[jdreyfuss]

This is just another entry in the "Apple: a Dongle Company" narrative. Apple has long had a philosophy of designing things their way and making the consumer adapt to their whims, rather than accepting standards or designing for the way people like to use things.

If you're charitable, you can say that they design with the future in mind. If you're not, you can say they know they can squeeze out more revenue via dongles and be indifferent to consumer wants because they have the size and market loyalty to get away with it. Depends on how you feel about Apple, I suppose

[closetohome]

"Apple makes money off of dongles" is such a ridiculous argument though. And to imply that they would make major changes to their flagship hardware just for that is way on the wacky end of conspiracy theories.

These decisions are based on focus groups, user analytics, and reducing manufacturing costs. Nothing more.

[llampx]

Apple has a long and rich history of making their customers buy dongles to interact with technology.

[closetohome]

I have yet to disagree with one of their format changes. Lightning was miles better than Micro USB or the old 30-pin dock connector, and USB-C allows me to dock my laptop with a single cable.

Got any other examples?

[david-cako]

I like USB-C, lightning, and the new keyboards, although losing magsafe sucks. Having dockability baked into the format is great though. If they move everything to USB-C they will have me satisfied.

The dongles are whatever. I’m not convinced I need permanent ports when I’m not at my desk. Losing the iPhone headphone jack is only an inconvenience when I’m negligent about plugging my phone in and am traveling. I airplay to my receiver at home. I started using a different pair of bluetooth headphones when on the go, but the headphones I actually like, 598s and 579s, are wired. The dongles are priced right. If they were $20 I’d be more upset.

The keyboards were most surprising; as a mechanical keyboard guy, a few months and I’m finding it’s quicker due to low travel and more predictable action. I don’t even have a separate keyboard on my desk now.

I think people just underestimate the big picture benefit of letting Apple shepherd you into the experience they have designed. To them, “everyone” uses bluetooth, so the jack is irrelevant. For me, as someone who REALLY likes my wired headphones, I still get it. The seamless bluetooth experience is nice in and out of the car and traveling.

They make a top level decision like “slim, quiet keyboards!”, “no more buttons!”, or “one cable!” that is appealing to investors and consumers and stick to it. The fact that they are the only brand that seems able to strongly execute on these types of unified schemes, often requiring partners to architect to a specific API (airplay and homekit, for instance) could be proof that the only way to do that is with a lot of steam behind you and strong opinions behind design choices. I cannot wait for what is next in terms of mac/iOS unification.

[Rebelgecko]

Other companies that make USB-C laptops still manage to include USB A ports, ethernet ports, and HDMI. Some USB-C laptops even have more esoteric stuff like RS-232. Docking my MBP at my desk is great, but it's a pain in the ass when I need to go anywhere else and use multiple video outs and multiple network connections

[closetohome]

If you want RS-232 on your laptop, you must realize that you belong to a vanishingly small demographic that Apple will never even pretend to cater to.

[Rebelgecko]

Definitely don't expect Apple to bring back serial ports, just pointing out that if Laptops smaller than a MacBook Pro can have HDMI, serial, USB A, USB C, ethernet, and VGA then I don't buy any arguments about getting rid of ports to keep the device small.

[jdreyfuss]

And they do make money off of dongles[0]. It is obviously a small percentage of their overall revenue, but even a couple percentage points is sizable at Apple's size.

[0]https://9to5mac.com/2018/08/24/dongle-top-seller-apple-best-...

[sneak]

https://sneak.berlin/20190330/apple-is-not-trying-to-screw-y...