[headcanon]

Apple's definitely playing the long game here. When the retinas came out, the absence of an ethernet port was a bit inconvenient for me, but now I don't miss it at all. It's possible that in a few years, when this model matures and goes down in price, the touch bar gets more wide support, and everything uses USB-C, then it will make a lot more sense to get one.

[BinaryIdiot]

Yeah I'm very convinced this is going to happen. At the same time, at least for me, I can't afford to wait for this utopia of single-connectors. I need to be able to plug in my daily cords and the last time I had to deal with dongles I lost them all over the place.

I do think it was a big misstep that their flagship, brand new phone can't connect to their flagship, brand new laptop without an adapter that has to be bought separately. I also think they could have done it in a more phased approach without losing anything. But ultimately it will turn out to be a good decision.

[on_and_off]

Kinda weird that the last nexus & pixel fit more naturally with the last macbook pro :)

[thefalcon]

When was the last time you plugged your iPhone in to your computer? I don't think I've ever plugged my current phone in to my computer since syncs and backs up to the cloud anyway for me.

[BinaryIdiot]

I haven't in years but everyone who isn't technically savvy in my family still does. I don't know if that's indicative of anything larger than my anecdote but I work with people who are very involved with technology who still sync all of their stuff, with a cord, using iTunes and their iPhone 6s / 7.

No idea how common this is but I feel like it's common enough that it should have been handled better.

[grzm]

And who knows? Maybe USB-C will be the last port ever? The step before everything is radio^H^H^H^H^H^H wireless!

[threeseed]

Two predictions from me. (1) They sell out and it is the most popular MBP model to date, (2) They don't reduce the price in the future.

Apple is awfully good at knowing just when to extract that little bit more from their customers. And I suspect that similar to the USB-C MacBook the concern over ports will just be from a vocal but tiny minority.

[Eric_WVGG]

I have to disagree on that. Unlike the more vertically oriented iOS devices with their A series processors, Mac pricing has always been highly volatile, and new form factors always start at high prices which quickly degrade as Apple perfects the manufacturing processes. Macbook Airs, for example, started out as premium-priced devices, before settling into the entry-level.

I can't find hard numbers for MBPs, but here's a list of prices over years for Mac Pros; from a consumer perspective, the changes are essentially random.

https://marco.org/2013/12/22/mac-pro-pricing-over-time

[johansch]

They have gone too far this time. This is far beyond the usual expensive inconvenience dongle cost etc that we're used to seeing from them. They just want to game us. It's basically financial domination at this time.

How hard could it really be to make a basic Linux desktop environment work sorta close enough to OS X to make enough people switch to finance further development? My quick and dirty estimate is that 50 good people could pull off a great first release in 18 months.

(I do have relevant consumer UX software design management experience and feel that I can do reasonable quick estimates based on that.)

[ianai]

I think that could be good as well. If I were to spearhead it I'd have us hone in on one or two laptop models. Then spend the rest of the engineering time on making the install, upgrade, and user experience as smooth as possible.

[desipenguin]

Deepin Desktop Environment