If you don’t like your job and are contemptuous of the people who you are paid to help, maybe you’re in the wrong job, but it’s not the fault of the people who use your services. And if you think that tech support is the exclusive domain of “fruitheads,” I’m pretty sure you’re letting your irrational hatred (and by your words we know that we should assume people to be irrational) of Apple get in the way.
I’ve never needed Ethernet. I’ve never needed a USB hub. I’m not alone. The situation you told me would happen has never happened. That the small number of people it does happen to go to you for support—which is presumably your job—that doesn’t mean that much. But hey, I’d be perfectly happy if you were out of a job, too.
And note that I didn’t blame you for their problems. I blamed you for your attitude and contempt for those whom it is your job to help.
Well, it’s Apple’s fault they are so many years ahead (so much so that they can continue to sell computers whose design is 5-7 years old with great success).
I’m still trying to figure out how commercially available power banks are reasonable when USB adapters are not. Why not just build battery life into the darn thing?
Like power banks. Or chargers. Or ethernet cables. Or flash drives. Or so many other things that are reasonable when you agree with them.
Because, to start, you just finished telling us that things not built in tend to wander away?
Because why not simply build it in, like these 5 gram USB ports and Ethernet ports? Because if Macbooks are stupid because full size SD cards stick out when in use, then your VGA-port bodge is stupid because it sticks out?
Oh. Removable like the USB-C port on a Macbook uses removable connectors? As in, you can remove things when you want to plug other things in? Or use a hub if you want multiple things plugged in?
I’m sure everyone who sees your computer agrees your modifications are entirely reasonable. And hey, it’s not like your vents stick out at all, and in a permanent way (unlike the dreaded SD-card problem). I bet over 95% of that Thinkpad model have suffered damage due to insufficient venting, so good good job on overcoming an unreasonable design.
Simple solution: glue the hub to the top of your computer. Problems solved!
You’ve optimized portability. You’ve compromised functionality by omitting ports.
And the portability would be compromised by couple more millimeters around the keyboard by about how much?
We did that back-of-the-envelope calculation already. The resulting difference was Not That Much. So unless the added volume is filled with solid tungsten, the difference is negligible.
You can have the added width added to the battery too. Voila - win!
You mean the “let’s throw away important features in order to think different” design?
I do. You?
Depends greatly on the settings.
Under optimal conditions, and when you don’t need to transfer files to e.g. a network-attached storage, yes. Yes, wifi works acceptably, when certain assumptions are relied upon.
Way less bad than trying to find why-the-place-of-eternal-damnation the wifi keeps dropping again. Reaching for a cable can then turn an afternoon of forced debugging (or giving up) to a five-second reach-plug-done operation.
I expected this reaction.
So symmetrical, asymmetrical, macro level… where do you have the thresholds?
Would a little bump on the bottom shell profile count as unacceptably asymmetrical? If yes, why exactly, and how big bump would still be acceptable if asymmetry is allowed? Who decides?
Nether Samsung nor Lenovo nor Acer have loud gangs of fanboys coming to the defense of the brand-that-should-not-be-criticized coming out of woods whenever a bad word is uttered the fruit’s way.
And don’t think that I am not grumbling about those brands too.
There’s enough examples out there when the markets weren’t right to make them a way-less-than-reliable indicator of superiority.
The cable gets lost occasionally. But it is easy enough to make; just do a beeline to the connector box, crimp tool, cable spool, and two minutes or so later I have a replacement. Part of the pre-travel checklist. No logistics with buying the cable is required, there’s always enough of connectors on hand and 300 feet of CAT5e will last you for quite some time.
I encounter all four kinds of situations that the availability matrix of these two allows. The “router is there, wifi is available, nobody knows the password” situation is one of the commonly encountered kind; that of course counts as unavailability of wifi vs availability of wired ethernet.
Of course, if you need a peer-reviewed study.
Further distortion is that I am the goto guy when something does not work for somebody. That significantly increases the proportion of malfunctions in my sample.
Southern to northern Finland. Takes quite over half a day easily. Or trans-European rail travel, when you are fed with airports and their security kabuki.
That assumes a herd of fruitheads.
Did you try doing techsupport?
The work colleagues are easy in comparison. The own family, and their friends, is worse.
You can reduce the degree of dependency quite significantly merely by having a brain and using it. You still are dependent on others but at least are less annoying to them.
Or friends and family they don’t pay to.
Try doing techsupport for couple years, even informally. Let’s see how long your faith in the humanity lasts.
It’s not. But others have typically enough sense to not buy half-crippled machines.
So you live in a foam-padded sheltered world where everything works. Or are conveniently forgetting when it does not.
I handed over techsupport and am back in R&D. There are days now when the phone doesn’t ring at all.
What should I have for those who don’t even TRY to understand even a little of the machines they are dependent on?
Mwahahahah. Years ahead? The modus operandi of Apple is to take something that’s already out there, repackage it as their idea, and have a sect of worshippers that then laud them for originality.
Because they are bigger and less easy to misplace. (MicroSD cards are the worst offenders here.)
Because some bloody designer decided that whatever the thing is it Has To Be Insanely Thin, and the battery just does not fit? Smartphones, I’m looking at YOU. (Cameras, too.)
That’s irritating, but can be solved without much effort. Just swap the connectors for something standard and then use commodity cables that you have enough of when some get lost.
And that’s why commodity hardware and unified connectors and the resulting capability to mix-and-match are so important.
Yes. The smaller the thing is, the less reasonable is to rely on it not getting lost.
It was (and still is) on the todo list. The machine was under warranty when this was added, hot-gluing the cable on the top shelf and using a connector was a way to add functionality without compromising warranty. It lasted that way for longer than expected.
With cameras on the top lid, you have 3.3V (sometimes 5V) and USB right there.
The stupid part on the SD cards is not sticking out. The stupid part is the combination of sticking out, sharp edges prone to snag, and fragility prone to snap. My connector has only the stick-out part. Sorry.
You have one port. You MUST remove things when you want to plug other things in.
Where did you forget the hub?
I don’t beg others for the approvals of the mods; I encountered only a few negative reactions, so far only from those style-over-substance ones who are unable to repair even a chewed cable. More often I get curiosity and envy.
The independence on what the plebes think is quite liberating. Try it sometimes.
I put extra effort into making the vent covers robust enough to withstand quite some abuse. I want to see the SD card not snapping under such forces. The primary issue is withstanding the commonly encountered abuse without loss of performance, a machine you have to pamper is worthless in the field. Too bad milspec Toughbooks are so expensive…
Thank you.
Some of the most common failures of laptops are related to overheating. Especially during summer months, when the margin between environmental and maximum allowable temperature is diminished. Usually there is not outright lasting damage, but shutdowns due to overheating are pretty common. Especially when the poorly designed vents get clogged with dust and debris.
Been there done that. The double-sided foam-core tape does quite wonders. I did some wardriving operations with a wifi adapter and a gps receiver glued to the laptop in just such way. It worked surprisingly well.
Use alkane-based solvents, aromates-free, for cleaning the adhesive residue later.
The disadvantage is that it makes the screen more liable to breaking. Anything attached to the lid will be a magnet to impact forces, and transfer them right to the lid’s surface, which is prone to bending because the manufacturers hunt thinness instead of mechanical integrity. So such glue-to-the-top-lid approach is for temporary mission-specific mods rather than for permanent installations.
Listen. You’ve said that they can have it all without compromises. Then you say that they can make small compromises to get to the spec that you want. Nevermind that those compromises essentially bring you back to an Apple that already exists: the Macbook Air. They don’t want to sell another version of the Macbook Air.
You have the shortest and most disingenuous memory in the history of Engineers. As I repeatedly said in the last few posts, you did this calculation assuming USB-C connectors—even though we already know that the Macbook can fit the much-smaller USB-C connectors!
And this adds weight. Add the weight and width (and thickness), and we get Macbook Air dimensions.
You mean, lets create a light, lean computer that someone like Linus Torvalds would snap up (in a form factor that pretty much no one else is making), while leaving the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro lines with their multiple ports intact?
Nobody is making anyone but this machine. If people think it lacks important features, they won’t buy it.
Not really. Wifi is far more available, and almost all internet connections initiated through laptops are by wifi.
And how many people have to do this? Percentage of users? Percentage of Apple users?
But I’ve been told that cables will inevitably be in my glove compartment or at home in a drawer whenever I need it (just like my easily-lost car and house keys, I guess).
And most people in an environment where Ethernet exists won’t debug their wifi system: they pay someone else to do that.
The market? People? The same people who decide if a song sounds good or a movie is good?
Samsung and Lenovo aren’t the subject of intense and irrational criticism over their products.
No, markets not working are generally the result of market failures, which are pretty well understood phenomena. And as I said earlier, the existence of market failures doesn’t mean they exist whenever you want them to exist.
I mean, there’s lots of examples of bad RAM out there. That doesn’t mean that you get to claim that every computer problem is a result of bad RAM without having a god reason for thinking so.
Oh. So now your reasonable computer should have a spool of cable and some connectors and crimpers at home. And everyone should do a pre-travel checklist, but only in such a way as makes it possible for them to remake a new Ethernet cable but not possible to obtain a new (or spare) adapter/hub/whatever.
And you complain about my assumptions!
There’s a pretty huge middle ground between anecdotes and the ab absurdum extreme of peer reviewed studies.
I doubt there’s a a lot of business travel on routes that are more than 10 hours long (and the Helsinki-Rovaniemi routes are either within a Macbook’s battery life, assuming that there are no plugs available, or are overnight).
Sharing of any computer chargers assumes a herd (actually, just two, but maybe Engineers really do “think different” about how many chargers it takes to charge a computer) of users of that computer.
I’m pretty sure you are annoying to a lot of people, whether or not you recognize it (or think their annoyance valid). These people who annoy you are probably using their brains quite nicely for things that are actually important to them (and likely society).
One word: “no.” Don’t complain about things you agree to do.
Because people don’t need to try and understand. They have much better things to spend their time and resources on.
How did they ever get a sect of worshippers in the first place? By making crippled, unoriginal products? Why do other manufacturers copy their repackaging of existing ideas?
Glue your cable to a brick, then.
Umm, we’re talking about non-Apple computers here, and Apple have already shown you can have thin, light computers with all-day batteries. Since you abhor compromises (at least when it comes to Apple), I’m simply asking why these compromises are acceptable in non-Apple computers.
And you only have one VGA port. It’s not like anyone every gives presentations in dark rooms.
The same place I forgot my Ethernet cable, my car keys, and my wallet.
[quote=“shaddack, post:67, topic:54751”]
I want to see the SD card not snapping under such forces.
[/quote] It’s not meant to be plugged in all the time. Neither are things that plug into USB ports: I bet my flash drive would also snap if plugged in all the time.
I suspect you have difficulty reading the feelings of others.
