"Fun fact": Steve Jobs is said to have admired Sony [0] and things like the MacBook Air is presumably inspired by the Sony VAIO X505 [1].

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+admiration+for+so... [1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/6/5385716/sony-vaio-iconic-pc...

I bought a Sony Vaio 15 Flip ($1200)[1] new vs. a MBP, Surface Pro 3 or Wacom Cintiq (needs a computer) for drawing. Artists are still looking to buy them at $1400 to $1800. It has a large drawings surface vs Surface Pro 3, a dedicated GPU, lots of ports, and a great screen. It runs my CAD programs (Rhino, MOI and AutoCAD Fusion) sufficiently for an i5-based notebook. It has some other great screen positions for just browsing. It a very sleek and well-designed unit. I can see how Jobs would admire them or be inspired by their innovative designs. Just look at the PSP vs. the Nintendo Gameboy physical design. I did consider an Apple Modbook [2], but it was too blocky, expensive, and going to a third-party for a modded Macbook didn't feel right, although they are Apple-endorsed and sponsored now.

[1] http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425731,00.asp [2] http://www.modbook.com/

Sony actually manufactured the early Powerbooks under contract.

That's correct. The Powerbook 100.

I worked at Geek Squad in the mid 2000s and we had one regular customer who had one of those X505. Its thinness and its lightness were unbelievable back then.

I still miss the z series... But the z series had ethernet ports. This surface thing is useless to me.

You can order a new Z here: http://us.vaio.com/

As a pleasant surprise, it still has a built-in RJ45.

At $3000 I expect a dedicated graphics option...

You'll probably be best served by the (ugliest ever) "surface dock." See the same page.

I use a surface and I have an ethernet to USB adapter, works pretty well.

But then you loose the USB port. But the main problem of USB adapters is that they don't like being unplugged and plugged back which happens quite frequently with a laptop. With a real port connectivity is pretty much instantaneous. I used USB adapters for a while on a MacBook pro and came to the conclusion that I will never ever buy a laptop without ethernet ports.

What I wonder is why they don't come up with a mini-ethernet port format? Ethernet ports aren't exactly high tech.

Anker makes a USB 3 hub with gigabit ethernet. I've got one, it's pretty great.

http://www.ianker.com/product/A7514041

That is my docking station at work! Fully linux compatible, built properly too, albeit Apple aesthetic rather than the black plastic that is more me.

I didn't realize such a thing was being made! thanks for the tip

> What I wonder is why they don't come up with a mini-ethernet port format?

I suspect that is part of the problem. The plug is just so big - though IMO Thunderbolt and USB adapters work OK. Realise not everyone thinks this way, though.

> But the main problem of USB adapters is that they don't like being unplugged and plugged back which happens quite frequently

? That's basically what they're designed for.

Maybe I am unlucky but I tried different adapters. The Apple ethernet adapter is not even plug and play on windows and requires a reboot. But even USB adapters take a while for drivers to load then I had all sort of problems: the connection regularly being recognised as 100Mbit when it should be gigabit or the USB adapter not being recognised after a couple of unplugging without a reboot.

The Apple Thunderbolt Ethernet Adapter is basically a PCIe devices over Thunderbolt. Unless your OS has hot plug PCIe, it's going to require a reboot.

At least Windows and Linux have supported hot plug PCIe for ages.

Although hardware PCIe slot register must support the optional presence detect bits. Also slot capabilities register must report optional hotplug support and surprise removal support.

I guess thunderbolt has those features supported by default.

IIRC, the apple thunderbolt ethernet adapter violates thunderbolt spec and relies on the adapter specific driver for hot-plug when it's supposed to be a generic interface... this is a problem in other OSes running on mac hardware even.

How about a cable that’s USB-C on one side, has the ethernet controller built into the plug (similar to the way a Thunderbolt chip is crammed into the plug), and ethernet on the other end?

Remember these? http://www.recycledgoods.com/media/extendware/ewimageopt/med...

Never quite sure why the small connector didn't become the standard for laptops.

The 15-pin I/O connector for ethernet was part of the PCMCIA CardBus standard, which is why dongles could be shared between cards. After PCMCIA picked up speed, a "non-practicing entity" pulled a patent out of their portfolio for a "programmable connector". Because the PCMCIA ethernet card itself plugged into the computer and presented a different connector to the outside world, the NPE was able to sue and/or settle with something like 90% of the companies making PCMCIA ethernet cards & modems.

3COM had a cool connector on some of their cards called XJACK. It was a little tray you slid out of the card. It had a hole that your RJ-45 plug slid into and some pins. It would certainly make for thinner devices today, but the connectors broke pretty easily and you ended up with an ethernet cable sticking out at a weird angle.

Before everybody standardized on RJ-45, there was a standard called AUI which used a 15-pin D connector. Your network card would have an AUI connector and you'd buy an adapter for whatever kind of network you needed to attach to. Apple had their AAUI which was much, much smaller (about the size of 2 mini Display Ports?). But I think licensing kept that from taking off as a standard.

Well, that's actually an alternative. Instead of having a full standard RJ45 port, having a smaller laptop-friendly proprietary socket with a cheap plastic adapter to RJ45. The adapter would just be a piece of plastic and therefore this would avoid all the driver related problems and would not require manufacturers to pick up the phone to agree on a standard with their peers. That would work for me.

I think that was before my time. All it would take is a different plastic socket format. The top 10 laptop manufacturers could agree on a standard in a 10 minutes conference call.

Real products don't work like fads in Javascript.

> What I wonder is why they don't come up with a mini-ethernet port format? Ethernet ports aren't exactly high tech.

Regular ethernet is so ubiqutious that you'd end up needing adaptors anyway. At that stage, you may as well use a USB-whatever to Ethernet adaptor.

Not if it's a standard. Think micro-usb ports. You can find micro-usb cables everywhere. In this case you would find RJ-45 to mini-RJ-45 cables.

You can do Ethernet over many connectors. The end points will still be RJ45, which are very ubiquitous. That issue will not be resolved any time soon.

It has, in the docking station; which makes sense to me.