Re:Design flaw behind MacBook Pro’s “stage light” effect
by jonny_eh on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @05:43PM
(#18973400)
Why not have both USB-A and C? Plenty of non-Apple laptops do it that way. A USB port is far smaller that a whole floppy drive.
Re:Design flaw behind MacBook Pro’s “stage light” effect
by npunt on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @07:46PM
(#18974553)
The rip off the band-aid shift isn't just about making the leap to a better universal connector, it's also about kickstarting the peripheral market. Manufacturers of peripherals heavily optimize on the short term, so if USB-A is still around, they'll keep their R&D low and just pump out more of that. Moving to USB-C in one fell swoop creates instant demand and forces them to move.
Apple is one of the few companies that can act as a market maker, bringing tons of consumers with money over to a new technology. The strategy was sound, and worked in the past (see iMac's USB in 1997, iPod connector, and lightning connector), though I think USB-C proved a bit too complex for many peripheral manufacturers to put out good products right away. These days though there's a ton of great USB-C peripherals out there.
One of the most "egregious" omissions was either a floppy or an Iomega Zip drive. But a few short years later USB thumb drives became ubiquitous.
USB-C is the future, we're already seeing a plethora of displays launching with them, and they obviate the need for another power supply. Yes, right at this moment it's a bit of a pain (not massively though, I have a dock at work and plug a single cable in and my dual monitors, keyboard and mouse just start working - with my 2015 MBP I had lots of ports, but had to plug and unplug 3 cables each time I wanted to move my laptop).
I'd argue that maybe they went a couple of years too early, but they saw what the next big thing would be and jumped.