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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 08 2016, @03:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the one-more-thing-to-lose dept.

A tweet posted shortly after Apple's recent Macbook launch event underlined the absurdity: Apple now sells 17 different types of dongle.

In its ever-escalating war against connectivity ports, Apple's latest computers do away with the SD card port, a full-size USB port, and the HDMI port.

Instead, you'll need a dongle to convert those "legacy" connectors, as Apple put it on Friday, into the new, smaller USB-C port.

"We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition," the company said in a statement, without acknowledging that Apple's newest iPhone, released just last month, is one such "legacy" device - without a dongle (or a different cable, sold separately), you can't connect Apple's new smartphone to Apple's new laptop.

"We want to help them move to the latest technology and peripherals, as well as accelerate the growth of this new ecosystem."

That help will be a decent discount on the price of the dongles - it calls them adapters - until the end of this year.

How long before they release new dongles that must be individually charged?


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  • (Score: 1, Disagree) by VLM on Tuesday November 08 2016, @06:30PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 08 2016, @06:30PM (#424163)

    Thats one low res display...

    http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstation/pd [dell.com]

    The dell is a 1920x1080 which was cutting edge resolution in 2005 or so

    https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/ [apple.com]

    The macbook is 2560x1600

    I've had a 1600x1200 first CRT in the 00s and then one of the last available 4:3 around 7 years ago and for many long years only lower res screens have been available, or I could find a high res screen but its "CAD" branded so $3K and up etc. Admittedly we're talking about laptops here not desktops but still...

    I'm not entirely sure its possible to buy a windows laptop with higher than 1080 resolution. I'd just be running freebsd and emacs on it. Possibly the only thing I like about mac hardware is they're the only mass market seller of quality displays. Everyone else is trying to push somethingx720 as if its still the 90s.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @06:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @06:43PM (#424171)

    I guess you didn't bother to actually do any research. The M5510 has an option for a 3840x2160 touch screen.

    • (Score: 1) by Cornwallis on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:12PM

      by Cornwallis (359) on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:12PM (#424193)

      Exactly and it is gorgeous. Beats the Mac hands down.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:38PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:38PM (#424206)

      Close, I screwed up in posting my results because I should have specified I was comparing a $1500 dell to a $1500 mac, not a $1800+ dell to a $1500 mac which seems a bit unfair.

      I would agree with you in theory that if money is no object you can find some kind of gaming laptop or something that nearly approaches the specs of an apple laptop, for hundreds to thousands of dollars more of course.

      Its weird that in the olden times the specs/$ ratio strongly disfavored apple hardware, and now its the other way around. Other than that lovely ratio, I'm not a huge fan of Apple. My wife likes her mac mini and my kids like their ipads but I have no apple products personally.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:27PM

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:27PM (#424224)

        Maybe you also didn't notice the cheapest MBP has integrated graphics (that steals from system ram) and the CPU has only two cores at 2GHz. The worst dell on that page has four CPU cores at 2.3GHz with dedicated video (2GB DDR5 dedicated video ram). Nearly everything is better on the dell. Just noticed the ram itself. MBP has 8GB DDR3 at 1866 MHz while the dell has 8GB DDR4 at 2133 MHz.

        If the MBP is trying to use the latest and greatest tech maybe they should try that with real hardware instead of just the peripheral ports.

        --
        SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 09 2016, @01:31PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 09 2016, @01:31PM (#424586)

          Yeah I acknowledge you're probably correct but I don't care about those specs. I make stacks of cash using my fingers on keyboard and eyes on screen so I hate using cheap junk for either, nothing but top of the line please. You can translate those specs into time, like what you're talking about will kill CPU performance from 2017 levels to merely 2013 levels. I don't care because in 2013 I had a top of the line matte non-glossy high res high DPI monitor, genuine model M keyboard keyboard of the gods (aka no chance of carpal tunnel), and the CPU was fast enough in 2013 to make fat stacks of cash. I just can't downgrade my keyboard to atari400 levels or my display back to the days of CGA, not anymore. I wasn't CPU limited in 2013 and I won't be in 2017 either.

          Its like rating laptops based on thinness. Yes thats very nice that someone minmaxed to a ridiculous value. Sorry, can't make me care about something that don't matter.

          The CPU doesn't matter to me because I do all my work logged into bigger machines. Virtual images larger by far than anything you could imagine getting in laptop format. Even my dev and test servers are bigger because you can't realistically estimate performance without something similar to the PROD herd, similar test datasets for example.

          I guess in summary I'm paid to read the display and make code appear on it, so I care immensely about keyboard and display, but I'm not paid to make the RAM access 18% faster, in fact back when that was 75% slower it was not an impairment to my job.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Cornwallis on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:33PM

        by Cornwallis (359) on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:33PM (#424231)

        I was comparing a $2700 Mac to a $2700 Dell. I just priced them all the past few days and bought the Dell. I'm not a gamer at all but I use the thing for graphics and DTP along with some coding. The Dell allows upgrading and adding a 2nd HD - stuff I like. Plus there's the whole function & escape keys thing...

        Macbook Pro - $2799

        2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz
        16GB 2133MHz memory
        512GB PCIe-based SSD
        Radeon Pro 455 with 2GB memory
        2880-by-1800 native resolution with LED-backlit

        Dell Precision 5510 - $2728

        Intel® Xeon® Quad Core Processor Xeon E3-1505M v5 Quad Core 2.80GHz, 3.70GHz Turbo
        32GB Memory DDR4-2133MHz SDRAM
        512GB PCIe-based SSD
        Nvidia® Quadro® M1000M w/2GB GDDR5
        UHD IGZO(3840x2160) Touch Wide View LED-backlit

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 09 2016, @01:38PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 09 2016, @01:38PM (#424587)

          That's a nice system. Either of them. Looks like there's more parity that I expected at the extremely high end. My wife would likely enjoy that as a video editing workstation, the specs look real good for that.

          On one hand, as a fraction of my total salary and benefits package thats nothing so I could probably get it if I asked for it. On the other hand I'd mostly be using it to run chrome or FF, maybe a local emacs, SSH, and rdesktop, so its hard to justify the specs aside from the obvious display quality advantages, and one of them has a real keyboard...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @06:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @06:46PM (#424172)

    Hmm... I just bought a new HP Envy 15t with the 3k x 2k resolution display.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:09PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:09PM (#424190)

    Didn't we just have this discussion, and I pointed out my Asus with a 4K display?

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:30PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:30PM (#424203)

      I do believe you're right.

      The situation was identical, the manufacturers own website always claims a lower resolution than SN commenters report.

      Must be a "windows thing" to never update your website or something like that.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:11PM (#424192)

    You can get the 4k screens on windows laptops (3840X2160). However, be prepared to pay a decent amount for it. There are not any blackfriday specials with that screen res. At least 1080 is the bare min and the screens are actually easy to find now. For awhile they were a real PITA to get, 720 was the norm.

    I hate the way this site is laid out but http://www.xoticpc.com [xoticpc.com] it shows a good scope of what sorts of laptops are out there.

    http://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gaming-laptops-notebooks-gaming-laptops-ct-118-96-98.html#!/dir=asc&no_cache=true&order=price&size=13&p=clear&screentyperes=95 [xoticpc.com]

    Apple is one of the few companies that still actually makes its own laptops. The rest of the PC industry is just rebrand. Has been since the early 90s. Though it looks like they went overboard with minimalist and actually managed to piss off a lot of people. I can think of a few people who will NOT be happy with the ESC key missing (anyone who uses VI). I was considering getting one. But missing keys is a non starter for me. As is, I am pissed off about the computer I currently use missing scrllock. Well its there but not labeled and sometimes the fnkey combo does not work right.

    If you stick to HP, DELL, and Amazon finding the right high res screens is kind of a PITA. For that sort of res it seems to be easier to find in smaller screen sizes (11-15). But I would not go anything less than 17 with that sort of res. As an old man I can not see it anymore :( Also right now high res screens usually means getting a 'gaming' laptop. They are usually fairly beefy on the specs and will cost you. Dell has a few configs that have 2560x1600.

    My bitch with these things is finding a decent CPU with 8MB+ cache AND a high res screen AND a decent video chipset. I have been sticking with my 4 year old laptop for now. It works good. But starting to get the upgrade itch :) I probably will wait for the 4 core Kabey lakes and then seriously look into getting one. Start with 16gig with the option to upgrade to 32 and a pascal nvidia vid (1060/1070) chip. Not sure I will get a 3840 screen. Where it will cost me is the 2tb of SSD I will want. Something with an m.2 connector.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:49PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:49PM (#424211)

      I can think of a few people who will NOT be happy with the ESC key missing (anyone who uses VI).

      Of course the minecraft players outnumber vi users about 1000 to 1... This is actually kind of funny to think about. Dude gets a new mac, loads up minecraft for some fun, maybe feed the beast for some modded fun, plays for a few hours .... can't save or quit game with out esc, LOL.

      High res for me, means beautiful paper-like fonts on my emacs when I'm editing code. The res simply can't be too high, its not possible for text to look "too good".

      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 08 2016, @09:02PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday November 08 2016, @09:02PM (#424242)

        loads up minecraft for some fun, maybe feed the beast for some modded fun, plays for a few hours .... can't save or quit game with out esc, LOL.

        I think if you Alt+Tab out of the game without your inventory open, when you Alt+Tab back you'll be at the Esc menu? From there you can use the mouse to save and quit.

        :)

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 09 2016, @12:49PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 09 2016, @12:49PM (#424571)

          your inventory

          Which brings up the second problem that about 90% of the population gets out of an inventory/gui by hitting escape and maybe 10% of the population hits "e" again.

          Um I think I'll just stick with PC hardware here. At least for minecraft.

          I think you need ESC to play dwarf fortress too.

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:46PM (#424236)

      NO.
      It works ___WELL___.

      Bet you don't like young girls either, tech faggot.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @11:27PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @11:27PM (#424287)

        Works good for me.