Thursday, March 12

Geek

Google > Apple

So two days ago, Apple announced the Macbook Nothing, which depending on your perspective is either a Retina Macbook Air with all the ports removed, or a 12" iPad Pro with full-size keyboard option.

It has one USB Type-C port.  This is the great new standard that will be showing up everywhere in short order.  It's about the same size as the USB 2 micro-B port found on most phones, but it supports 20 times the bandwidth and 10 times the power.

/images/Macbook.jpg?size=720x&q=95
That's the good news....

And that's it.  One USB-C port.  No charging port; you charge over USB.  No SD card slot; you connect to storage over USB.  No video port; you connect to monitors over USB.

Which is a teensy problem if you want to do more than one thing.  Though Apple will happily sell you a $79 dongle that gives you an outdated video connection (no DisplayPort for you!) and another USB port.

Also, if that USB-C port breaks - and while we haven't seen USB-C in the wild before and don't know exactly how well it holds up, micro USB ports have a bad habit of working loose or failing entirely - you have a $1299 paperweight.

Google announced their new model Chromebook Pixel today.  It has a higher resolution screen and a faster processor than the Macbook, optionally more memory, and it comes with two USB-C ports.  One on either side, either of which can be used as a charging port or a video port...  Or a USB port.

It also has two regular USB 3.0 ports.  And an SD card slot.

/images/ChrombookPixel.jpg?size=720x&q=95
Image borrowed from Ars Technica because those fuckheads at Google won't even let me view the product page without a US passport.

I don't know for sure what Apple were thinking when they released an expensive notebook with a single port for I/O, video, and charging, but I believe they were thinking "iPad" rather than "getting stuff done".

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:54 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 328 words, total size 2 kb.

1 "We know exactly what you need in a computer," reminds me of NeXT. I wonder what happened to those guys...

Posted by: Ken in NH at Friday, March 13 2015 12:15 AM (0Y1hO)

2 I suspect what they were thinking was "Thin, thin, thin... the USB 3 port is fat and won't fit!"

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, March 13 2015 12:36 AM (+rSRq)

3 Does that Macbook have an optical drive?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, March 13 2015 04:48 AM (+rSRq)

4 Nope.  I don't know if any Apple computers still have an optical drive.  My new notebook doesn't have one either.

I don't mind the new USB-C port - on the contrary, it's one of the best things to show up in computing in years.  The problem is that the new Macbook has a grand total of one port, which has to do everything, leaving you to buy bulky and expensive adapters for everything you want to do.

Even having two of those ports like the Chromebook would have been a major improvement.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 13 2015 09:46 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, March 14 2015 05:31 AM (+rSRq)

6

Historically Apple has done a lot of that: You don't need more than one button on a mouse. You don't really need a floppy-disk drive. B/W is good enough for you; who needs color? You don't need USB. Motorola processors are better than Intel.

(And a lot of times they later change their minds.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, March 14 2015 11:45 AM (+rSRq)

7 Motorola processors were better than Intel...  In 1983.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, March 14 2015 01:34 PM (2yngH)

8 Just got 18 spams by "viviennejewelry " and since I require a login, that must be a bad account.

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, March 18 2015 04:53 PM (TJ7ih)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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