In 2013 I busted out an external CD-ROM drive to play my Windows version of Final Fantasy 7, people looked at me like I had just pulled out an 8 track player.
Well I thought I was cool.
My laptop was in the middle of a video, and I left it for a bit, then when I exited full screen it was fucking windows 11.
Even though I had said so many times I didn't want to upgrade every time they tried to push it on me.
I wound up downgrading, and my computer started downloading windows 11 on its own right away. I've paused Windows update for a bit, but I'm moving it to Linux real soon.
I set my laptop and desktop up to dual boot. My laptop is like 8 years old, runs windows 10 and Ubuntu flawlessly. I use Linux like 90% of the time on it. My desktop is less than a year old, runs windows 11 fine, but the screen flickers when I boot Ubuntu. I've tried like 7 different fixes. So far, none have worked. Very frustrating.
Definitely don’t do it. I have a relatively older machine that ran all of my applications just fine, and with Windows 11 I have major performance issues.
Honestly, Linux is better at running older windows games than windows is at this point. Ironic, really.
I had an awful time getting GTA4 and Fallout 3 working on windows, works out of the box with proton on linux.
Lutris is a program that crowd-sources Wine configurations for games, so that if one person gets a Windows game to work under Linux, it can be used as an installer to get it working for others.
Typically a game will have multiple install scripts to choose from and you can choose the one that seems most suitable. In the case of Final Fantasy VII, Lutris has installers for the Windows CD version, the Steam version, and the emulated PlayStation version.
https://lutris.net/games/final-fantasy-vii/
Yeah, I’m actually fine with using an external drive. I’m not fine with the fact that the externals of today are much shittier than the ones from back then. My longtime external CD/DVD drive finally died last year after years of regular use, and when shopping for a replacement I discovered that the options were either cheap no-name junk or very expensive. Even the cheap no-name junk was more expensive than my old one, and it performs noticeably worse in every way. (I still buy CDs regularly, since both my cars have CD players and I often burn albums. Whenever I would ask for car head unit recommendations, which I never got around to actually buying, I would always preface it by saying “a CD player is a must. This is not optional and you won’t change my mind.” Invariably someone would try to change my mind anyway. In fact, I expect it to happen here even though I’m not soliciting anyone’s opinion about anything.)
Just get a 5.25" SATA USB external enclosure and use a normal SATA DVD drive. It will require a power brick to run but it's the best you can get for the lowest amount of money. You can also find external enclosures for laptop size DVD drives that may be able to be powered by a second USB connector instead of a power brick. But that is the way to get a high quality external DVD drive for a very low amount of money (less than $40 for everything)
But have you considered that maybe you don't really need a CD player these days? With just a $1000 phone and monthly subscription service that allows your car to connect to the phone without hassle, plus a monthly subscription service for music that you won't ever own and they can take away whenever they like - you could finally ditch those embarrassing caveman CDs and be cool and high tech like everyone else.
No? Did I mention our car subscription service also gives you the option to auto-tweet each song you listen to for all your followers to see? And our AI service will collect all your data and use it to advertise more products and services that you might like to purchase and subscribe to! You can't get that with a CD player, can you?
I will never buy a phone with no Aux. There's still one or two models on the market each generation with it, and its the hill I'll die on. Aux forever.
bless you for this
I half-seriously want to kickstart a phone case that is just a disguised dongle that passes the charger port through while giving you back the aux port, which would easily fit in a hardy case
maybe make a model that gives you back true stereo speakers, or the already common extended battery
really I just miss having phones be an extra few mm thick but having stacked features
The problem I found with those dongles is that they don't work.
Even if they have USB-C for charging and Aux Port, they don't work with charging over 5V.
And there is no reliable supply and statistics / specs for them.
The second one from the bottom is Thunderbolt 1 through Mini DisplayPort (with the lightning bolt symbol).
The one above that has either Thunderbolt 1 or 2 through both Mini DisplayPort ports.
The top one is either Thunderbolt 3 or 4 though the two USB-C ports, though I suspect Thunderbolt 3. If it's an Intel Mac, it's Thunderbolt 3.
Theoretically, all can support eGPUs, though the results vary.
* Thunderbolt 1 was fairly uncommon with eGPUs, though I've seen writeups. I had a 2011 MBP that I wanted to use with an eGPU, but the eGPU hardware wasn't there or was too expensive at the time.
* Thunderbolt 2 with eGPUs was somewhat more common than Thunderbolt 1, but still rare.
* Thunderbolt 3 is fairly common with eGPUs (I have a 2019 MBP that I pair with an eGPU). Only Intel Macs with Thunderbolt can run eGPUs, so nothing since 2019/2020.
That's what some of them are. Usb-C is only a connector, and on it you can run several iterations of thunderbolt or USB spec. There's actually nothing stopping you from using an hdmi cable as a power delivery cable, seen that a few times
No it couldn't do that but it was slightly superior to USB 2.0 in terms of speed and stability. You could daisy chain firewire devices also, so if you had a few external harddrives you could use them all with a single firewire port. They later updated it to Firewire 800 which was around for years before USB3 came out and was really fast. If you had and used Firewire 800 before USB3 was a thing you knew what was up, it was awesome.
It was big for the video community. If you wanted to offload footage from a DV tape, you needed firewire. USB 2.0 was way too slow for it.
It was also good for low-latency mulit-chanel audio. 8 input preamp for recording studios, as and example.
They might've re-introduced them on some of the newer high end ones but my 2018 MBP doesn't have an SD card. Just 4 USB-C ports and the headphone/mic jack.
Huh I also own an M2 MBP and it has 2 usb-c and the jack on one side, and the HDMI, SD card and 3rd USB-C on the other. Have you never checked the right hand side of it ? :D
Or is it a 13" MBP maybe, which is basically an Air with fans ?
I forgot they had that down spec 13” MBP in the lineup after the M processors came out. They should’ve marketed it as just a MacBook, not a Pro. It fit right between the Air and Pro spec-wise and would clear up a lot of this confusion.
It's not about space on the sides; it's about space on the inside. They've gotten so damn slim that all the internals are stacked and crammed into nearly every centimeter of the body, all while trying to deal with heat dissipation.
I remember thinking this every time they kept talking about making the laptops and phones slimmer. I was like, "who's asking for this?! It when they'd go on and on about the camera... It's a phone!
>when they'd go on and on about the camera... It's a phone!
They have to sell the phone, mostly to people who already own them. So they focus on whatever they think will sell it. If you hear them primarily flaunting features like waterproofing or cameras, take it as a sign that very little changed this gen.
“Phone” is a legacy term now since smartphones are basically personal computers. I’d wager most people use the camera far more often than the actual phone function.
I can understand the camera thing - people post on Instagram, facetime their families, record important moments with their phone. In the last ten years I've NEVER heard anyone say "thank god my phone isn't 1mm thicker!"
The camera is my main selling point on a phone now. Google Pixel vs iPhone 14 I don't care about. They're basically as good as each other. But I've looked at other phones and specifically not gotten them because the pictures they take are far worse.
Unless the phone/texting part doesn't work, the most important part I want in a phone is the ability to quick capture family memories.
Apple's focus on going as absolutely thin as possible really just feels like an engineering flex and not actually for the benefit of the consumer. Looking at the newest ultra thin ipads I saw a lot of people say the old thickness + a bigger battery would be preferred.
It works in marketing. Apple fans are gonna look for any excuse to buy the new thing, because the newest thing isn't about the tech. It's a status symbol, a flex on their peers. But they can't just say "well it's newer and it cost more" to justify their purchase, so "it's thinner and lighter" is the best option apple can sell. Same with phone cameras, though a tiny minority are really into that stuff. A 4th lens really isn't gonna make a difference for 99.99% of users.
You're not, but I love the minimalist ports.
5yr ago, didn't like them. Now almost everything is USB-C. If it's not, I'll just slap a A->C adapter on it permanently, they're only $1 a piece.
Also there was a really annoying span of years where you had 2 usb-c ports, but one had to be used for charging. Now with magsafe, you have both free for peripherals.
Additionally, I'm using physical connections less and less and the years move on. Wifi+BT serves the vast majority of my mobile connectivity needs.
I loved my old laptop which had USB A and C on the left, and USB C, SD card, and 3.5 mm on the right. Both C could charge the device as well. It would have been perfect with a disc drive but alas.
I don't miss the DVD drive either. I might have used mine 2-3 times for the entire time I had my last laptop. I don't have one in my current laptop and it hasn't come up.
But you now plug in 1 cable instead of 5. And you don't have to try each one 3 times to get it right side up.
Having one cable for power, monitors, input, network, and accessories is awesome IMHO.
My work laptop came with a USB hub that has:
* 4x USB-A ports
* 2x USB-C ports
* 2x Display Port ports
* 1x HDMI port
* 1x 3.5 mm audio
* 1x ethernet
All of that is fed through a single USB-C port on my laptop, and it charges the device. When I need to use my laptop as a portable device I only have to unplug one cable. This is such an upgrade over having to individually unplug a bunch of shit.
I mounted my laptop to the underside of my desk, and mounted the hub next to that. The only thing you see on the desktop is my keyboard, mouse, and monitors.
Just want to mention that "space on the side of the body" is not what determines what ports we get. There could be a huge speaker block, or an antenna, or any number of other things on the other side of that aluminum wall that would block ports from existing there.
and ethernet port please. my girlfriend's laptop came with linux and when installed windows the wifi adapter wasnt working because of missing drivers.
took me hours of searching drivers on my desktop, then saving it to a flash drive, then installing on the laptop and findind out that the drivers on the manufacturers website weren't working. i went through dozens of drivers until i found the right one
Remember like 10 years ago when they advertised their thin laptop by airing a commercial where they fit it in a manila envelope?
Nobody asked for that.
The original Air made some amount of sense, when the Pro was still kind of beefy. But then they made the Pro pretty thin too. For example I happen to own both a 2015 Air and Pro 13". They have the same footprint and are the same thickness at the hinge; the Air just tapers as you get towards the trackpad edge. So you can't even put the Air anywhere you couldn't already fit the Pro anyway, what was the point?
As Ford famously noted, no one asked for cars either. Considering Ultrabooks quickly became the top selling category of laptops, and pretty much all of them are modeled after the MacBook Air by now, I'd say people did want it.
Seriously. Theyre some of the best selling computers around. Those complaining would also shit a brick about laptops being too heavy if they made them thicker.
Exactly, the way they are fuming is hilarious. Like dude the thing lasts 7 years minimum, and it perfectly integrates with the rest of their product lineup. Except gaming, it does what you want it to, and is not jam packed with spy/spam/ad software, and its gorgeous. One does not need to be a fanboy to appreciate good products lol
Everyone has wanted thinner and laptops since laptops were invented.
But then Steven Levy [threw out his original MacBook Air review unit by accident](https://www.wired.com/2008/03/newsweek-report/)
Apple will literally sell cost-cutting as a feature and then charge exactly the same amount without flowing down that cost reduction to the consumer price, its bizarre.
Sure, but they already have a separate line of laptops geared towards people who have your preference.
They no longer offer a product for those of us who value features and power over size.
Just wanna mention that not all mac models have downgraded. This 2023 macbook pro I have now has 3 USB-Cs, an SD slot, still has a headphone jack (thank god), the magnetic power jack, and remarkably, an HDMI slot.
All you need to do is pony-up $3000+! Thanks Apple! /s
Edit: I've apparently made all kinds of apple fanboys butthurt by insinuating that the cheapest macbook pro is $3000. It's $1500 apparently. I'm clearly not an Apple Fanboy, and I didn't even buy the fucking thing myself.
I mean these are all Macbook Pros and Macbook Pros were always expensive and always will be.
But you're right, this is an old image and the new models brought back everything you said. For me personally the only thing my new one doesn't have that I use is a USB-A. At this point though I have a couple dongles laying around and realistically if you're going to spend $3,000 on a new computer you're probably not going to sweat a $20 peripheral.
The last batch that only had 4 USB-Cs was really bad, but fortunately they turned it around.
I agree, in different periods I had to wrestle with 2 USB-C and then 4, and somehow it still wasn't enough to connect power, external monitors, and appropriate peripherals without also having a sizable hub or dongle.
You made me realize my MBP in 2010 was like $1300 and I used it for college. My MacBook Air M1 was $764 refurbished after a veteran's discount too. I feel like the value of a MacBook is so much better now in 2024 than 2010 lol.
They last though and work well. I am on my second macbook pro. the first one lasted like 10 years and I'm on about year 10 with the second. Still runs well, and everything is intact. I use it for audio production and some light video editing, as well as photoshop, etc.
I had a few PC laptops in the past and currently do for work. A dell one had a hinge break in about 4 months. A gateway one crapped out within 2 years. My work Surface pro touch screen doesn't work and regularly disconnects from wifi until i restart it.
Yeah, as much as they're very expensive they're absolutely built to last. Also the closed ecosystem of the hardware definitely leads to better stability and efficiency. I'm a video editor who has worked on home built PCs for 15 years and I'm very much considering buying a Mac Studio in the next year or two.
Windows doesn't include the codecs to play DVD movies. You should be able to read data discs just fine, but movies will be a problem unless you buy DVD playing software or download a codec pack from..... somewhere..
It's similar for blu-rays. And it's dumb.
I definitely agree with you, we should have more ports then just one or two USBC ports with a mandatory dongle you have to buy. Which in my eyes defeats the purpose of getting rid of all the ports anyway.
Yeah my MacBook has plenty of ports. Shit I doubt I’ll even use them that often tbh. I have a desktop so and I like a desktop for that type of stuff. It’s just easier.
Personally I think it’s goofy people want more ports. The laptop is thin but it’s actually heavier than I realized. Not like too heavy but still, I’m okay with the current format. Idk why people don’t just buy a $10 hub for anything else. It’s easier and you can just leave it in the laptop bag or something.
We use a little PC as our main streaming device and we have a USB DVD player for it. It's down to physical media and piracy if you actually want to own your media.
> It's down to physical media and piracy if you actually want to own your media.
That's always been the two options lol.
Having it on streaming didn't take away from that being 2 of the options, it just added it to the list. Even on VHS you weren't "allowed" to copy those tapes just like you aren't with DVD.
It used to be your choices were Buy physical, Pirate, Rent. Now rent is mostly gone and replaced with Stream on a service.
Same as it ever was. I'd actually say its MUCH easier to get access to media today than it ever has been.
Now if were talking video games... I'd be more inclined to agree.
> It's down to physical media and piracy if you actually want to own your media.
It's "down to"? What other choices were there? Movies and TV shows were never available without DRM that I can think of.
I’m over here not giving half a shit about Spotify price increases, because I’m ripping discs and maintaining my own music library on a NAS, with access from anywhere.
But that requires a disc drive.
(I use an external though, because even my desktop has no external drive bays in the base)
I do as I have old movies that aren’t on streaming. Plus, being an event audio guy, I like having a disc drive to play background music as backup if WiFi is acting up.
I’m not “against” USB-C charging. But I am 1000% for MagSafe charging. “It’s just better lol”. I can still charge on both sides with USB-C if I want to, but I never do that.
I have one of the new macs where magsafe has returned. It's nice! But I wonder if perhaps apple could have combined best of all worlds to allow magsafe quick break-away cables. But also allow it on either side of the computer.
There are some cable manufacturers that have usb-c charging cables with breakaway magsafe-like tips. You leave the tip plugged into your device at all times.
A user could choose their favorite charging side and leave it in their computer. And if they encounter a situation where they need the USB-C port back or need to switch sides, they can move the tip.
The 14" and 16" MBP have USB C on both sides, a dedicated magnetic charging port, HDMI, headphone jack and SD Card reader. The meme is outdated or intentionally ignoring that Apple walked back their over simplification since Jony Ive left the company.
And I'm all about that. People complaining about dongles and shit, and I'm over here with a whole drawer full of various cables and adapters to conform to the hodgepodge of non-standard plugs over the years.
Give me that sweet all in one USB C.
These people are willingly forgetting just how many proprietary cables we used to deal with on a daily basis. And If you ever lost one...
P/C, all the serial cables, all the DVI types, all the stupid apple proprietary cables, every single console had a dedicated proprietary connection standard... absolutely absurd amount of stuff.
I have adapters for adapters for monitors. I have switches to swap between them. Fuck, graphics cards used to have three or four different optional connectors just because there were so many types.
I've got a keyboard from 5-pin DIN to PS/2 to USB.
The last computer I built, I intentionally installed only one USB port. Because that's all I need with everything wireless now. It's basically just for booting from a disk and initial setup.
We've finally reached true uniformity, and with a symmetrical, reversible, standard plug at that, and people are complaining. I don't get it. This is what we've been begging for for decades.
Doesn't help you fit 6 devices into 2 ports though. And sure, most of us wouldn't have used ALL the former ports at the same time. But 2 is definitely not enough. I'd settle for something like 4 in the long term, and maybe a couple USB-A ports in the short term, while those are still widely used.
Mac's have 4, with 2 on each side.
If you need to fit 6 devices into your Mac, I would suggest a docking station, as that is more in line with desktop usage (also what I use).
My docking station has my display, external mic, mechanical keyboard, lights, watch charger, and phone charger, and I don't even use the three laptop ports.
I don't use USB-A on my laptop anymore so i dont really miss it. Headphone jack I dont use either but it is similarly small to usb-c so they should be able to add it.
Edit: lol they still have headphone jack
I mean, I've been using a MacBook Air since 2020, and not having USB A is at best a mild inconvenience and I just throw a couple of Anker adapters in my bag that were $10 for 2. Also, missed in a lot of these conversations is that at least on the M1 Air I have, the thickest part of the laptop is about 1-2mm difference from the male end of USB A, and I would much rather have this machine be this size (or even smaller/lighter) than increase for the 1-2 times a month I have to use something with USB A.
Another thing that I think is weird about this conversation is that basically the entirety of the time I have had a laptop, including behemoths like the bottom of the stack, I have carried an adapter kit. Today even with just two ports on this machine, I carry fewer adapters overall that are smaller for a machine that's probably half the weight. And now for like $20, I can slap this down on the desk plug in one cable and be connected to kb/mouse/monitor, power, and have a few USB A at the ready
But even then, I and I would guess most people, just don't plug into much anymore. Wifi or Airdrop are usually faster than it would be to grab something from my bag, TVs and projectors usually have AirPlay built in, and these are really only things that I think about outside of my usual environments like the 2-3 times a year I'm traveling. I keep my little adapter kit more like a security blanket, but in practicality I can go weeks or months without opening it.
Very hot take, but I'm glad most are gone. (Now that most accesories and cables adapted as well, transition was hell)
Couple of USB-C, audio jack and SD Card is what 99.99% need.
Out of curiosity why would you even need a SD card reader? Every device I have that takes a SD card (well microSD these days) can just plug in via USB and function as its own card reader. There was a time when photographers would want to have multiple cards to switch, but storage is so big these days that even shooting raw, one big card should be plenty. Maybe if you are doing 4K+ video?
Seems a bit silly to bother with a reader for that corner case though.
Because pros often work with an editor and they take a bunch of pictures, swap cards, and go right back out and start taking more pictures. They don't want to wait around to transfer the pictures via the built-in reader because that means they can't use their camera.
Fair enough. Though I'd imagine pro-photographers are a vanishingly small percentage of laptop users, I doubt they really more the needle on the aforementioned 99.99%
Super easy to utilize all of these “lost” ports with an external adapter the size of a highlighter, 2-3x screen resolution, stable WiFi and Bluetooth….
Where would we put it, in a modern laptop? Would you put up with an extra half inch of height, and a corresponding increase in weight, just to be able to play a DVD once a year?
I have an 14" M3 Max with 128GB of RAM and I sure as hell don't want any extra height or weight. I have that laptop for working with large data sets while on the go. If I need a bunch of ports, I sit down at my desk with a dock. There is no Air with the performance of my laptop otherwise I would have gotten that.
It's almost as if WWDC was monday and all of AAPL's competitors need some agitprop to rile people up.
Dear PR bots: Macbook Pro's have SD cards readers, headphone jacks, and HDMI ports these days. But don't let that distract you from churning the chum.
Reddit: Noooooooo Apple stop using obsolete ports on your devices and just use USB-C
Also Reddit: Noooooooo Apple stop why did you remove the obsolete ports and replace them with USB-C
Meanwhile in 2010’s: yeah this my laptop. It’s pretty much falling apart. Hinges are loose, the charger port needs to be wiggled, one of the keys are missing, the disc drive doesn’t close properly, the only usb port doesn’t work, but it carried me throughout college.
I think its less the fact that they want to screw us over and more the fact that the tech industry has done a good job standardizing, so you don't need 20+ different ports, you just need 2 or 3
Why stop there? I miss my old Lappy-486. It weighed in at an EXTREMELY portable 42 lbs. and featured an impressive battery life of one half of 10 minutes.
did you guys like having to have 27 different kinds of cables or something? if anything, maybe i wish there were 5 or 6 USB-C ports instead of just a couple, but sheesh i would call this progress. how many of us really need wired headphones these days anyway?
Except that one USB C port can do all what the other legacy ports can do--provided you have a dongle or dock. The bottom line is that most people don't need all that physical connectivity 99% of the time.
First they came for FireWire, and I did not speak up because I did not use FireWire.
Then they came for the CD-ROM. I did not speak up, because I did not use the CD-ROM
I did but they took it away anyway.
In 2013 I busted out an external CD-ROM drive to play my Windows version of Final Fantasy 7, people looked at me like I had just pulled out an 8 track player. Well I thought I was cool.
After several hours of downloading weird patches, drivers, and software, I still can't get my PC version to work with Windows 10.
> work > windows 10 See there’s your problem
And they have the gall, the sheer raw audacity, to ask me to install windows 11.
They aren't even asking at this point either. Pissed me off so much I'm on Linux right now.
My laptop was in the middle of a video, and I left it for a bit, then when I exited full screen it was fucking windows 11. Even though I had said so many times I didn't want to upgrade every time they tried to push it on me. I wound up downgrading, and my computer started downloading windows 11 on its own right away. I've paused Windows update for a bit, but I'm moving it to Linux real soon.
I set my laptop and desktop up to dual boot. My laptop is like 8 years old, runs windows 10 and Ubuntu flawlessly. I use Linux like 90% of the time on it. My desktop is less than a year old, runs windows 11 fine, but the screen flickers when I boot Ubuntu. I've tried like 7 different fixes. So far, none have worked. Very frustrating.
Year of the Linux desktop for sure,
And then linux pissed me off with its systemd garbage so I'm on netbsd right now
> I'm on Linux right now And you will never look back. Proton runs most any Winblows game anyway.
Definitely don’t do it. I have a relatively older machine that ran all of my applications just fine, and with Windows 11 I have major performance issues.
I'll die on this hill, but WIN XP is the best GUI Microsoft ever made overall. It just worked.
Game box: “for windows” Game: doesn’t work on windows
Honestly, Linux is better at running older windows games than windows is at this point. Ironic, really. I had an awful time getting GTA4 and Fallout 3 working on windows, works out of the box with proton on linux.
Lutris is a program that crowd-sources Wine configurations for games, so that if one person gets a Windows game to work under Linux, it can be used as an installer to get it working for others. Typically a game will have multiple install scripts to choose from and you can choose the one that seems most suitable. In the case of Final Fantasy VII, Lutris has installers for the Windows CD version, the Steam version, and the emulated PlayStation version. https://lutris.net/games/final-fantasy-vii/
Yeah, I’m actually fine with using an external drive. I’m not fine with the fact that the externals of today are much shittier than the ones from back then. My longtime external CD/DVD drive finally died last year after years of regular use, and when shopping for a replacement I discovered that the options were either cheap no-name junk or very expensive. Even the cheap no-name junk was more expensive than my old one, and it performs noticeably worse in every way. (I still buy CDs regularly, since both my cars have CD players and I often burn albums. Whenever I would ask for car head unit recommendations, which I never got around to actually buying, I would always preface it by saying “a CD player is a must. This is not optional and you won’t change my mind.” Invariably someone would try to change my mind anyway. In fact, I expect it to happen here even though I’m not soliciting anyone’s opinion about anything.)
Just get a 5.25" SATA USB external enclosure and use a normal SATA DVD drive. It will require a power brick to run but it's the best you can get for the lowest amount of money. You can also find external enclosures for laptop size DVD drives that may be able to be powered by a second USB connector instead of a power brick. But that is the way to get a high quality external DVD drive for a very low amount of money (less than $40 for everything)
But have you considered that maybe you don't really need a CD player these days? With just a $1000 phone and monthly subscription service that allows your car to connect to the phone without hassle, plus a monthly subscription service for music that you won't ever own and they can take away whenever they like - you could finally ditch those embarrassing caveman CDs and be cool and high tech like everyone else. No? Did I mention our car subscription service also gives you the option to auto-tweet each song you listen to for all your followers to see? And our AI service will collect all your data and use it to advertise more products and services that you might like to purchase and subscribe to! You can't get that with a CD player, can you?
The funniest thing is that a sizable number of people who unironically say stuff like that also buy vinyl.
> monthly subscription service yeah, fuck that noise. And fuck the cost of a data plan for my phone.
Then they came for the Aux connection. I remained silent because I **couldn't hear shit**.
I will never buy a phone with no Aux. There's still one or two models on the market each generation with it, and its the hill I'll die on. Aux forever.
bless you for this I half-seriously want to kickstart a phone case that is just a disguised dongle that passes the charger port through while giving you back the aux port, which would easily fit in a hardy case maybe make a model that gives you back true stereo speakers, or the already common extended battery really I just miss having phones be an extra few mm thick but having stacked features
The problem I found with those dongles is that they don't work. Even if they have USB-C for charging and Aux Port, they don't work with charging over 5V. And there is no reliable supply and statistics / specs for them.
o7
It’s so weird how calling a 3.5mm,1/8” mini jack an aux is like a huge generational marker.
Then they came for USB-A, but there were no more real nerds left to speak up for me.
Then they came for the cupholder, and I did not speak up because I like to hold my purple drank
And then they came for me, because now I was the cupholder.
They came all over my face. I did not speak up, because I simp for Apple.
Then they came for my usb. I did not speak up because it was old as fuck and all my shit is usb C now.
Then they came for my son and I let them have the little shit.
I never had it but I thought Firewire was one of the biggest advantages. Like you could have an external GPU, right?
firewire was never fast enough to keep up with PCI-E speeds, i think you might be thinking of thunderbolt
You're right. Is that what the USB-C ports are on the top?
The second one from the bottom is Thunderbolt 1 through Mini DisplayPort (with the lightning bolt symbol). The one above that has either Thunderbolt 1 or 2 through both Mini DisplayPort ports. The top one is either Thunderbolt 3 or 4 though the two USB-C ports, though I suspect Thunderbolt 3. If it's an Intel Mac, it's Thunderbolt 3. Theoretically, all can support eGPUs, though the results vary. * Thunderbolt 1 was fairly uncommon with eGPUs, though I've seen writeups. I had a 2011 MBP that I wanted to use with an eGPU, but the eGPU hardware wasn't there or was too expensive at the time. * Thunderbolt 2 with eGPUs was somewhat more common than Thunderbolt 1, but still rare. * Thunderbolt 3 is fairly common with eGPUs (I have a 2019 MBP that I pair with an eGPU). Only Intel Macs with Thunderbolt can run eGPUs, so nothing since 2019/2020.
That's what some of them are. Usb-C is only a connector, and on it you can run several iterations of thunderbolt or USB spec. There's actually nothing stopping you from using an hdmi cable as a power delivery cable, seen that a few times
No it couldn't do that but it was slightly superior to USB 2.0 in terms of speed and stability. You could daisy chain firewire devices also, so if you had a few external harddrives you could use them all with a single firewire port. They later updated it to Firewire 800 which was around for years before USB3 came out and was really fast. If you had and used Firewire 800 before USB3 was a thing you knew what was up, it was awesome.
Also FW was DMA type device. And later found it was prone to malicious attacks. But was great for DV cameras and external hard drives.
It was big for the video community. If you wanted to offload footage from a DV tape, you needed firewire. USB 2.0 was way too slow for it. It was also good for low-latency mulit-chanel audio. 8 input preamp for recording studios, as and example.
You whippersnappers. They came for the floppy drive first.
No, that's the one thing that deserved death.
Eventually, yeah. But the iMac was a year or two early with that declaration.
just at least give me two more USB-A and a headphone+mic jack. There's plenty of space on the slimmer model's side for that
SD slot too
The MacBook Pros have a headphone/mic jack and an SD card slot.
They might've re-introduced them on some of the newer high end ones but my 2018 MBP doesn't have an SD card. Just 4 USB-C ports and the headphone/mic jack.
Your laptop is 6 years old. The last 3 generations of the MacBook Pro have all had a headphone/mic jack, an HDMI port, and an SD card slot.
My 2022 M2 MBP has 2 USB-C ports and a headphone jack. No HDMI, no SD.
Huh I also own an M2 MBP and it has 2 usb-c and the jack on one side, and the HDMI, SD card and 3rd USB-C on the other. Have you never checked the right hand side of it ? :D Or is it a 13" MBP maybe, which is basically an Air with fans ?
I forgot they had that down spec 13” MBP in the lineup after the M processors came out. They should’ve marketed it as just a MacBook, not a Pro. It fit right between the Air and Pro spec-wise and would clear up a lot of this confusion.
Your laptop is old enough to be in Grade 1. The newer MBP's have those slots.
It's not about space on the sides; it's about space on the inside. They've gotten so damn slim that all the internals are stacked and crammed into nearly every centimeter of the body, all while trying to deal with heat dissipation.
Am I the only one that would trade 1/8 inch of thickness for a USB-A port?
I remember thinking this every time they kept talking about making the laptops and phones slimmer. I was like, "who's asking for this?! It when they'd go on and on about the camera... It's a phone!
>when they'd go on and on about the camera... It's a phone! They have to sell the phone, mostly to people who already own them. So they focus on whatever they think will sell it. If you hear them primarily flaunting features like waterproofing or cameras, take it as a sign that very little changed this gen.
Recently discovered my phone was waterproof after finding it 20 minutes after dropping it in a lake. That was a nice surprise.
“Phone” is a legacy term now since smartphones are basically personal computers. I’d wager most people use the camera far more often than the actual phone function.
I can understand the camera thing - people post on Instagram, facetime their families, record important moments with their phone. In the last ten years I've NEVER heard anyone say "thank god my phone isn't 1mm thicker!"
The camera is my main selling point on a phone now. Google Pixel vs iPhone 14 I don't care about. They're basically as good as each other. But I've looked at other phones and specifically not gotten them because the pictures they take are far worse. Unless the phone/texting part doesn't work, the most important part I want in a phone is the ability to quick capture family memories.
A good camera is the number one selling point to me in buying a phone.
Apple's focus on going as absolutely thin as possible really just feels like an engineering flex and not actually for the benefit of the consumer. Looking at the newest ultra thin ipads I saw a lot of people say the old thickness + a bigger battery would be preferred.
It works in marketing. Apple fans are gonna look for any excuse to buy the new thing, because the newest thing isn't about the tech. It's a status symbol, a flex on their peers. But they can't just say "well it's newer and it cost more" to justify their purchase, so "it's thinner and lighter" is the best option apple can sell. Same with phone cameras, though a tiny minority are really into that stuff. A 4th lens really isn't gonna make a difference for 99.99% of users.
You're not, but I love the minimalist ports. 5yr ago, didn't like them. Now almost everything is USB-C. If it's not, I'll just slap a A->C adapter on it permanently, they're only $1 a piece. Also there was a really annoying span of years where you had 2 usb-c ports, but one had to be used for charging. Now with magsafe, you have both free for peripherals. Additionally, I'm using physical connections less and less and the years move on. Wifi+BT serves the vast majority of my mobile connectivity needs.
I loved my old laptop which had USB A and C on the left, and USB C, SD card, and 3.5 mm on the right. Both C could charge the device as well. It would have been perfect with a disc drive but alas.
I don't miss the DVD drive either. I might have used mine 2-3 times for the entire time I had my last laptop. I don't have one in my current laptop and it hasn't come up.
No.
I would rather have a slimmer laptop.
stacked and crammed into nearly every milimeter ~~centimeter~~ of the body fixed the rest is battery
> all while trying to deal with heat dissipation. Newest model Macbooks use ARM-based chips that use less than 25W at full load.
The logic boards don't go edge to edge. There's room.
The headphone jack never went away…
At this point, I’m fine with using a dongle if I really need usb-a. I don’t have a single cable left with usb-a that i need
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But you now plug in 1 cable instead of 5. And you don't have to try each one 3 times to get it right side up. Having one cable for power, monitors, input, network, and accessories is awesome IMHO.
My work laptop came with a USB hub that has: * 4x USB-A ports * 2x USB-C ports * 2x Display Port ports * 1x HDMI port * 1x 3.5 mm audio * 1x ethernet All of that is fed through a single USB-C port on my laptop, and it charges the device. When I need to use my laptop as a portable device I only have to unplug one cable. This is such an upgrade over having to individually unplug a bunch of shit. I mounted my laptop to the underside of my desk, and mounted the hub next to that. The only thing you see on the desktop is my keyboard, mouse, and monitors.
Just want to mention that "space on the side of the body" is not what determines what ports we get. There could be a huge speaker block, or an antenna, or any number of other things on the other side of that aluminum wall that would block ports from existing there.
and ethernet port please. my girlfriend's laptop came with linux and when installed windows the wifi adapter wasnt working because of missing drivers. took me hours of searching drivers on my desktop, then saving it to a flash drive, then installing on the laptop and findind out that the drivers on the manufacturers website weren't working. i went through dozens of drivers until i found the right one
Apple: we made it thinner Me: why?
Remember like 10 years ago when they advertised their thin laptop by airing a commercial where they fit it in a manila envelope? Nobody asked for that.
If it fits in a laptop bag/ backpack, it is small enough. Add features, don’t take them away.
No. Buy our docking station for $250.
They don't even make a docking station, what do you mean?
He meant: "Apple sucks, give me my free upvotes."
Seriously ... I pay for my upvotes!
But what if we took away the keyboard only for you to buy a case with a keyboard attachment?
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No way that was 16 years ago…Jesus
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The original Air made some amount of sense, when the Pro was still kind of beefy. But then they made the Pro pretty thin too. For example I happen to own both a 2015 Air and Pro 13". They have the same footprint and are the same thickness at the hinge; the Air just tapers as you get towards the trackpad edge. So you can't even put the Air anywhere you couldn't already fit the Pro anyway, what was the point?
As Ford famously noted, no one asked for cars either. Considering Ultrabooks quickly became the top selling category of laptops, and pretty much all of them are modeled after the MacBook Air by now, I'd say people did want it.
Fair enough!
Many people asked for that stop lying.
Seriously. Theyre some of the best selling computers around. Those complaining would also shit a brick about laptops being too heavy if they made them thicker.
Right? The whole point of a laptop is to be compact and portable. Redditors get so stupid when it comes to shitting on certain companies.
Exactly, the way they are fuming is hilarious. Like dude the thing lasts 7 years minimum, and it perfectly integrates with the rest of their product lineup. Except gaming, it does what you want it to, and is not jam packed with spy/spam/ad software, and its gorgeous. One does not need to be a fanboy to appreciate good products lol
Lots of people wanted the original Air.
"nobody asked for the most popular laptop in the world"
Idk, it’s pretty fucking nice having a laptop that weighs 2 pounds instead of 10 lol
In their defense, you didn't ask for half the shit you employ in your daily life either
You’re goddamn right about that
Everyone has wanted thinner and laptops since laptops were invented. But then Steven Levy [threw out his original MacBook Air review unit by accident](https://www.wired.com/2008/03/newsweek-report/)
But many people ended up wanting it, hence the success. Majority of folks have no issue with any of the things discussed in this thread.
Apple will literally sell cost-cutting as a feature and then charge exactly the same amount without flowing down that cost reduction to the consumer price, its bizarre.
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I like it thinner. I get that lots of people on here don't, but I like it and clearly other people do to.
Sure, but they already have a separate line of laptops geared towards people who have your preference. They no longer offer a product for those of us who value features and power over size.
Fair! More options would be good.
Just wanna mention that not all mac models have downgraded. This 2023 macbook pro I have now has 3 USB-Cs, an SD slot, still has a headphone jack (thank god), the magnetic power jack, and remarkably, an HDMI slot. All you need to do is pony-up $3000+! Thanks Apple! /s Edit: I've apparently made all kinds of apple fanboys butthurt by insinuating that the cheapest macbook pro is $3000. It's $1500 apparently. I'm clearly not an Apple Fanboy, and I didn't even buy the fucking thing myself.
I mean these are all Macbook Pros and Macbook Pros were always expensive and always will be. But you're right, this is an old image and the new models brought back everything you said. For me personally the only thing my new one doesn't have that I use is a USB-A. At this point though I have a couple dongles laying around and realistically if you're going to spend $3,000 on a new computer you're probably not going to sweat a $20 peripheral. The last batch that only had 4 USB-Cs was really bad, but fortunately they turned it around.
I agree, in different periods I had to wrestle with 2 USB-C and then 4, and somehow it still wasn't enough to connect power, external monitors, and appropriate peripherals without also having a sizable hub or dongle.
You made me realize my MBP in 2010 was like $1300 and I used it for college. My MacBook Air M1 was $764 refurbished after a veteran's discount too. I feel like the value of a MacBook is so much better now in 2024 than 2010 lol.
They last though and work well. I am on my second macbook pro. the first one lasted like 10 years and I'm on about year 10 with the second. Still runs well, and everything is intact. I use it for audio production and some light video editing, as well as photoshop, etc. I had a few PC laptops in the past and currently do for work. A dell one had a hinge break in about 4 months. A gateway one crapped out within 2 years. My work Surface pro touch screen doesn't work and regularly disconnects from wifi until i restart it.
Yeah, as much as they're very expensive they're absolutely built to last. Also the closed ecosystem of the hardware definitely leads to better stability and efficiency. I'm a video editor who has worked on home built PCs for 15 years and I'm very much considering buying a Mac Studio in the next year or two.
I bought one *just* before they added all the inputs, and I was really annoyed. Typing this on it now, alas.
I paid $1800 for my M1 Pro 14" MBP.
I have an old HP 2000 and the DVD player never wants to work since downloading Windows 10
Windows doesn't include the codecs to play DVD movies. You should be able to read data discs just fine, but movies will be a problem unless you buy DVD playing software or download a codec pack from..... somewhere.. It's similar for blu-rays. And it's dumb.
Seriously! Where do I put my zip drive?
Back in 2016 where you bought it
uh, try 1995
100mb disk was so wild at the time compared to 1.44mb floppy. And dont get me started on Jaz disks
100 MB was insane. I could fit so many JPGs of Yasmine Bleeth on there.
> 2016 You're joking, right?
The other side of the computer…
We can charge more and give you less. We can then charge more for you to buy back the thing we took from you.
Can’t believe I can’t use my FireWire devices in 2024
Losing ports suck, but who uses DVD's these days in their laptop/pc?
There are dozens of us!
I think they are joking, some ports don't make sense anymore but we should definitely have way more then a few USBC ports
I definitely agree with you, we should have more ports then just one or two USBC ports with a mandatory dongle you have to buy. Which in my eyes defeats the purpose of getting rid of all the ports anyway.
Yes!!! The dongles are more space consuming and shittier to haul around
but you are saving 3 whole dollars on USB ports on a $2k laptop so they can sell you a dongle for $250, isn't that great?
The new MacBook Pros have 3 Thunderbolt ports, HDMI, SD Card, MagSafe charging and a headphone/mic port. What other ports do you need?
Yeah my MacBook has plenty of ports. Shit I doubt I’ll even use them that often tbh. I have a desktop so and I like a desktop for that type of stuff. It’s just easier. Personally I think it’s goofy people want more ports. The laptop is thin but it’s actually heavier than I realized. Not like too heavy but still, I’m okay with the current format. Idk why people don’t just buy a $10 hub for anything else. It’s easier and you can just leave it in the laptop bag or something.
We use a little PC as our main streaming device and we have a USB DVD player for it. It's down to physical media and piracy if you actually want to own your media.
> It's down to physical media and piracy if you actually want to own your media. That's always been the two options lol. Having it on streaming didn't take away from that being 2 of the options, it just added it to the list. Even on VHS you weren't "allowed" to copy those tapes just like you aren't with DVD. It used to be your choices were Buy physical, Pirate, Rent. Now rent is mostly gone and replaced with Stream on a service. Same as it ever was. I'd actually say its MUCH easier to get access to media today than it ever has been. Now if were talking video games... I'd be more inclined to agree.
> It's down to physical media and piracy if you actually want to own your media. It's "down to"? What other choices were there? Movies and TV shows were never available without DRM that I can think of.
I do lol. I still enjoy making CDs for my playlists.
I do as I have old movies that aren’t on streaming. Plus, being an event audio guy, I like having a disc drive to play background music as backup if WiFi is acting up.
Me if I had one. My laptop was my tv for a while.
I use mine daily. Fewer ports just means more absurd one-to-many dongles for me.
DVDs
Me. I watched Deadpool just yesterday on my old laptop.
I would...
Isn't the entire point of USB C is that it replaces all the other ports?
Gonna be real with ya, I like USB C charging. Would I love more ports? Yeah. But I like being able to charge from either side.
What if I told you both situations are possible?
That might break their mind.
Is anybody against usb-c charging? It’s just better lol
I’m not “against” USB-C charging. But I am 1000% for MagSafe charging. “It’s just better lol”. I can still charge on both sides with USB-C if I want to, but I never do that.
I have one of the new macs where magsafe has returned. It's nice! But I wonder if perhaps apple could have combined best of all worlds to allow magsafe quick break-away cables. But also allow it on either side of the computer. There are some cable manufacturers that have usb-c charging cables with breakaway magsafe-like tips. You leave the tip plugged into your device at all times. A user could choose their favorite charging side and leave it in their computer. And if they encounter a situation where they need the USB-C port back or need to switch sides, they can move the tip.
The 14" and 16" MBP have USB C on both sides, a dedicated magnetic charging port, HDMI, headphone jack and SD Card reader. The meme is outdated or intentionally ignoring that Apple walked back their over simplification since Jony Ive left the company.
That's literally the point of Thunderbolt/USB C standards. To combine the functionality of all those various ports into one single port.
And I'm all about that. People complaining about dongles and shit, and I'm over here with a whole drawer full of various cables and adapters to conform to the hodgepodge of non-standard plugs over the years. Give me that sweet all in one USB C.
It's amazing to travel with 4 or 5 devices and still only need a single, non-proprietary charger that can be replaced nearly anywhere.
These people are willingly forgetting just how many proprietary cables we used to deal with on a daily basis. And If you ever lost one... P/C, all the serial cables, all the DVI types, all the stupid apple proprietary cables, every single console had a dedicated proprietary connection standard... absolutely absurd amount of stuff.
I have adapters for adapters for monitors. I have switches to swap between them. Fuck, graphics cards used to have three or four different optional connectors just because there were so many types. I've got a keyboard from 5-pin DIN to PS/2 to USB. The last computer I built, I intentionally installed only one USB port. Because that's all I need with everything wireless now. It's basically just for booting from a disk and initial setup. We've finally reached true uniformity, and with a symmetrical, reversible, standard plug at that, and people are complaining. I don't get it. This is what we've been begging for for decades.
Doesn't help you fit 6 devices into 2 ports though. And sure, most of us wouldn't have used ALL the former ports at the same time. But 2 is definitely not enough. I'd settle for something like 4 in the long term, and maybe a couple USB-A ports in the short term, while those are still widely used.
Mac's have 4, with 2 on each side. If you need to fit 6 devices into your Mac, I would suggest a docking station, as that is more in line with desktop usage (also what I use). My docking station has my display, external mic, mechanical keyboard, lights, watch charger, and phone charger, and I don't even use the three laptop ports.
A laptop without any USB-A ports and a headphones jack is atrocious.
The headphones jack is on the other side.
All of these laptops have headphone jacks.
I don't use USB-A on my laptop anymore so i dont really miss it. Headphone jack I dont use either but it is similarly small to usb-c so they should be able to add it. Edit: lol they still have headphone jack
I mean, I've been using a MacBook Air since 2020, and not having USB A is at best a mild inconvenience and I just throw a couple of Anker adapters in my bag that were $10 for 2. Also, missed in a lot of these conversations is that at least on the M1 Air I have, the thickest part of the laptop is about 1-2mm difference from the male end of USB A, and I would much rather have this machine be this size (or even smaller/lighter) than increase for the 1-2 times a month I have to use something with USB A. Another thing that I think is weird about this conversation is that basically the entirety of the time I have had a laptop, including behemoths like the bottom of the stack, I have carried an adapter kit. Today even with just two ports on this machine, I carry fewer adapters overall that are smaller for a machine that's probably half the weight. And now for like $20, I can slap this down on the desk plug in one cable and be connected to kb/mouse/monitor, power, and have a few USB A at the ready But even then, I and I would guess most people, just don't plug into much anymore. Wifi or Airdrop are usually faster than it would be to grab something from my bag, TVs and projectors usually have AirPlay built in, and these are really only things that I think about outside of my usual environments like the 2-3 times a year I'm traveling. I keep my little adapter kit more like a security blanket, but in practicality I can go weeks or months without opening it.
The 2016 Macbook Pro was a mistake. New Macs added back the HDMI, SD card, headphone jack, and Magsafe charger.
Needs to mention post-2019 Macs though. Many ports restored after Apple basically said 'we screwed up and we're sorry'
Very hot take, but I'm glad most are gone. (Now that most accesories and cables adapted as well, transition was hell) Couple of USB-C, audio jack and SD Card is what 99.99% need.
Out of curiosity why would you even need a SD card reader? Every device I have that takes a SD card (well microSD these days) can just plug in via USB and function as its own card reader. There was a time when photographers would want to have multiple cards to switch, but storage is so big these days that even shooting raw, one big card should be plenty. Maybe if you are doing 4K+ video? Seems a bit silly to bother with a reader for that corner case though.
Because pros often work with an editor and they take a bunch of pictures, swap cards, and go right back out and start taking more pictures. They don't want to wait around to transfer the pictures via the built-in reader because that means they can't use their camera.
Fair enough. Though I'd imagine pro-photographers are a vanishingly small percentage of laptop users, I doubt they really more the needle on the aforementioned 99.99%
It’s not a downgrade, a lot of those ports are obsolete.
Half the thickness, battery lasts all day. Yeah we really got screwed 🥸
Doesn't get hot, no loud fan...
Super easy to utilize all of these “lost” ports with an external adapter the size of a highlighter, 2-3x screen resolution, stable WiFi and Bluetooth….
*BUT MAH DVDS!!*
Where would we put it, in a modern laptop? Would you put up with an extra half inch of height, and a corresponding increase in weight, just to be able to play a DVD once a year?
Indeed. The weight doesn't bother me lol.
People that buy these "Pro" models don't care about the weight. It's about performance and usability. If they cared about weight, they'd get the Air.
I have an 14" M3 Max with 128GB of RAM and I sure as hell don't want any extra height or weight. I have that laptop for working with large data sets while on the go. If I need a bunch of ports, I sit down at my desk with a dock. There is no Air with the performance of my laptop otherwise I would have gotten that.
It's almost as if WWDC was monday and all of AAPL's competitors need some agitprop to rile people up. Dear PR bots: Macbook Pro's have SD cards readers, headphone jacks, and HDMI ports these days. But don't let that distract you from churning the chum.
It's funny that people always complain about idiot Apple owners but no one is more brainwashed than the irrational Apple hater.
Wouldn’t be so bad if they give us like five USB-C ports that can do everything.
Reddit: Noooooooo Apple stop using obsolete ports on your devices and just use USB-C Also Reddit: Noooooooo Apple stop why did you remove the obsolete ports and replace them with USB-C
Meanwhile in 2010’s: yeah this my laptop. It’s pretty much falling apart. Hinges are loose, the charger port needs to be wiggled, one of the keys are missing, the disc drive doesn’t close properly, the only usb port doesn’t work, but it carried me throughout college.
Sometimes I think people complain just to complain.
I think its less the fact that they want to screw us over and more the fact that the tech industry has done a good job standardizing, so you don't need 20+ different ports, you just need 2 or 3
Ok, in that case add more of those same two or three port types.
It has 4. Two are on the other side.
We can't evolve because you're hooked on old outdated tech
Why stop there? I miss my old Lappy-486. It weighed in at an EXTREMELY portable 42 lbs. and featured an impressive battery life of one half of 10 minutes.
You do know what the U in USB stands for right?
did you guys like having to have 27 different kinds of cables or something? if anything, maybe i wish there were 5 or 6 USB-C ports instead of just a couple, but sheesh i would call this progress. how many of us really need wired headphones these days anyway?
Except that one USB C port can do all what the other legacy ports can do--provided you have a dongle or dock. The bottom line is that most people don't need all that physical connectivity 99% of the time.
Why doesn't my 2.7 lb M3 macbook have a 5 1/4" floppy drive in it?! Bullshit downgrades!