[_delirium]

It's probably a diminishing use-case, but I personally still need an ethernet port. There's a surprising number of times when I visit somewhere (offices, universities) and they can't figure out how to get me logged onto the guest wifi, but I can just plug in to the wired network without a problem. Also some hotels have only ethernet, though that's getting less common.

[thejosh]

Yeah, go and buy a thunderbold ethernet cable, they are really cheap and work fantastically.

The only downside is on Linux you have to reboot if you unplug the ethernet, but apparently that's being improved in 3.15.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

I think the reason Windows and Linux seem to behave awkwardly with Thunderbolt is that Thunderbolt is actually PCI-Express, and they're not exactly used to hot-plugging PCIe devices! But that's just speculation on my part.

[wolfhumble]

What happens if you don't reboot?

[thejosh]

It doesn't work :).

[wolfhumble]

I see :-)

RHEL 7 will be a problem then, I assume, as it seems to be based on 3.10?

[thejosh]

I run the 2013 on Arch, and apart from the thunderbolt issue it actually works very very well. Totally silent laptop with incredible battery life is a major winner.

[abrowne]

Or get a (third-party) USB 3 adapter.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Yes, I suppose the Ethernet is useful. But it doesn't seem worth sacrificing everything else for. Why not just get a USB or Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter?

[smackfu]

"Oh, you want to hook your Firewire drives up to it? That's another adapter. Oh, you want to play or burn CD's? You need to get an external drive then. You want to use your old Magsafe power bricks? Sorry, we changed the connector. You want to lock up the computer while it's at your desk? Sorry, there's no Kensington slot anymore."

At which point the SSD and Retina display sound nice, but that other stuff seems like it's going to a pain in the neck on a daily basis.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Apple tend to deprecate and remove stuff often and quickly. The PC world and Microsoft don't. For those of us who like living on the cutting edge, we're fine with it, but it's not really for everyone.

Remember when the iMac was the first USB-only computer, and had no floppy drive? Both were really unpopular at the time.

(Lack of Kensington is stupid though, I'll agree on that.)

[shalmanese]

It's not thick enough to fit a Kensington slot unfortunately.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Ah, so that's the reason. Apple's relentless pursuit of thinness is nice, but it has its drawbacks. That's also why it lacks Ethernet, AFAIK.

[_delirium]

Huh, I hadn't seen the Thunderbolt ones. The USB ones are notorious for not really working (they seem to have driver issues). Hopefully the Thunderbolt ones are better?

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Thunderbolt is just PCIe under the hood, so it would hopefully work as well as a PCIe Gigabit Ethernet one.

Although the fact it's Apple-made is probably more important, since they'll have made sure it works.

[acdha]

I'd second the thunderbolt recommendation but I would question the concerns about USB – until upgrading to Thunderbolt, I had no problems with daily heavy usage (along with several coworkers). The main drawback is that the USB devices can't go over 100Mb.

[jmnicolas]

I don't know for MACs but for 2 years at work I used a Windows laptop with a USB to Ethernet adapter and it ran absolutely fine.

[morituri]

Or you can get an Airport Express or similar adaptor, and use it in bridge mode.