[lstamour]

USB-C has lots of advantages, but it took 2-3 dark years before we started seeing commonly available peripherals that take advantage of the built-in protocols such as driver-less USB-C Ethernet adapters. I think USB-C on the iPad Pro and various phones has done more to turn USB-C into a viable standard than putting it on the laptops, since pros would obviously prefer existing and new Thunderbolt devices to USB-C devices. They could have moved iPhone/iPad to USB-C and used the MFI program to encourage USB-C for three years there, while adding USB-C support in a backwards-compatible way to their existing laptops. I would have been happy if they simply left me an HDMI port. As much as I want AirPlay everywhere, it's only in 2019 that we can buy a TV with AirPlay and make truly wireless/dongle-less Mac connections possible, which was the dream with Miracast on Windows/Android and the reality for many years with Chromecast.

Also, Magsafe might have come off easily, but every time it did, I went "oh, that is a nice feature!" I never once complained that I couldn't charge my laptop with it, the battery would die before the magsafe adapter would. Plus, why did Apple remove functionality from their power cords, forcing you to buy all the cables for the power cord separately? There were so many downgrades to the MacBook Pro, I wonder why I stuck with it... (Frankly, Windows was just that bad at the time. It's since improved, so maybe that'll light a fire under Apple a bit.)

[pmart123]

A lot of people made the same argument when Jobs removed the cd drive from laptops. It seemed like an issue at the time given most software was still installed from CDs. After a two year dark period where you had to use an external cd drive, most people didn’t miss it.

[gurkendoktor]

The first USB-C MacBook came out four years ago. I've just taken a look at Amazon: the top hits for keyboards are USB-A, the top hits for projectors use HDMI, the top hits for 4K screens have HDMI and DisplayPort ports. Apple's portable devices all ship with USB-A charging cables. Do USB-C thumbdrives even exist?

Yes, some transitions in the past worked really well. That doesn't mean that other transitions are automatically going to be a success.

ThunderBolt 3 is successful as a successor to the niche port that was ThunderBolt 2: for eGPUs, docking stations, some displays. USB-C seems to be doing okay in replacing Micro-USB. But HDMI, USB, and (for what they do) SD cards and Ethernet seem like they're almost in the same categories as wall sockets by now.

[sroussey]

The top hit for laptop in a windows machine, so what?

I remember being so worried about dongles and got extra. But then I found it better to just replace the cable to the printer and not have a dongle. Now they sit in a drawer unused.

[gurkendoktor]

> The top hit for laptop in a windows machine, so what?

It doesn't say anything about whether Windows is good or bad, but it means that no widescale transition away from Windows has happened.

[mustacheemperor]

>Do USB-C thumbdrives even exist?

The only hits I find on google are for a few sandisk drives with terrible amazon reviews reporting they're slow and get searing hot in the drive after only a few seconds of use. I'm kind of surprised sandisk would release that, one reviewer even reports theirs smoking after being inserted into a recent MBP. I'm also a bit surprised nobody has produced a working drive yet? Maybe there's so little demand for thumb drives these days it's just not worth the r&d to accomodate the standard with adequate cooling.

[parasubvert]

I found the Magsafe adapter cords would fray, corrode, and blacken pretty easily, becoming a fire hazard. Every Macbook I owned, I would need at least one replacement over a 3 year period.

The amount of time taken to re-plugin it in vs. times it saved my laptop from flying, really it was an overrated feature. USB-C comes out easily enough.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Magsafe. But I don't understand the passion for it, it had flaws and was a (nifty) minor feature.

[jdietrich]

>I found the Magsafe adapter cords would fray, corrode, and blacken pretty easily, becoming a fire hazard. Every Macbook I owned, I would need at least one replacement over a 3 year period.

That wasn't a fundamental problem with the MagSafe connector, but yet another symptom of Apple's detrimental obsession with aesthetics. The cable (like all Apple cables in recent years) had inadequate strain relief. Apple knew this, but decided that frayed and burned cables were preferable to an ugly strain relief boot. The problems with Apple cables are easily prevented with a few inches of electrical tape or a couple of pieces of heatshrink tubing to provide a satisfactory level of strain relief.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/why-a...

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201600

[clolege]

I wonder if you had a counterfeit Magsafe adapter? They commonly get shipped with used Macbooks, and get quite a bit hotter than their genuine counterparts.

I have personally preferred the Magsafe adapters ever since I had a USB-C powered Macbook slide off my bed by accident. It didn't fall far, but it landed right on the power cable and damaged both the USB port and the cable.

Understandably, Macbooks are not designed to withstand any sort of drops, but I'm positive that the Magsafe of my 2015 MBP would have popped out, and the body of the PC would have been fine.

[Larrikin]

I never had any cords fray ever on any product I ever owned.

Except for basically every single Apple product I ever got that had one of those stupid white cords no matter how gently I treated it. I've never bought anything Apple related from somewhere other than Apple and have been buying Apple products since the first iPod with the physical moveable wheel.

I think within the last few years they finally changed how they made the cords. My replacement Apple brick for my Macbook pro still looks filthy after a couple years of use, but has surprisingly not started fraying.

[ryandrake]

Almost half of my Apple cords are frayed, in the same spot, right next to their poor excuse for strain relief. Apple has a chronic problem with proper strain relief, and seem unwilling to fix it. Every other cord manufacturer on Earth has solved this problem with designs like this: [1]. Why Apple won't follow suit is beyond me. Maybe the appearance of it offends the sensitivities of one of their ID artists.

1: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31Jg9AjCdOL...

[labcomputer]

> I found the Magsafe adapter cords would fray, corrode, and blacken pretty easily, becoming a fire hazard.

Why do you attribute fraying and/or blackening of the cable to the connector at the end?

[Reason077]

> "Why do you attribute fraying and/or blackening of the cable to the connector at the end?"

It was at the point where the cable meets the connector that the fraying problem occurred. I suspect that because of the nature of MagSafe, many people tended to pull on the cable to remove it rather than actually grip the connector, which contributed to the problem.

But the real flaw with MagSafe (other than it being proprietary) was that the cable was permanently attached to the power brick. At least with USB-C, if the cable fails, you can just replace the cable - not the entire power supply!

[parasubvert]

I'm not comparing platonic ideals of connectors, I'm talking about the actual physical product that shipped. Magsafe was a proprietary connector attached to a fixed, non-removable cable. That cable had noted flaws.

Whereas USB-C is a standard connector on a removable cable.

[randallsquared]

Probably because it happened at where the connector joined.

I, too, miss magsafe. I, too, believe that the newer USB-C cables are better engineered, and like the fact that I can replace the cable separately from the adapter if there's ever a problem with it.

[porker]

> I found the Magsafe adapter cords would fray, corrode, and blacken pretty easily, becoming a fire hazard. Every Macbook I owned, I would need at least one replacement over a 3 year period.

My Magsafe power supply is a decade old, and except for being dirty has no problems.

You've repeated it a couple of times in this thread, and this doesn't hold up.

1. The cord is standard plastic sheathing: how does that fray?

2. Are you in a damp atmosphere for it to corrode?

3. You don't qualify what "blackening" is. Do you mean become dirty, or burnt?

[parasubvert]

1. See sibling posters. The plastic sheathing would split, and eventually splay. Electrical tape was the solution many used.

2. North America?

3. Burnt, i.e. the cable would turn brown at the edges connecting to the power supply or the Magsafe adapter.

I'm glad your power supply still works. This situation is sort of like the new MBP Keyboard: I've never had a problem with it, but many have. With the older power supplies, I've gone through at least three replacements over 10 years of MagSafe, not counting the new ones I received with new laptops. Much less expensive and time consuming than the keyboard so not as big a deal.

My point is that the Magsafe power adapters weren't this shining beacon of perfect design. They had flaws in practice, and USB-C has so far corrected those flaws (and introduced its own tradeoffs).

[EGreg]

Apple is known for touting things that it ships like they’re the next sliced bread, and then promptly forgetting them or even saying the opposite:

MagSafe: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2WknqkDzLTQ

Phones for single hand operation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O99m7lebirE

Mac App Store: https://www.macworld.com/article/1160331/WWDC_mac_app_store....

Steve Jobs used to constantly claim that Mac’s RISC processors were much faster than Intel, until the day Mac adopted Intel, then without blinking he said they are now much faster and never looked back.

That is salesmanship on a large scale. I thought Steve Jobs was the king of spin (ie convincing people of bullshit) until I saw Donald Trump run for President, and realized that you unlock a whole other level when you do this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4f_oxZqD6wQ

[dep_b]

Well the G3 when it shipped it was pretty competitive if not faster, the G4 still was pretty good in some benchmarks but the Intel / AMD post Athlon fight broke loose by then so by the time Apple switched to the Core architecture they were pretty far behind in performance unless you were using 2 or 3 hand picked Photoshop filters all day.

[TomVDB]

There were 2 versions of the Magsafe connector.

The bulky one on my 2007 MacBook had a much stronger magnet that the thinner one on my 2012 MacBook Pro.

People were annoyed when the thinner one got introduced because, indeed, they come off too easily.

It was another functional regression sacrificed on the altar of thinness.

[Reason077]

I believe this was also an attempt to address the fraying problem and make the MagSafe cables/connectors last longer. By decreasing the tension needed to release it, it would reduce stress on the cable.