You could always orient the ethernet port so it is sticking out the top of the body (or even the bottom, with a cutout to allow the wire to exist under the body) rather than the side. Of course this is far from an elegant solution, but it's not 100% accurate to say the MBP is "too thin" for an ethernet port.

edit: I did not expect such response to this comment, I think it's quite funny :)

This seems like a silly point to pick on. Why is the MBP so thin? Because of design considerations and the desires of the target market. The design considerations are a serious component of the Apple brand, perhaps the single most distinguishing component. To compromise on the design to work-around the thinness which is in service to the design would just be pointless.

It may not be accurate and complete and without flaw, but it is a reasonable reduction of the reality of Apple hardware to an understandable and useful form. The difference in thickness is profound, and would have been compromised itself, or have forced a compromise elsewhere in the design of the base hardware platform, without the removal of the Ethernet port due to physical space constraints that arose from the level of space reduction that was possible with this revision of hardware.

I think that's a pretty interesting point. The Thunderbolt adapter is a design compromise and a crappy one, but it is a general-purpose one (i.e. there is a consistent peripheral platform) and one that will not impact the vast majority of users. Copper Ethernet is not at the top of Apple laptop users' desire, as one might note conversely design is. There's a sort of elegance in systematizing the edge cases and making the base case streamlined, minimal, satisfactory, beautiful and shockingly-thin.

And make it look like a FrankenBook Pro? :-/

> Of course this is far from an elegant solution

That's... quite the understatement

> but it's not 100% accurate to say the MBP is "too thin" for an ethernet port.

It's 99% accurate, which I think is more than close enough for our purposes.

All that just so life is easier for the 1% of people who still use Ethernet ports ?

I mean even most large corporations have internal WiFi networks.

This

For 802.11g you're justified in using an ethernet cable (compared to 100M)

For 802.11n it's a different game, really

And really, 100M Ethernet is already faster than most (spinning) HDs.

Unless you're constantly transfering huge ammounts of data through the network, WiFi is ok for you

100M ethernet is about as fast as disks were over 12 years ago. Currently slowest mechanical laptop drives do about 500-600 Mbps, fastest SSDs about 5 Gbps.

802.11g is about 24 Mbps half-duplex in ideal conditions, so for example if you're sending 12 Mbps, you can receive at most 12 Mbps. 802.11n ups this to 30-100 Mbps range half-duplex, in rare cases a bit more.

100M ethernet is generally full-duplex, so you can send and receive very near to 100 Mbps speeds. And so is 1000M ethernet. And unlike wireless, they actually operate very close to rated speeds.

I'd say 802.11n can replace 100M ethernet in some use cases, like casual internet usage. Wifi has still a long way to go before it can truly replace cables.

I recall PCMCIA cards that had slide-out ethernet ports. They definitely would have worked with the Air, though they would probably feel "cheap" compared to the rest of the build quality. Dongles always feel cheap somehow, though.

> I recall PCMCIA cards that had slide-out ethernet ports.

PCMCIA requires quite a bit of internal space though, an ExpressCard/34 uses roughtly the same internal volume as a sodimm. That's a lot compared to a TB port.

> Dongles always feel cheap somehow, though.

Yeah, but an expresscard would look and feel even cheaper.