Be glad. Now you have to solder a little if you want to make/repair a charging cable. With inductive charging, there are many more variables involved. And complexity is bad.
It is a pretty common use case. It is not that difficult to add more ports, nor that costly.
Because they lack the fantasy to imagine how to make things better. Then they naturally take the Gospel of Apple to their hearts, drink the Kool-Aid by pitchers, and come for more.
1 Like
It was a choice to make the laptop as small and light as it is, versus a little bigger with more ports. It was a choice to have a USB Type-C and a headphone port, versus two USB ports. But this form factor does not allow for more ports, if you look at how the battery and keyboard are designed. So, itâs not the choice for you. They do make other laptops, you know.
And yes, the masses have been tricked into liking Apple products. Riiiiiiiight. Cynical much? Gimme a break.
Five millimeters of width, or so. If any. How thick is USB-C? How much margin is there? Too bad I donât have one such laptop here to unleash dremel on to make you a mockup.
Said who?
Stupid design then.
So I have a Thinkpad.
The masses are without a bit of imagination, ready to be misled with shiny sleek designs away from the path of pragmatic usability.
And what they get for it?
Antennagate and Bendghazi.
Edit: and the Apple Tax.
2 Likes
But what about the rest of the Acer lineup? You can use a magsafe cahrager on an 11" macbook as well as a 17." I took a look at a few current Acer shargers and it seems that some of the charger tips are different sizes (but itâs tough to be 100%).
Searching for a universal computer charger yields results suggesting there are dozens of different connectors being used by different brands.
They make more than one model; this one isnât intended for those users. Adding ports would also add size and weight, which are two factors this model optimizes.
Have you even looked at the specs and dimensions of the computer? As much confidence you have in yourself as a tinkerer, I suspect Apple has thought about the design and market segment a little more than you have.
Itâs nice to know that people who donât share your rather idiosyncratic technical obsessiveness, but who do find their own products very usable, are idiots without a bit of imagination.
2 Likes
Alright⌠Good trolling. Until next time.
3 Likes
Apple is the worst offender for proprietary ports. Internally, a Macbook is pretty much a PC⌠So its extra important and really profitable to make it look like something different.
Ironically, I think theyâre moving away from this with USB-C, and catching crap for it.
1 Like
Five millimeters of width, or so. If any. How thick is USB-C? How much margin is there? Too bad I donât have one such laptop here to unleash dremel on to make you a mockup.
Here, let me show you a picture.
Note how the yogaâs ports are two big for the case.
5mm is quite a bit on this scale. A little ridiculous, but meaningless competions need to be objective on some level.
I guess Iâm more interested in transformative uses. Itâs not whether the battery lasts 30 minutes longer than last years model, itâs whether the battery lasts long enough to ditch the ac adapter at home. It matters not that the case is thinner by 5 mm. It matters only that the macbook is thin enough to nestle into a new space.
4 Likes
I donât know, display size (the only 12" macbook ever)? âRetinaâ? Color (the only other metal macbook was offered for about 8 months in 2008-09, and it didnât come in grey or gold)? Year?
Is this any less kludgy than other computer makers, who use long and unwieldy model numbers?
These seem like pretty weird reasons to criticize Apple.
1 Like
Other than Lightning and Dock Connector, what proprietary ports has Apple used in, say, the last 5-10 years? I frankly canât think of any offhand. Note: FireWire and Thunderbolt are not Apple proprietary in any way shape or form.
Pretty comparison. The Yoga thing looks better to me than the Macbook, given the connectors choice and the display resolution. Other variables would have to
I wouldnât say. Iâd say that they just perfectly fit, and the âground clearanceâ of the laptopâs rubber bumps provides enough space for a USB disk or connector. With USB-C theyâd even have quite some more margin.
With this thickness you can even fit in a whole RJ45. Make the whole case a few millimeters wider (not thicker! I explicitly specified width, the x-size). Make a small cutout in the lid, let the connector protrude into this cutout. Nothing that would not be doable, for the cost of a little piece of the displayâs bezel.
Which is an invitation to needing just the half hour of operation more. Unforeseen situations.
Same for the yellow USB charging port. (Noticed it on the Yoga? I love these.) Few things are more frustrating than sitting on a laptop battery full of tasty e-juice, and having a hungry phone and not being able to feed it.
1 Like
Jony Ive would have a fit.
More importantly, so would customers. Of course, there also no real place to do this, given the edge-to edge keyboard and thin display bezel.
I donât think @shaddack will ever really understand that the design of Apple products is a large part of their success, or that some people are perfectly content with having a marginally less capable devices if is means losing a few hundred grams and a few hundred cubic mms in volume.
Those whose preferences are aligned with @shaddackâs have a number of other companies to chose from, but shouldnât expect every Apple product to cater to them.
They even had space to fit a dodgy rootkit in that Yoga 3!
2 Likes
Itâs an annoying design trend. When I ask people what is so useful about making these things ultra-thin, people look at me in silence, as if: 1. I am asking a crazy question, or 2. it seemed so âobviousâ that nobody bothered to think about it.
True, itâs easy enough to simply repeat âyou are not the target marketâ. But I still think itâs worrisome when I ask people to at least try to sell me on the decisions theyâve made and they seem unable to. Sorry, I guess that wasnât in the marketing literature!
2 Likes
Again, Apple offers multiple lines of laptops, including ones offering Thunderbolt, by far the best expansion technology for laptops to date. The Retina MacBook 12" is for students with light needs, and traveling business people. For me, itâs going to be fantastic in that latter role. It will be one of three computers I own, in addition to a tablet and smart phone. Iâm not worried about the lack of ports, and appreciate the fact that itâs as small and light as possible, without sacrificing a full size keyboard. shrug But be annoyed if you want, I suppose. (Pretty sure this is what people refer to as a first world problem?)
âyou are not the target marketâ
I donât think Iâd be much interested in a 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor (Turbo Boost up to 2.4GHz)
And good riddance. Whoever puts appearance above functionality deserves succumbing to such a fit.
Good riddance, too. If we get less style and more substance in the requirements from the remaining survivors, the world will be a better place.
And thatâs oh-so-important exactly⌠why? Is anybody assembling the machines into large panels where the displays must have no spaces between, where the keyboards have to organically tile into larger keyboards? Even in that case, why the backspace key or the capslock just cannot be a bit shorter? In this area, where is the will there is a way.
I just found that I misplaced my jewellery scale.
I wanted to find how many milligrams a USB A (and a RJ45) connector is. So youâll have to live with a rough estimate that says that it is somewhere around 3-4 grams. Give or take a factor of 2.
That is way less than your âfew hundred gramsâ, even if multiplied by five to give us four additional old-big-heavy USBs and one RJ45 Ethernet.
I hate carrying heavy machines in my carryon luggage like everybody else, but the extra weight of one connector is not that much. And for extra-extensive traveling I have a netbook, which not only has three USB ports and an ethernet one, but also fits into my thigh pocket.
The missing Ethernet jack has a significant negative impact on the innocent third parties who have to wipe the IT ass of the users whenever their machines crap themselves. And when the wifi goes down, or is jammed, or should not be available for security or EMI or other reasons in a given facility, and the given user cries and moans that they want their net. And instead of using six feet of a patch cable the technician in charge has to scramble to get a wifi node up, while wanting to use said cable to strangle the user and bury him in a shallow grave.
I am not the target market. But I have to pull the âtarget marketsâ out of their self-inflicted cesspool of fully predictable âunanticipatedâ situations. And I swear I am not alone.
Itâs not just about you. Your technology choices are impacting the others who have to keep the infrastructure to cater to your whims.
I wish the owners of such machines to have a tight deadline, a need to access the Net, no wifi, a complimentary patch cable in mockingly stylish apple white, and a bank of ethernet sockets in the wall to laugh at them.
And no USB-ethernet converter. And no cell signal. Or, better, so poor cell signal it is tempting - and painfully unusable. And, if Iâd be extra-sadistic, throw data-roaming charges into the mix and make the desperate attempts cost couple hundred bucks of extra hurt.
3 Likes
To be fair, Appleâs hardware actually works with OS X, apart from that Magic Painpad, while Toshibaâs, Sonyâs, and Genesiâs hardware didnât actually work with Linux with my accessibility needs.
Tell that to my coworkers when we have a meeting, everyone pulls out their laptop, and then we all do the shuffle in chairs around the table to find the power connectors (when we almost all use macbooks) that work with our macs. This actually happens. IT wound up using zipties to add the power connector adapter to all the old ones (with a string) to make sure we could use it on both sets of laptops.
1 Like
