I'm guessing this has to do with Johnny Ive's departure. He was notorious for design over function.

i'm guessing it has to do with the new M1 chips and their great power efficiency. back with the intel chips, an SD card slot or HDMI port consumed valuable internal real estate that could have been filled with battery instead, and filling it with battery was a better trade-off for most people.

with the new chips, they can comfortably sacrifice some battery size.

Disagree. 2016 15" MBP was 4.0 pounds. 2019 16" MBP was 4.3 pounds. New 16" MBP is 4.5 pounds. Apple simply decided in 2016 to shrink the size and weight by removing ports and other things, and then to increase the size and weight by bringing them back.

Personally I'm surprised they didn't decide to keep the same weight by shrinking the battery. Not that many people absolutely need a 21 hour battery life, though it is nice.

Pretty sure the batteries are bigger in the new ones vs the Intel ones, at least in capacity (6000mAh vs 5000mAh). I imagine they are the same physical size; if not bigger.

Apple isn't sacrificing any battery size on the 16" at least. 100-watt-hour is the standard max size for TSA.

Him and Steve were a great combo keeping each in check. Ive should have left a long time ago.

He is now designing at Ferrari: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ferrari-hires-former-apple-desi...

The new and improved Ferrari design rumored to include:

- Removal of the brake pedal since you should only need one input to control things

- The gas inlet port relocated to a more aesthetically pleasing location in the very center of the undercarriage

- Total width of the car down to a svelte and sexy 3.5 feet because the thinner it looks the better it is

There is no steering wheel, simply a flat panel where you swipe to steer.

There is 3D Touch where a long press on the steering screen lets you set cruise control

Steering wheels are available but sold separately.

You have to attach them via dongle, but the only input port is in the trunk.

> The gas inlet port relocated to a more aesthetically pleasing location in the very center of the undercarriage

Why is this a problem? You shouldn't be trying to drive it while it's fueling anyway

> - The gas inlet port relocated to a more aesthetically pleasing location in the very center of the undercarriage

It also requires the car to be on the front wheels, with the back awkwardly suspended by the fuel hose.

You joke but the new Ferrari has capacitive buttons everywhere. Even the rear view mirror adjustment buttons are capacitive. Whether this is Ive's doing, I don't know.

https://dealerimages.dealereprocess.com/image/upload/v157591...

You joke but the new Ferrari Roma has touch buttons on the steering wheel and the UX has been widely panned.

As far as I understand, he was absent from about 2015 on. There was an article, which I can't find right now, that discussed the mess this left the design team in. He basically retired to his home, and he would require the design team to come present to him at some local place (he wouldn't go to Apple). Then he'd give zero feedback. (This is from my recollection of the article.)

Pretty telling since that was sort of the heyday of Apple's devices having all sorts of conflicting designs.

Edit: I think this is the article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/jony-ive-is-departing-apple-but...

With a summary at: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/01/jony-ives-departu...

Furthermore, it's hard to imagine Ive and Ferrari gelling. Ive's style is about as diametrically opposed from Italian design as I can think of. I characterize his design as character-less, something Italian designers don't go for.

He may have been hired to sit in his home and not design anything - for the name only.

I get the feeling that it's part ego from Ive and part Cook actually not caring about design as Ive mentioned.

Johnny Ive wanted USB-C to be 'The One Port to Rule Them All'. That didn't work out for a number of reasons.

As someone that didn't like originally giving up my ports and thought Jony Ive was a bit too overzealous with thinness, I actually don't think he was wrong.

USB-C is pretty great, and the sooner we shift things over the better. When I bough a MBP with only USB-C ports I just bought a little dongle thing that slots in to my two ports on the side and gives me USB-A, HDMI, SD and MicroSD. I've used the thing around 20 times and its never been a burden because I carry it with me in my laptops case.

At this point I actually see adding the other ports back as a step backwards. HDMI is old and aggressively large in 2021. My 3 devices that use an SD card actually use a microSD card so I need to carry around an adapter anyway.

I have never understood this push for light, and thin.

Even twenty years ago I wanted just the best features in a laptop.

Give me a quality machine, at a reasonable price; and I would drag around a boat anchor.

I also wanted repairability, and room for future upgrades inside the laptop, but gave up on that one.

It almost has, it's just playing the long long game. People don't replace their monitors, tvs and projectors constantly but eventually they will all be bundled in with usb-c cables. Last time I was in an office, every cable had a usb-c dongle stuck to it permanently.

I totally loved USB-C being the only port(s) on the device and thoroughly miss it on my Thinkpads.

> Apple playing 5d chess.

I think you're giving them too much credit. This is Apple's way of admitting they were wrong.

5d chess is usually only ever said in a sarcastic context, so the implication is that Apple didn't plan this at all

Well at least they admitted it. If they doubled down with the butterfly keyboard and touchbar crap they would rapidly die to a better designed linux capable book. or just become one of the many commercial vendors.

More to the point, they now have someone else designing these laptops.

It would be interesting to read the former designers take on the new machines.

The worst part is that everybody copies them. Now, two USB-C ports, one of which is used for power, is standard.

I far prefer just plugging in one USB hub than plugging in like five different cables. I have a Thinkpad with loads of ports, but I just use two (one for a wireless mouse that's always plugged in).

I've got a reasonably cheap screen with USBC input. The screen is the hub.

It's great, as I only need to plug in one cable and my laptop is powered, connected to both my external monitors (displayport mst) and USB peripherals.

It's also a reason I asked not to have a Mac when I changed jobs. The Intel Macs and the older m1s don't support MST.

I wonder if the new m1s finally support it?

MST would work correctly _in Windows_ on my last-gen MBP, so I think it may be a limitation of macOS. Apple has only ever officially supported MST over Thunderbolt, never over USB or DisplayPort.

I think the usefulness of a bunch of different ports/port types is for when you're on the go. A hub/dock is of course way more convenient when you're at your main workspace. But if you're traveling or even just on your couch, having extra ports makes things much more convenient.

I like the hub/dock lifestyle as well but… USB-C/Thunderbolt is complex and there are many gotchas.

As more folks returned to the office, we get lots of issues with shitty network and other drivers on docks.

Issue with my rMBP is if i have too much on said single port; the laptop overheats and crashes. I end up with all 4 ports plugged in anyway to get decent performance.

It's good to have multiple options. I lug my laptop around and (rarely) need to connect multiple devices to it and sometimes I run out of ports. At home, I use a dock and the ports are useless, but that doesn't mean that I don't like the option to have more ports on the machine.

the great thing with this update is that you can still do that :)

I prefer USB-C with PD to all of the vendor specific ports except maybe MagSafe.

Same, but there still usually aren't enough ports in total. Looks like the new Macbook Pros have 2 ports on one side, 1 port on the other. At least keeping 2 on each side would've been much better.

I had the same thought, if you're charging on the right side you don't have a USB port left there.

That is the biggest problem with USB-C IMO. The ports can all have different capabilities and it's not always obvious what they can do.

For the most part though it seems they've settled on Thunderbolt, Charge, and bog standard ports. Are there any that do Thunderbolt + Charge?

It's a shame about the name because the Thunderbolt icon would be perfect to indicate a charge port. Instead we're stuck with a little plug icon that is usually isn't discernable.

That doesn't mean that people are copying them. Thunderbolt 3 adopted the USB-C format. Until USB-C, USB wasn't capable of delivering the power required for charging. It made logical sense to switch charging to USB-C. If anything, Apple copied USB-C.

I think the point was 2 ports is 1 port in practice. And so few ports used to be rare.

Sadly no. My new Thinkpad has only one USB-C port and it's used for power. So I cannot use the USB-C port while charging. And it has three USB-As and a freaking HDMI.

Maybe next year's refresh will have USB-A ports again!

Apple, according to the rumors, considered even bringing back USB-A but decided against it.

It would be nice if they could have squeezed one in again so you don't need to pull out a dongle/hub every time you want to connect a "legacy" USB device when traveling. But not really a realistic wish and wouldn't have wished they took anything out to accommodate it.

What legacy USB devices are you plugging in while traveling?

Traveling is when I'm least likely to do that. And regardless, I travel with this[1] anyway, so no problemo.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Purgo-Adapter-2018-2016-Delivery-Thun...

I'm not the one you asked, but heres a few things that I might need to use a USB-A port for when traveling:

* My yubikey to perform 2-factor auth

* The checkra1n jailbreak for my work iPhone (I do some iOS dev and occasionally need a jailbroken device. For whatever reason, it doesn't work with a USB-C-to-lightning cable, it has to use a USB-A-to-lightning cable + a dongle.)

* A USB flash drive for transferring a presentation or whatever. (I know these come in USB-C variants, but I don't have one.)

* Charging all the random things that charge from USB-A ports.

Gotcha. Well except for the weird checkra1n thing, everything else is easily migrated to USB-C. To help with that migration, I highly recommend this[1] cable (or one similar to it) as a technological Swiss Army Knife.

I made the transition at the beginning of the year to "USB-C everything I can" and it's very liberating. Ironically the only devices I have left that are not USB-C are my iPhone and AirPods (and my Kindle, but they just released a USB-C model which I will soon use to replace my current one).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/SDBAUX-USB-Compatible-Electronic-Tabl...

Yea, fair enough. I am generally migrating in that direction, but probably a bit slower than you.

Looks like a handy cable.

As I said not something I could reasonably expect or that Apple should reasonably have done. Just another set of changes to make/stuff to buy.

In practice I’ll probably mostly just deal with for a while by carrying a hub with me.

Of course I have a ton of other things I’ll home but that’s easier dealt with using various usb hubs.

Yubikey has a USB-C version with NFC now.

Would USB-A fit in a macbook? No way for the air right?

I mean, Apple gets to decide how thick the laptop is, so they could make it work if they wanted to. Didn't the original Macbook Air have a USB-A port?

Also, HDMI ports are approximately the same height as USB Type-A ports, so presumably it would fit in this design.

> Didn't the original Macbook Air have a USB-A port?

It did

I am happy if USB-A dies.

For me C can die. Having multiple specs on one plug and various cables that all behave differently is ridiculous.