[hoorayimhelping]

I get the warm and fuzzy feeling USB-C gives nerds, cause of the open standard and interoperability, and cause it only takes one attempt to actually plug it in; but I just cannot fathom how Apple replaced Magsafe with USB-C.

Magsafe was one of those magical Apple features from the mid 2000s that just delight and work incredibly well and almost seem like science fiction. It's not like they had shitty power adapters and USB-C was an upgrade. It was the Hofmeister Kink of Apple computers, and they got rid of it. I just do not understand at all.

[ramphastidae]

You don't understand because you haven't shifted your mindset about Apple correctly. As a former Apple fan I was the same way.

Apple under Tim Cook is motivated by shareholder value, not usability or design leadership, as they were under Steve Jobs.

They got rid of Magsafe and the rest of the useful ports and added USB-C not because of the warm and fuzzy feeling it gives nerds, but because it streamlines factory production and makes the laptop thinner.

At some point Cook decided to shift their decision making from being driven by the power user's needs to being driven by the shareholder and average consumer (which is motivated more by marketing flourishes like thinner laptops and the Touch Bar than usability). Shareholders would likely applaud that.

The point is that Apple is more Microsoft than Apple these days and we should shift our expectations as such.

[zamfi]

> They got rid of Magsafe and the rest of the useful ports and added USB-C not because of the warm and fuzzy feeling it gives nerds, but because it streamlines factory production and makes the laptop thinner.

A “former apple fan” should surely remember the hand-wringing over the iMac USB switch too. And Lightning?

Apple has always pushed almost-there technologies with benefits over legacy tech, this isn’t about “shareholder value”.

[ramphastidae]

Sure, I remember ... The disabling of Flash and removal of CD drives, ethernet ports and headphone jacks are good examples too. I still have the dongles I bought for my Powerbook.

But up until now it hasn't been a unilateral replacement of all ports with just one type. The dongle I bought was an adapter for one port and one use-case. I didn't have to buy a new adapter for every peripheral I owned.

Ultimately if Apple had included a portable docking-station-like adapter that had HDMI and a few USB-not-C ports along with the laptop purchase I would be OK.

[scarface74]

They got rid of Magsafe and the rest of the useful ports and added USB-C not because of the warm and fuzzy feeling it gives nerds, but because it streamlines factory production and makes the laptop thinner.

Except for the “make things thinner part”, there was the same complaint about the original iMac when they got rid of all of their ports and went USB all the way. The Macs before then had serial, ADB, and SCSI - and of course the floppy.

[parasubvert]

Magsafe adapters had quality issues. My company is all-Mac (3000 employees now), and you'd not believe the turnover of Magsafe power adapters frayed, blackened, corroding.

[fleetingmoments]

Exactly. USB C is so much better. Charging on either side and only replacing the cable and not the whole adapter if there is a connection issue.

[fastball]

You can have a MagSafe low voltage cable that is also removable from the adapter.

[s17n]

They got rid of magsafe because it's a lot less useful in a world of 8+ hour battery life. I generally don't plug in my laptop except for at my desk and/or at night.