This is my ~8 month old work laptop.
Is a Dell.
2 usb c not pictured.
You have options.
That's the way to do it. I just wish Framework had a better selection of modules available and had more module bays on their laptops.
And there's the soldered RAM and storage, and glued-in or screwed-in battery...
Fuck firewire. Glad it's dead. USB C is the best thing to happen to peripherals since the mouse.
USB C is the best thing to happen to peripherals since the mouse.
I would agree with you if there were a simple way to tell what the USB-C cable I have in my hand can be used for without knowing beforehand. Otherwise, for example, I don't know whether the USB-C cable will charge my device or not. There should have been a simple way to label them for usage that was baked into the standard. As it is, the concept is terrific, but the execution can be extremely frustrating.
Hey that's a fair point. Funny how often good ideas are kneecapped by crap executions.
I’m pretty sure the phrase “kneecapped by crap executions” is in the USB working groups’s charter. It’s like one of their core guiding principles.
I agree with USB-C, but there are still a million USB-A devices I need to use, and I can't be bothered to buy adapters for all of them. And a USB hub is annoying.
Plus, having 1-2 USB-C ports only is never gonna be enough. If they are serious about it, why not have 5?
I dunno - I’m pretty sure I’d choose the modern MacBook Pro’s ports over any of these other options.
We’re mindlessly bashing Apple here, we don’t need your sensible reasoning!
I'm no Apple fanboy (never owned a product of theirs and never will) but to be fair, those two USB-C ports can do everything the old, removed ports can do and more. The real crime here is not putting enough of them on the laptop.
Edit: The only port I'll lament the removal of is the headphone jack. USB-C headphones are rare, adapters get lost, and bluetooth headphones compress the audio and have input lag. Everything else can go, though, and won't be missed. (Okay fine ethernet can stay too.)
I dont know why this is controversial. I'm way more happy with 4x USB-C, than 5 unique ports, that will likely never be used on a regular basis, even when they were relevant
4 USBC would be cool. Most of these devices only have 2 or 3, minus 1 required for power delivery. If you have peripherals a hub is almost required.
My current phone lacks a headphone jack and I hate it. It would be okay if it was replaced with two usb c ports, but there's only one which means I either choose between headphones or charging, or I must use an adapter. Or wireless, but I don't want yet another fucking battery to charge.
I miss having a thousand different cables to keep track of /s
really, all we need is the companies to start packing those laptops with thunderbolt3 or equivalent USB-C (USB 4). I love the old ports, but they were unnecessary. I'd rather the industry finally takes on the open thunderbolt standard and we're all good to go. With 10 thunderbolt ports you have 10 HDMI, or 10 USB, or 10 Ethernet, or 10 headphone jacks, or 10 RJ45 or whatever you need + PCIe tunneling.
This post is actually so stupid, they didn't take shit from us, it's still right there.
Nobody uses a firewire cable anymore, USB-A/B is very outdated. On my work macbook with is a M1 Macbook Pro, I have a card reader, a usb-c and an hdmi port on one side, and a headphone jack, 2 usb-c ports and magsafe power ports.
Even if there wasn't, and it was just all usb-c, you can accomplish all of the same things ports. The old macbooks only had these ports on one side and the other had like one firewire or something.
USB-C can be used to deliver audio, video, ethernet connection, etc. You didn't lose any functionality. Worst case scenario you'd need a hub for the card readers or a usb to usb-c adapter, or ethernet to usb-c.
My work provided me with a usb hub that includes usb-a/b slots, hdmi, ethernet and power, which takes a single usb-c port. They're cheap and work just fine if you really need more than 4-5 ports.
Don't take it from me though!
2024 16" macbook pro: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/121554
I really don't think it's that stupid. Your particular machine has a lot of ports, yeah. But there are plenty of machines out there, like the 12-inch non-pro macbook, that have ONE USB-C PORT and absolutely no other ports. That's clearly limiting. Like, you can connect it to ethernet, if you buy an additional USB-C ethernet adapter, but if you want to be able to ethernet and have it connected to power at the same time, you need to buy a special power brick that combines the two functions, because they didn't include any other ports.
Plus, there are a bunch of things that still use USB-A. I've got a bunch of old thumb drives that work like that, especially for transferring video files to my TV, which only supports USB-A itself. Wireless dongles for mice and game controllers, which still offer a latency advantage over bluetooth, tend to be USB-A as well. I've also got a wearable pulse oximeter that requires a special cable to load data, and the other end of that cable is USB-A only. Again, you can get an adapter dongle, but that's never as convenient as just having the right port in the first place.
I went a bit out of my way to get a laptop with a decent collection of ports (and it's a bit of a less portable laptop as a result, maybe more like a desktop replacement), but even it has for some reason dropped the SD card reader, which I would have used a lot. I had to get a dongle for that. And I had to get one that used USB-C in particular, because my USB-A ports are usually both filled.
Basically the selection of ports used to be something that laptops used as a point of differentiation and pride in a crowded market; but Apple managed to invert this, making the prestige marker having a slimmer laptop with as few ports as possible, and that was a dumb change. I do the the pendulum is swinging back, as with your Pro macbook, but I don't think it's unreasonable to be frustrated with the way this element of the market went in such a consumer-hostile direction for a while.
This post is actually so stupid, they didn’t take shit from us, it’s still right there.
It's not. it's quite visibly not there.
USB-A/B is very outdated.
I take it you are offering to provide me with the adapters needed for all my USB-A devices, and my square-USB printers, for free? Because your mouth certainly runs well oiled.
USB-C can be used to deliver audio, video, ethernet connection, etc. You didn’t lose any functionality. Worst case scenario you’d need a hub for the card readers or a usb to usb-c adapter, or ethernet to usb-c.
Worst case scenario is if you have one sole USB-C connector and it breaks or is damaged. You'd lose all the eggs you had in one basket, whereas with separate adequate connectors you'd at least get to keep some workflow.
As someone who daily drives a laptop for work and does field work on server facilities, finding a modern replacement that has both a RJ45 port and square USB (USB-A?) ports available on both sides, has been a pain in the hassle.
And I'm not even crying over the loss of VGA any longer. That one I can live without.
To make our laptops look clean and minimalistic, they made us buy a bunch of dongles and adapters.
Screw it, I'm buying a rugged laptop with the thickness of a desktop PC next
Dude, those two little UBS-C ports do 50x what the ports on the bottom laptop could do
That's true and good, but I still want to be able to plug on an HDMI or Ethernet cable without a damn adapter.
As long as a computer has 4 usb-c ports, I think you’re covered for everything.
Yes we had more different ports back in the days, but most were never used.
Usb-c is way more practical. Still that implies that you have more than 2 Usb-c ports.
At work both my monitors and networking go through the same port. The monitor also acts as a usb hub.
You can buy an adapter and plug everything in one port.
I love it personally.
Laptops from the 2010s represented a peak in design and performance, but since then, it feels like we've seen consistent downsizing and downgrades. Take the latest Intel CPUs, for instance—it's as if the marketing pitch is, 'It may not be very powerful, but at least it’s energy-efficient.' It’s almost as though manufacturers are catering to a market they perceive as indifferent, and we, as consumers, continue to accept diminishing returns while paying increasingly higher prices. This trend reflects a broader issue in life today: settling for less while being charged more.
This picture captures the essence of that realization, and it is truly heart-wrenching.
They remove the extra ports because they take up space in the board.
That aside if you’re buying Mac you took it from yourself. No one made you buy it.
I’m glad I can plug in one port and have a dual display setup, all peripherals, speakers, ethernet, charging, etc connected at my desk in one go.
If I want to leave, unplug one thing and I’m good to go.
I'm on the other side wishing peripherals would catch up and all become USB-C already. I'm tired of USB-A.
The desktop equivalent is "What happened to all my PCIe expansion slots?!"
(Note: processor PCIe lane count has gone up, used to be like 16 from CPU, 4 from chipset, since a GPU didn't need an x1x6 in terms of bandwidth - see SLI/crossfire. These days, it's just that many lanes go to M.2, with each using up to 4 lanes - vs having 6 SATA driven off the chooser)
Fades is either drinking Apple flavor Kool-Aid or has been fully brainwashed by apple into thinking everything is okay because a company said "you don't care, you're stuck here with us."
It's really sad how people will bootlick for any company once they bought enough products.
Is this rage bait? Those are different macbooks. I think the bottom ones are pros. My current Pro M2 has HDMI and magsafe. My M1 (Air?) is like the top one, but is not in fact a pro and therefore does not provide as many ports.
USB-C does a lot of heavy lifting. Also, MagSafe™ is still there. A little surprised there is also a SD card slot. And a HDMI port. Not complaining about their inclusion, and I do use them regularly, but why did the dongle company give these to us?
The annoying thing is they're not even that much thinner. They've just reshaped the edge to make it look like there isn't room for real ports.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
