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Problem: This is what happens when you pick Apple.
Where’s the magsafe ?
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.
Back in the ‘90’s, they had every port you could imagine, and some STILL felt the need to use a docking station. You really can’t please everyone. I actually like the streamlined setup more these days. Because I’d rather have ports I actually use and that are fairly standardised, as opposed to a bunch of others that are of no use.
I never used most of the ports on my 90’s laptops. Never used a parallel port, PS2, never used the PCMCIA card slot, etc.
All I really need is a full sized HDMI, a few USB-C’s and one or two A’s for convenience.
And look how much thinner. A large part of that is the need for physical ports which although they may loom small on the outside, also take up space inside for the boards that convert signals. Now those conversions happen in the dongles if needed.
The real problem is that USB didn’t implement a hub standard so most hubs have had to use old hub standards and just have a single USB-C connector and the rest USB-A, hdmi, etc. There haven’t been many purely USB-C to USB-C hubs to allow for connecting lots of USB-C devices to a single port and usually they end up losing features or splitting bandwidth instead of sharing the full bandwidth.
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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
To be fair, USB-C, especially with Thunderbolt, is much more universal. There are adapters for pretty much every “legacy” port out there so if you really need FireWire you can have it, but it’s clear why FireWire isn’t built into the laptop itself anymore.
The top MacBook Pro is also the 2016+ pre Apple Silicon chassis (that was also used with M chips, but sort of as a leftover), while the newer MacBook Pro chassis at least brought back HDMI and an SD card reader (and MagSafe as a dedicated charging port, although USB-C still works fine for that).
Considering modern “docking” solutions only need a single USB-C/Thunderbolt cable for everything, these additional ports only matter when on the go. HDMI comes in handy for presentations for example.
I’d love to see at least a single USB-A port on the MacBook Pro, but that’s likely never coming back. USB-C to A adapters exist though, so it’s not a huge deal. Ethernet can be handy as well, but most use cases for that are docked anyway.
I like the Framework concept the most, also “only” 4 ports (on the 13" at least, plus a built-in combo jack), but using adapter cards you can configure it to whatever you need at that point in time and the cards slide into the chassis instead of sticking out like dongles would. I usually go for one USB-C/Thunderbolt on either side (so charging works on either side), a single USB-A and video out in the form of DisplayPort or HDMI. Sometimes I swap the video out (that also works via USB-C obviously) for Ethernet, even though the Ethernet card sticks out. For a (retro) LAN party, I used 1 USB-C, USB-A (with a 4-port hub for wired peripherals), DisplayPort and Ethernet.
USB-C is awesome though. I carry one charger amd dongle for HDMI and ethernet. It serves my many devices including Steam Deck, phone and laptop.
I believe that the topmost (M1?) MacBook still has a headphone Jack on the other (right-hand) side.
PS: by no means am I an apple fanboy, but I inherited an old Retina MacBook Pro that I installed Linux on and now use as my daily driver. It still holds up extremely well considering it’s 11 years old. The only ports it’s really missing is an RJ45 and (nowadays) USB-C.
Honestly for some specific use cases where the computer being very light is needed, this is great, but the fact every mac has this now is a little crazy.
All the other brands went along
(My 2020 G14 has 3 A ports and ethernet, but still…)
That’s hot af
I’ll be in my bunk.
I will always upvote a relevant Firefly reference.
yea this is the way. is only they had more high end components
In case you’re not aware, that’s a Framework laptop.
One more reason for me to get one. Dammit.
Is it still owned by LTT? I don’t particularly like this LTT though.
Owned? The kid just bought stock.
Yup. If you limited your purchases to companies not partly owned by people you don’t like, you couldn’t buy from any public company and would have a very small selection from private companies.
Buy products that make sense, screw whoever else invests in it.
I didn’t knew. I thought it was co founded by him or something.
Nowhere near owned. LTT made a small investment.
Okay good.
I have a framework, and while this system is pretty cool, I don’t change the cards often and I only have 4 cards. I’d rather have some more built-in ports too.
That’s one of the cool things about the framework, though, just the fact that you can, because I swap my ports all the time. I use it to game on my big TV at home, but I almost never need an HDMI port on the go, so I pop it out and pop in another USB-C or something.
I don’t change them ever. But I have the exact set of ports I need now
Framework baby!!!
Framework users: “Yeah, but my USB-C ports are recessed!”
That also means we can still use the expansion cards for the Framework in any other device that also has a USB-C port. Need an SD card reader or a 2.5Gb LAN adapter? Not a problem, I’ll just grab one from my laptop.
Eh, I’d much rather have a USB-C dongle built-in to the laptop than in a separate bag that I’m definitely going to lose.
Oh my god
This is the way
What a waste of chassis space.
Yeah, I wish they had 2 dedicated USB-C ports (one on each side) and had the four swappable bays. The RJ-45 port also look really dumb, I think they could have done something a bit more clever there.
Love mine.
still only 4 ports thou
ok but where’s the pcmcia slot! /sees myself out
It’s SDCARD since like 1999. Sheesh, get current mate! 🤣
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.
I just wish the existing dongles had a bit more density to them. That’s a lot of space for a micro-SD slot, they totally could have fit a full SD card in there as well, and perhaps even a micro-USB or headphone jack.
I like being able to swap them, but each USB-C port can handle a lot more than a single-use dongle.
Right?! If you’re going through the all trouble of mass producing the modules, etc., make them worth it. As it is, it’s a bunch of expensive squares.
What module would you like to have.
I would like RS-232 and RS-485 modules and a full size SD card reader would be nice too. It’s probably something I would end up building myself if I get a Framework laptop.
Edit: It looks like they have an SD card module now, nice.
What would you do with RS-232 and RS-485?
Time travel
And what the hell, add RS-422 while you’re at it. And a parallel port! And the left side expansion port they used to have on the Amiga 500 and 1000!
And some ISDN BRI ports. And ATM and FDDI. And something I can do X.25 over. Oh, and Token Ring.
Hook up my US Robotics 56k modem and dial up to the internet, where I can chat with hot babes
After your training to become a cage fighter, I presume?
404
Hot babes not found
-485 is superior. Everyone knows it
UART consoles and model train control systems come to mind.
You’d be surprised to know how much of the world’s manufacturing infrastructure still uses it.
I have a 485 adapter in my bag for BACnet and Modbus communications.
I 3d printed a dongle that has a Logitech receiver in it. All their design files are online, so you can make your own pretty easily.
Oh, damn, that’s a game changing idea there.
Why are the modules so wide?
I guess they have to be the same, so they all have to be the maximum width of anything you might want to put in there.
Is a dongle that doesn’t dangle even really a dongle at all?
Doubtful.
no body shaming please
All the people saying buy a dongle are forgetting to mention that dongles stop working all the fucking time. It’s yet another potential point of failure that stops ALL work dead in its tracks if it happens.
On the other hand, ports on laptops fail too, so having several USB-C ports that can do basically everything is great for if one or two of them somehow break.
If the HDMI port on your laptop breaks, and the only other stuff you have is 3xUSB-A, ethernet, and an SD card slot, you’re shit out of luck if you want to output to a monitor or TV.
You’re not really expected to repeatedly remove the HDMI port itself from the laptop
They still break
Out of the two, you’re more likely to have the dongle break first. Those cables have a limited life of bending before snapping or the internal wiring coming undone or a failed connection or just cheap hardware. My first dongle I bought about 2 years ago is getting to that point with me carrying it in my backpack.
I still have my IBM ThinkPad running Windows 95 that has all of its ports still working to this day. The screen hinges are the only thing that has broken on it in all this time. Same for many other laptops I’ve had over the years. Even a gaming laptop I had had its plastic housing break along the sides of the ports due to a fall, but no ports were ever damaged or became inoperable in its life.
That’s what I mean when I say that Apple is the worst even ever happened to technology.
