You're provably wrong : if it was a minority, they wouldn't have reversed. See headphone jack on iPhone.

"Provably wrong"? On the contrary, if it wasn't a small minority, Apple wouldn't have continued to break sales records with each iteration they release.

I posit that "hate" is too strong a word. I would describe the changes as merely unpopular.

Power users forget that function keys and even command shortcuts are pretty much useless for normal users.

>About 90 per cent of computer users don't use CTRL-F to search for a word - as they don't know such a keyboard shortcut exists, a Google survey found.

The results stunned Google's Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness, Dan Russell.

I think we just all assume that we all know it, but no one actually does."

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/only-one-in-10-know-what-c...

To be fair, the Macbook Pro is aimed squarely at power users. The majority of normal users are better off with the Air.

>Nah. It was hated by a small but vocal minority of users, of which HN has a lot of.

I have not met a pro user that wasn't annoyed by not being able to plug in HDMI at some point without a dongle...

It was even worse. Those macbook owners would cause the others in the meeting to be annoyed when they couldn’t plug in and had to send their slides to someone else with a hdmi port and keep repeating the words “next slide”. It was viral annoyance.

My employer issues a dongle with a type A, type C, and HDMI port on it with every MacBook. That only helps if you actually have the dongle with you. One popular option was to just keep the dongle attached at all times. Personally, I found an adhesive pouch and attached that to the back of the monitor, and carried the dongle around that way.

I wonder when I'll be able to get one of these new Macs at work ...

At my office they just gave up and replaced the HDMI connectors with USB-C connectors in every meeting room. Now it's the people with the older windows laptops who need a dongle.

Nice to meet you. I could not care less. If I need to plug something with a cable, it may have a dongle as well.

I personally think if it was just a vocal minority, Apple would not have relented. They play the long game, so they probably saw a decrease in their user base somewhere, or at least a trend there.

>small

Do you have a source for that? Because if that was the case, it would seem silly for them to undo.

I think he meant "hate" is too strong of a word. My impression is it just didn't serve much of a purpose for most people. I almost never use the function keys for anything but volume control anyway, and probably wouldn't have used the touch bar for anything but that either. It was just a waste. I probably wouldn't have hated it if I got one, maybe even found some nice uses for it, but I still think it was the right choice to get rid of it.