COSPILOT

iPhone X now for a couple of months, and I use the wired headset or my noise cancelling headphones every single day. The extra dongle has been a complete non issue for me. If the extra dongle has made your life "much more complicated" you should steer clear of Microsoft Surface tablets. They have a mind of their own and sometimes simply don't cooperate, usually at a critical time such as a presentation. While I've since dumped the Surface Pro 2 for a real laptop (never been a Mac fan), I also use both my old iPad or my new iPad Pro for presentations. No complaints from me, and I will never buy another Surface device again, ever. Forgot my Surface charger at my PHX office one time, good luck finding one of those just laying around at your local store... Apple items are easy to find, pretty much anywhere.

The dongle issue is the least of my concerns, and while I was tempted to buy an extra "just in case", I'm pretty organized and have yet to lose it.

Uncle Nonny

They said the same about RJ11. They said the same about RJ45. Same was said about serial ports. SCSI ports. VGA connectors. Removable batteries. Disc drives. Zip drives. Do you miss any of that? We all seem to be getting along just fine without these once standard thing. iPhones were slammed for not having a stylus or a keypad. Evolution happens. I listened to my Bluetooth headphones the duration of a DFW-HKG flight last month....and through immigration and the train into town and the walk to my hotel. Not buying the argument that battery life is an issue.

Qwkynuf

• RJ11 was eclipsed as a standard as broadband replaced dial-up for remote connectivity. Early laptops that had RJ11 were typically replaced with machines which had both RJ11 and RJ45 before the phone jack went by the wayside
• I miss having a built-in RJ45 jack on my MacBook Pro almost every day. Gigabit lan speeds by just plugging a wire in is better than sub-gig WiFi speeds, and is also better than plugging into ethernet via a thunderbolt or USB-C dongle
• Serial ports (9-pin D Sub) were replaced by USB (universal SERIAL bus). Again, many computers shipped with both during the overlap period.
• SCSI needed to die. You can have that one. Though I will say that I never owned a SCSI capable computer which had the port built in, rather than on an expansion card.
• I still miss VGA connectors as well. I regularly make presentations at customer sites where their projector is several years old and only has VGA - though HDMI has been picking up over the last 2 years or so. Again, though - VGA requires a dongle on my MBP.
• Removable batteries are the biggest thing I missed when switching from Dell laptops to the MBP. Battery life is very good on the MAC (even 4 years old), but being able to carry a charged spare and be at 100% instantly is better (for me) than being dead in the water until I can find an outlet.
• Until I get to be king of the world and can force software vendors to do my bidding, I have to carry an external CD/DVD drive around also. I have a vendor who uses the original disc as a license for installing updates. I have server application vendors who have no download options for initial install. I sometimes work with customers whose data is so sensitive that the software I support is on "air gap" computers, with the USB ports disabled. In all of those cases, not having a disc drive makes my life more difficult, with no measurable benefit
• Finally, ZIP drives never really gained traction as a standard, and most people only had to experience the "click of death" one time in order to stop trusting their data to them.

My current MBP is getting a little long in the tooth, but I am babying it as long as I can because I don't want to be forced to carry a USB-C port replicator or a big pile of dongles just because Apple decided that they could make the new ones .000000001" thinner by removing the USB-A ports. If the point in making it thinner is to reduce the mass that one has to carry around, then moving that mass from the main compartment to the accessory pouch is a negative benefit.

WilcoRoger

I have a hand me down MBP mid-2012 from my kid - I installed a new battery, SSD drive and more memory (8GB), all for less than $200. Now it's nearly on par with the current offerings in terms of daily usability, running the latest OSX (!) except for the most CPU intensive tasks, which I rarely/never do. It has all the slots/connections I need

LondonElite

Back then you could do all that free-styling . These days, forget it!

Uncle Nonny

Of course RJ11 was eclipsed. My obvious point is many items that were once standard on computers are now obsolete. However, there is never any consensus among consumers that should be replaced. Plenty of people at the time thought the sky was falling because an RJ11 wasn't built into their laptop.

I have an RJ45 dongle. I rarely use it. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I used it. My current MBP is less than the dimensions of an RJ45. Considering how many times I have to take my laptop out of my backpack and how many steps I put on when traveling I place a high value on not having a laptop that is twice as thick and heavier solely so I can have a connector that I rarely use.

And?

I've worked in the AV industry for a very long time. I've serviced breakout rooms at large conferences. What do you see? You see display ports, you see VGA, you see DVI, and you see HDMI. You can have 4 laptops come through the door and they will each have a different external display option. VGA is BY FAR the most inferior and obsolete out of these connectors. It's the only analog choice as well. Not sure why anyone would want to pine for the return of VGA.

I had a spare battery on a MB about ten years ago. I needed it as my charge only lasted about two hours. I can honestly say, however, that after 25+ years of having a laptop I've never been "dead in the water". My laptop is not an extension of me. If it's out of juice then it's time to take a break. If I desperately need to finish a task and have no juice then the issue is with me not being able to make best usage of my 8 hours of battery life available to me.

I have an external disc drive. It's a beautifully designed item by Jonny Ive. It sits in my home office. Used on the rare occasion I want to upload an old CD into my iTunes library. I've had it for 3 years.

You bring up some points that are proprietary to your needs. I feel some of your other points are just devil's advocacy. The people that make the machines obviously agree with me. Progress is painful for some.

Qwkynuf

I'm not really sure what the snark is about.... You named several technologies which you claimed were removed in the name of "progress". You inferred that no one really needed them; that only Luddites were hanging on to this "old" technology. But clearly every use case is different. I pointed out several cases where the accelerated depreciation of these technologies made my day-to-day work life more difficult. There are things about Apple laptops which make them far superior to any of the PC brand that I am familiar with, but that doesn't mean that I have to appreciate them deciding for me what technology I *don't* need.

Progress may be painful for some, but it tastes remarkably like Kool-Aid to others.

tmiw

The laptops that my work issues are generally HDMI only and we've had occasional problems getting them to work with projectors. VGA has tended to be more reliable (at the expense of maximum resolution and display quality, of course).

The technology that's been the most unreliable, however, is using TCP/IP to beam the display to the TVs in our conference rooms. There were so many issues, in fact, that they had to discontinue that and go back to providing HDMI cables.

COSPILOT

WilcoRoger

I just can't see how the 3,5mm audio jack is "obsolete" - especially that the "solution" Apple offers is a 3,5mm audio jack dongle... and in the process making it impossible to charge and listen to the device.

Uncle Nonny

It isn't obsolete. There are, however, easier and less complicated ways to achieve the same results. Waiting for something to become obsolete before moving it from your production line is bad business and backwards thinking.

tmiw

My main problem with it was the massive amounts of lag (on the order of multiple seconds in some cases). It was a bit better with wired Ethernet but still not great.

There was also the issue with outside vendors being unable to use it due to the display side device being on the employee only network. I don't know how much of a factor that played though.

WilcoRoger

The only thing Apple achieved with killing the 3,5mm jack was to put the DAC chip from the phone to the dongle. Obviously it makes good business sense, as you can sell a $1 gadget for $9 whereas earlier the chip was part of the package. I don't see how that's "easier and less complicated"

brp1264

Easier and less complicated ways? And what is that?

I can connect small durable in-ear headphones w/ microphone to my laptop, phone, tablet, almost any airline entertainment system.

If it gets lost or broken, I can pick up a new one for cheap almost anywhere in the world to hold me over.

If everything out there started having a USB-C port, and the audio (digital vs. analog) was standardized better, then this wouldn't be an issue.

u600213

I would find a dongle more acceptable on an iPad because they can be rotated so the dongle isn't interfering with resting the bottom of the iPad on my stomach :-) Also, I rarely need to have the iPad charging while using it and have some Bluetooth noise cancelling headphones.

Not having an headphone jack on my phone would be more annoying because I use it with wired earbuds frequently.