[tnones]

But the old MBP had two thunderbolts and an HDMI connector, on top of the two USB. You could plug in 3 displays, charge it and still have room for a mouse and a keyboard. Now it's always a trade-off, so on top of DVI/HDMI/DP dongles, you'll have to carry a USB hub.

[colanderman]

Where could you possibly go where (a) there are three monitors, a mouse, and keyboard waiting for you, and (b) none of those devices have a built-in USB hub, and you did not think to keep a USB hub there?

Either you're mobile and need the USB ports, or stationary and there's a hub there. What use case am I missing?

[connor4312]

> Where could you possibly go where (a) there are three monitors, a mouse, and keyboard waiting for you, and (b) none of those devices have a built-in USB hub

That describes my workplace. (But with two rather than three monitors.) Standard monitors that operate over HDMI/DVI/etc don't have USB hubs without a separate USB connection, most keyboards are the same way.

> Either you're mobile and need the USB ports, or stationary and there's a hub there. What use case am I missing?

Sure, you can work around the lack of IO by buying a hub, but the point was that previously you would not have needed yet another dongle.

[colanderman]

So buy the USB-C hub/dock/whatever and leave it at work. No need to carry it around with you. This isn't really any different than the case of a traditional laptop with a dock, except instead of some weird giant proprietary connector, you have a small standardized connector.

[merb]

> USB-C hub/dock/whatever

There aren't that many good one's. What I would need would be one which handle's at least, 4-6 USB, two HDMI, Ethernet and charging would be a bonus.

[lmm]

Can I tempt you over to the Microsoft side? The Surface Dock has exactly those connections - I leave everything connected to the dock as my "workstation", and carry my Surface Book travelling when need be.

[douche]

If you're being tempted over to the Microsoft side, you might as well just buy a Dell or HP or Thinkpad or whatever, and get Mac-level specs at half the price, and usually a good collection of today's standard ports.

[xenadu02]

Who wants to run Windows?

[edwinjm]

Apple's idea is that your monitor will be the hub. See the new LG Ultrafine Display. Just connect your Mac with one cable and you're ready to work.

[monkmartinez]

Can we say that, at this time, Apple's idea here is a bit dumb/half-baked/incongruent/silly/frustrating and it will materially hurt them in the longer term?

[kartickv]

I wouldn't buy a $1300 monitor that worked only with a Thunderbolt 3 device. It must work with USB-C and DisplayPort, even if only at UHD resolution than 5K. If I buy a Windows laptop tomorrow, and it doesn't have Thunderbolt 3, I can't throw away my monitor and buy a new one. Or if I want to plug my new monitor into any existing Mac model, which doesn't have Thunderbolt 3.

I would be happy if an adapter exists for this job. The monitor needn't natively support DisplayPort.

[exhilaration]

That would be pretty cool actually, so only a single connection for everything? Like a docking station! Why isn't Apple making one?

[Bud]

Because Apple does not NEED to make every single necessary object in the universe. LG is making them, they are 5k, they have wide color gamut and 3x USB-C out, and they are in the Apple Store. That's good enough. This enables Apple to focus on what they are good at.

[henrikschroder]

They already did, it's called the Thunderbolt Display.

[phonon]

http://plugable.com/products/ud-ultcdl/

came up in a quick search. Looks good to me!

[merb]

not available in my country tough.

[bwilliams18]

Look at Thunderbolt 3 docks instead, theres a better selection of options...and I'm sure in the next few weeks there will be even more.

[wlesieutre]

> That describes my workplace. (But with two rather than three monitors.) Standard monitors that operate over HDMI/DVI/etc don't have USB hubs without a separate USB connection, most keyboards are the same way.

But your run of the mill Dell office monitors do have a USB hub, most often 2 ports on the back panel for keyboard/mouse and 2 ports on the side for flash drives and other transient accessories.

colanderman's point is that you should get a USB cable and use that hub instead of individually plugging everything into the laptop. Three video connections and one hub connection gets you all the connectivity you need at a desk. If you're mobile, you'll certainly need less.

[vacri]

My run-of-the-mill Dell monitors at work don't have USB ports.

[colanderman]

I have a Dell U2410, which, while not exactly run-of-the-mill (it is wide-gamut), isn't that fancy yet does have all the ports wlesieutre mentioned. (Granted, they require a separate USB connection, but it is an older monitor.)

At work I have an Apple monitor that has multiple USB ports and an Ethernet port on the back of it. I think it has speakers too. All that and the display run across the mini-DP connection. Again, not exactly run-of-the-mill, but well within the price range of Apple's target market, and given Apple's push in that direction, it's liable to be commonplace in a couple years anyway.

[odbol_]

I'm a VJ. You absolutely need that many ports when doing visuals at a concert or venue. That was the whole reason I bought a MBP. Now it looks like PC might be a better choice; Apple has abandoned the professional "workhorse" market and is leaning towards the Facebook/email machine market.

[bwilliams18]

You can now get four DisplayPort outputs from two ports: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01F81EIBC/ref=ox_sc_act_t...

And they can all be 4k.

[odbol_]

First of all, that's Windows only. Says so right there in the listing.

Second of all, it's yet another dongle I have to carry around and potentially lose. There's often not a whole lot of room on stage, so space is precious.

Thirdly, those dongles that convert video are usually slow garbage. If I am performing as a VJ, I need the video to be frame-synced and perfectly synced to the music without lag. I can do that just fine on my current MBP (run 3 monitors at once from the ports built-in to the computer. That's specifically why I bought it.) And now I can do that just fine from some Asus laptop since Apple doesn't seem to want my business anymore.

[r00fus]

Product doesn't indicate support for MBP.

[blhack]

My office? I would suspect many, many offices of people who post here?

[exhilaration]

Yup. My MBP at work: one thunderbolt port for an external monitor, the other for ethernet. One USB port for my nice keyboard, the other free. And the magsafe for charging. So I'm currently using 4 of 5 connections, and the new MBP will only have 3?

[bwilliams18]

You'll be able to use a single thunderbolt 3 port to get power, monitor, ethernet, and USB accessories, sit down, plug one cable in and you're off to the races.

[jsjohnst]

So now you can plug a single cable in and get power, display, and accessories. Where's the problem?

[Rebelgecko]

I'm guessing people don't upgrade their TVs, monitors, and projectors as often as they upgrade their laptops. I can't even find a USB-C adapter that would work with my current display (which was made by Apple)

[jsjohnst]

Here you go: Kanex Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt Adapter https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EJ4XL08/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_B5tf...

[ctrl-j]

> (a) there are three monitors, a mouse, and keyboard waiting for you, and (b) none of those devices have a built-in USB hub.

I don't know of a monitor that doesn't require a USB A-B cable to provide USB, so you're looking at three $70 adapters, plus three USB A-B cables. Sure maybe all that lives at the office. It's still less convenient.

I still can't get over the fact that you can't plug your new iPhone 7 into your new Macbook Pro without a dongle.

[lee_s]

That's kinda the point, the new USB-C monitors have built-in USB hubs and charging. So you only need one cable to plug in all of your monitors and USB devices. It's going to take a little while for everyone to get there, but for now there are ~$80 hubs that will break out all of these ports.

> I still can't get over the fact that you can't plug your new iPhone 7 into your new Macbook Pro without a dongle.

You've never been able to though? There is a USB-C to Lightning cable.

[stouset]

I think he means, it doesn't even come in the box. Buy a MacBook Pro, buy an iPhone, and you can't even use one to charge the other without buying a separate cable or an adapter.

[bichiliad]

> You've never been able to though? There is a USB-C to Lightning cable.

I think it was more a complaint about the fact that you'd have to buy an additional adapter to be able to connect the two.

[FireBeyond]

So your argument is now not "you don't need to buy all manner of dongles" and instead "You just need to buy one of these new USB-C monitors"?

[lee_s]

No, I just think the one cable solution with a USB-C monitor is really neat. I won't be getting one for personal use because they're too expensive right now.

I'll be picking up one of the $60-100 hubs/docks that have a single USB-C connector and HDMI/Ethernet/USB-A to connect all of my devices. When the monitors are cheaper in 4 years I'll buy one of those.

My point was that we're actually moving to a really good solution where you can plug in a single, non-proprietary cable and get all the throughput and peripheral connectors you could ever need. It's not even particularly expensive compared to a dock 5-10 years ago.

[colanderman]

My Apple monitor at work provides USB and Ethernet over the same cable (mini-DP) it uses for video. Every day I go in I just connect the mini-DP and MagSafe (both of which come from the monitor) and magically all my peripherals are connected.

It seems like in the new USB-C world, I'd only have to connect one cable. Bonus points if it's sturdier than mini-DP and less flaky than MagSafe. Sure beats those weird-ass proprietary docks that used to be common ~10 years ago.

[AlexandrB]

> It seems like in the new USB-C world, I'd only have to connect one cable.

That's something I've never seen properly explained. Can you charge at 100W at the same time as using Thunderbolt 3 connectivity? It strikes me as unlikely since the power delivery and the signaling would have to share the same pins/wires.

Edit: I stand corrected after seeing that new LG monitor. Now I'm just curious how it works. Even PoE can't deliver 100w and Thunderbolt 3 uses much higher speeds while having to inject power.

[jsjohnst]

There's a couple reasons for PoE not supporting over 36W but USB-C supporting PD at up to 100W.

1) PoE only uses two pairs of wires for transmitting current, USB-C PD uses four pairs.

2) Ethernet cables are rated for much longer lengths, show me a 100m USB cable.

3) Ethernet is typically run in walls and more often than not is grouped into bundles, so heat dissipation is an issue.

4) PoE delivers power at ~50v, USB-C PD does 20v.

Also, piggybacking on the other commenter's reply, PoE voltage is carried on the same wires that are transmitting data (for 1000Base-T anyway)

[jessaustin]

There's no physical reason that power and signal can't share lines. Any particular device or protocol might fail to implement that, but PLC and even POTS show that it's possible and not even new.

[WildUtah]

The principle of power and signal separation has been used to send multiple signals over a wire since the duplex telegraph in 1872. It's one of the few things in this world older than the headphone jack standard that we've been using since 1878.

[xenadu02]

The USB-C connector dedicates 4 pairs of pins (8 total) to power transmission (VBUS and GND). It only does that to give enough contact area and enough conductor circumference in the cable to support 100w transmission.

It also has two pairs of unshielded twisted pair for non-superspeed (USB 2.0) though only one pair is used in the cable apparently; which USB 2 channel you get depends on which way the cable is plugged in I guess.

It has a pair for sideband use. A pair for configuration and control.

The data primarily travels over the four high-speed differential signal pairs; two TX pairs and two RX pairs.

All USB 3 cables must have a chip in them. It communicates over the C&C channel to select how the high-speed pairs are used. When a display is connected, one TX/RX set are used for USB 3 and the other for DisplayPort.

USB 3 also supports "alternate" modes, so the C&C can negotiate that all high-speed pairs are used for Thunderbolt which is just the PCI-Express bus. Intel added the ability to interleave DisplayPort packets with the PCI-Express data. I assume that displays with USB 3 built-in are simply connecting a PCI-E USB hub to the Thunderbolt interface since in that mode there is no actual USB signal in the cable. USB 2 can use the dedicated signal pair for that and not interfere with DisplayPort or Thunderbolt traffic.

Thunderbolt is a nicer standard in some ways - interleaving means if you aren't using a 16bpp 5K display at max refresh rate you have more bandwidth available for other devices. With USB 3 you get half the available bandwidth if you connect a display. Thunderbolt is also old-school in the sense that it projects the CPU's bus to external peripherals... something all early computers used to do. Everything old is new again!

It is obvious USB-3 was very forward-looking. The C&C channel means some future version of the standard can drop USB-2 support and start connecting the unconnected pair if both ends negotiate for it. Now you have an extra TX/RX channel to give you +50% bandwidth. You can also imagine taking over the side channel pins. If you assume the next-gen standard can double USB-3's 10Gbps and add in double the data pairs that would be 40Gbps which matches Thunderbolt 3. Apply the same math to Thunderbolt and that's 160Gbps.

[e40]

Work and home, traveling between them.

[kgwgk]

"and you did not think to keep a USB hub there?"

[petemill]

The new 5k monitor display[1] not only connects with a USB-C but it also provides charging power (85W) to the Macbook at the same time.

Plus, it has an additional 3 USB-C ports, meaning you plug one cable in to your Macbook Pro, and you are left with a total of 6 USB-C slots free, which you don't need because power is provided over the same cable anyway...

[1] http://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62LL/A/lg-ultrafine-5k-...

[robotresearcher]

I wish it had an Ethernet port and a couple of legacy USB ports on the back to avoid the mess and cost of dongles.

The old Apple Lightning Display was a nice everything-dock.

[bartvk]

Here in Europe we have the Philips Brilliance 258B6QUEB http://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/258B6QUEB_00/brilliance-lcd-mon...

It has exactly what you want: hook it up with USB-C, and on the back it has ethernet, three USB-A, audio in and audio out. Fantastic thing. Resolution is 2560x1440. http://images.philips.com/is/image/PhilipsConsumer/258B6QUEB...

[bwilliams18]

There are a ton of good T-Bolt 3 dock options out there, none provide power at the moment, but I'm sure someone will have one on the market shortly.

[djrogers]

Yeah, but your thunderbolt or USB-c monitor can now provide power, wired Ethernet, etc all over one of the 4 ports.

[cma]

Or a Bluetooth mouse/keyboard (which may need their own chargers; hopefully will be chargable via usb-c directly in the future as things transition).

[kartickv]

You're right that if you've maxed out the old MBP's ports, the new one supports fewer connections at once.

But I still think it's a net win because:

- We need to buy and manage fewer cables.

- We'll no longer have the problem of having a free port, but not the right kind.

- When we buy a device, we don't have to decide which ports it should plug into. Like, when I buy a monitor, I don't have to decide whether it should have DisplayPort, HDMI, both or either.

[glogla]

And having to use a special Apple dongle to connect normal mouse or flash disk is downright embarassing.

[Roritharr]

Nothing special about it, its standardized. Actually Apple just released a Notebook that has NO proprietary ports anymore. As a Surface User I find this astonishing and great.

On top of this I find it weird that people say they have to carry 20 Apple branded dongles. Depending on your use-case there is already type-c usb hubs with HDMI Ports, or Ethernet Ports, or both.[1]

The thing is, I love the USB-C TB3 Ports and I love Apple's decision to drag the industry kicking and screaming into a reality where an Office can have a Monitor that is a Thunderbolt 3 Hub, connected with Ethernet and peripherals, that work with both Windows and Mac. This will revolutionize flex-desk setups for big organizations and Co-Workingspaces everywhere. Imo it's worth to have this transition period where people drag a dongle with them to achieve this.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Resolution-Aluminum-MacBook-ChromeBoo...

[farm_code]

And then replace laptop with your phone. Continuum.

[LoSboccacc]

macbook users tend to overlap with iphone users. so there's that, no hub I know has also a thunderbolt. will happen given enough time and the current demand, but if this was the direction engineering went with the laptop, a revolutionary iphone would have had two usb c

[jsjohnst]

> no hub I know has also a thunderbolt

Belkin, Elgato, OWC and others sell them. I use the Belkin one and it works great.

[Roritharr]

Correct, Apple's decision to insist on lightning for the iPhone is a bad one considering where the wind is blowing.

[spankalee]

Why would it be a special Apple dongle? Any USB-C to USB-A adapter would work, until you get a USB-C mouse.

[bluedino]

USB C mouse? Let me know when you can pick one of those up at Staples or Best Buy

[bartvk]

Why the snark? It'll probably take a year before you can get a cheap throw-away mouse with USB-C at Staples or Best Buy.

But assuming you're a professional, you either already have a bluetooth mouse/trackpad or you'll want some quality and order a mouse from a reputable brand.

[bluedino]

Does Logitech make a USB-C receiver for their wireless mouse yet?

[bartvk]

Heh, that's an interesting point you make. Assuming you can't or don't want to use Bluetooth, I was surprised to see that in The Netherlands, there's only 1 brand that carries an USB-C mouse, and it's a budget brand as well: http://www.trust.com/en/product/20969-usb-c-retractable-mini...

So I have to admit it's indeed very, very slim pickings.

[jsz0]

How about a $10 USB-C mouse from Amazon?

[eropple]

My flash drives will be a minor pain in the rear, but the disks I use more often (4TB+ externals) just take a C-to-B cable and I'm done.

I don't think this is going to be as big a deal as people say. Honestly, the biggest beef I have is removing the SD card slot, because I do a lot of photo/video work.

[slantyyz]

>> I don't think this is going to be as big a deal as people say.

I think it depends on the type of user you are. If you're a true "mobile user", it's probably not a big deal, because you put a value on mobility over other stuff.

If you treat your laptop as a "portable desktop", it can get annoying. The ability to not have dongles for everything is one less thing to think about. Yes, it's not the end of the world to have dongles, but if you're used to not needing dongles, being forced to use them is going to make you unhappy.

[eropple]

I'm not really a "mobile user". But I'll be happy to be able to run my entire desk off of one plug rather than the five (power, two monitors, two USB, one of which is a hub) that are currently plugged into my 15" MBP.