Her biggest complaint is she sometimes forgets whether she has it in her bag or not because there is so little weight difference either way.
AFAIK there are not any USB modems in the new USB form factor. I haven't looked at what the adaptor chain looks like for "old USB and power at the same time" ... what does that look like ?
I think a single USB port on the new 12" is designed to be flawed. Apple knows these things last 5+ years so the second release of the 12" will have a second USB port on the other side and X% of folks will re-buy that to remove the original flaw. That's one way to combat hardware that lasts "too long".
> Remember, the keyboard abuts the side. The only areas where ports wouldn’t intersect with the keyboard are already taken: USB-C on the left, headphone jack on the right. Adding another USB-C port would require sacrificing the headphone jack. I doubt that will happen any time soon.
Apple's solution is to sell an adapter that lets you charge and use USB[2]. Not pretty, but fewer peripherals need wires these days. Heck, I use the MacBook as my primary dev machine and the only adapter I use is for my Yubikey.
1. http://geoff.greer.fm/2015/04/19/2015-macbook-review/
2. http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital-av...
The keyboard appears to abut both sides equally ... so while there may be an internal component in the current iteration that takes up internal space, it's not the external footprint of the keyboard that is determining port or no-port.
Perhaps I am missing something ? Genuinely curious...
What I am saying is, the laptop (and the keyboard) are symmetrical left to right ... so if they can squeeze the port in on the left side, they should be able to squeeze an identical port in on the right side.
> Adding another USB-C port would require sacrificing the headphone jack.
Have you seen a MacBook in person? As soon as I did, I found this quite apparent.
OWC has such a thing [1].
It's a bit pricey. If you want better than the built-in SATA II, but without such a high price, they also have a PCIe card that provides a SATA III interface for a 2.5" drive that you supply and attach to the card. This card is only $60 [2]. This can be used for the boot drive.
You can also get a nice boost for external drives with a $60 PCIi card that gives you 4 external USB 3.0 ports [3]. They also have similar cards, except that instead of 4 USB 3.0, they give you 2 USB 3.0 ports and 2 eSATA III ports.
I don't think any of the USB 3.0 cards from OWC are bootable. There are bootable USB 3.0 cards available from other places [4]. The key is to get one that uses the same USB 3.0 chipset that Apple uses in later Mac Pros that had USB 3.0. From what I've read, it appears to be the Fresco Logic FL1100.
My main work machine is a 2008 8-core Mac Pro, with 18 GB of RAM and an SSD. I wish it had more RAM, but other than that it should be fine for a few more years unless the hardware break.
My main home machine is a 2009 4-core Mac Pro, with 32 GB of RAM, and SSDs for both main drive and Time Machine, and an external 1 TB mSATA SSD in a cute little case [5] for a weekly offline backup. This machine should be fine for a few more years unless the hardware breaks, especially if I toss in one of those USB 3.0 cards mentioned above, and maybe that SATA III card for the boot drive.
I wish I had more RAM in the work machine, but I messed the window on that. That's one thing to watch out for when using a machine long term. The price for a given RAM technology tends to start off high and then drop and stay low for a while...and then it tends to rise again as production is cut. Due to this, it often makes sense not to max out a machine when it is still fairly new--just get what you reasonably need. Then add RAM when the price drops. Usually at some point the price is low enough that it is cheap to max it out.
With my work Mac Pro I waited too long. I upped the RAM in that and the home Mac Pro at the same time, and it turned out taking the home one from something like 12 GB to 32 GB cost considerably less than taking the work one from around 8 GB to 18 GB!
[1] https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsi...
[2] https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury-Accelsi...
[3] http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technologies/USB34PM...
[4] ...maybe. The web is not entirely consistent as to whether or not this is actually true. Also, check OS compatibility. Some of these are not compatible with Yosemite!
[5] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LRZPNHM?psc=1&redirect=t...
2008 Macbook air was in (hard) daily use and travel from end of 2008 to beginning of 2015. Would still be using it if not for 2 GB of RAM becoming insufficient for a browser with many open tabs.
I've owned a lot of computers of many different form factors and it's hard to think of anything that comes close in terms of physical design and durability. Maybe SGI workstations from the Octane2/Tezro years ... and current model supermicro rackmount servers.
I'm worried, however ... the new 12" macbook with a single port (which gets used up by the power adaptor) is a fatal flaw. I've wanted a retina MBA for years now and now that there is one, there is no way I can use it. I predict buying a max-spec 11" MBA[1] just before they go out of production and using that for many years.
[1] with two full-sized USB ports in addition to thunderbolt.
EDIT: also, I haven't checked recently, but I think there now exists a bootable PCIe SSD for 2009 Mac Pros ... which means if I max out my ram and switch to PCIe SSD I could very easily run this Mac Pro for another five years. I think there is a 4k capable video card available for it and the lack of fast SATA is obviated by the pcie SSD ... really the only thing missing would be USB3, but I can live without that...