"MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) The two right-hand ports deliver Thunderbolt 3 functionality, but have reduced PCI Express bandwidth."
Wasn't USB supposed to be the connector to rule them all? Now it seems we're going backwards where just because you have a connector doesn't mean it supports what you want.
That was always going to be the end result of a single connector standard. Not all devices are going to support all modes of use.
In the end, what's really going to dictate how this shakes out is what chipset manufacturers decide to do. And there aren't as many of those as there used to be. Most likely, eventually, all intel chipsets are going to do thunderbolt 3 over usb type-c and everyone else will follow.
Exactly. Bluetooth for example is the same: there are loads of different authentication and communication schemes depending on the device used. The difference of course is that it's mainly the designer who has to worry about it.
Yes, because the PCIe root complex in the CPU can only connect one other device besides the southbridge, and that's used for the Thunderbolt controller on the left handside. The second Thunderbolt controller is connected to the southbridge (as are all the other PCIe peripherals), so it doesn't have the same number of PCIe lanes available as the one directly connected to the root complex.
Apple could have solved this by connecting a PCIe switch to the root complex and attaching both Thunderbolt controllers below it, but that would have consumed additional energy. Alternatively they could have used a beefier CPU with more PCIe root ports on the CPU, but I guess those available would have been too energy hungry. Which kind of means this is Intel's fault for not providing a low-energy chip with enough PCIe root ports on the CPU.
I'm wondering what the situation is like on the 15" version with discrete graphics. This would require 3 root ports directly on the CPU to drive both Thunderbolt controllers and the GPU with full speed, I assume that's indeed the case since it's not mentioned in the document.
Another thing not mentioned in the document is that energy consumption will be suboptimal if one device is attached on both sides of the machine because it prevents one of the Thunderbolt controllers from powering down. One should connect both devices on one side to improve battery life.
Edit: On Skylake the PCH is apparently optional, the functionality is mostly integrated into the CPU, so the limitation is really the number of lanes provided by the CPU, and this wasn't sufficient to connect both Thunderbolt controllers with 4x. The CPUs used in the 13" model all have 12 lanes, the ones in the 15" model have 16 lanes. So for the top-of-the-line model this could be 4x for each of the Thunderbolt controllers, 4x for the GPU, 2x for the SSD, 1x for Wifi, 1x for HD Audio?
I mean, I'm not sure how you can get 40 GBit/s with 4x PCIE 3.0 in the first place, every quote I find says 32 GBit/s. Maybe there is that much overhead in Thunderbolt.
But surely 4x40 Gbit/s would require 16 lanes at least. I don't think Intel makes any consumer CPUs with more than 16.
My understanding is that that's total bandwidth across all protocols. So the mix of Displayport and PCIe 3.0 can't exceed 40 GBit/s. The 4x PCIe 3.0 on it's own is 32 Gbit/s, as you mentioned.
Each controller provides two Thunderbolt ports, which share bandwidth. For the 15", 4x PCIe to the left side Thunderbolt controller, 4x PCIe to the right side Thunderbolt controller, and 8x to the GPU would be a sensible configuration. Though who knows if Apple took this approach.
Re:your edit, the PCIe lane configurations from the CPU aren't that flexible. There is no 4x+4x+4x+2x+1x+1x configuration.
4x Thunderbolt + 4x Thunderbolt + 8x GPU, with everything else on the PCH would make sense for the 15". Or maybe they connected the SSD (also 4x PCIe) to the CPU, and one of the Thunderbolt controllers to the PCH.
Hopefully they used the full set of CPU lanes. Most laptop manufacturers have a tendency to under utilize the CPU lanes and put things on the bandwidth constrained PCH for some reason.
Yes, he did. As nsxwolf commented, the 2010 MacBook Pro had USB 2 ports that ran at different speeds. And I remember vaguely that that wasn’t the first time.
It’s just not your problem because, really, how many people are going to be inconvenienced by the right Thunderbolt ports being slightly slower than the left Thunderbolt ports?
Apple has a "long" history of differentiating ports by left and right (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711127) which has been frustrating to me. For instance sometimes the left USB port "dies" after a sleep, while the right one keeps working.
I agree it's going to be a mess for a long while, similar to HDMI cables that work or don't without any clear reason for the casual buyer.
I liked when we just had USB2 and all you had to do was try to plug it in once, flip it over, try to plug it in again, flip it over once more, now it plugs in, and now you're reasonably sure it'll work.
And now the near-future seems to be full of dongles, shame.
At least if you tried to plug a USB cable into an ethernet jack it would be immediately obvious that it wouldn't work. In today's world the wrong cable will plug in to the wrong port just fine, and you can be scratching your head for a long time trying to figure out why it's not working. And, if you are particularly unlucky, while you are puzzling it out your device can fry.
[UPDATE] Well, I stand corrected. It is actually possible to stuff a USB A connector into an ethernet socket. (You learn something new every day.) But come on, folks, telling the difference between a USB socket and an ethernet socket is really not that hard. You don't even have to look, you can do it by feel. But all these different USB-C/Thunderbolt ports are physically identical. They are literally and by design impossible to distinguish.
> At least if you tried to plug a USB cable into an ethernet jack it would be immediately obvious that it wouldn't work.
Not necessarily. Ethernet jacks are often wide enough that a USB-A plug can be partially inserted, and it's pretty common to stack the two types of ports. If one isn't looking directly at the connector (common when dealing with the back side of a tower or docking station), it's a surprisingly easy mistake to make.
I have accidentally put a USB device in my laptops ethernet port several times because the laptop is on the back corner of my desk and all the ports are on the back so the cables all go behind the desk but because of the proximity to the wall I can't easily see the ports. USB and eth are right next to eachother. Wouldn't have it any other way. Don't know what I will replace my T420s' with.
I agree, we are moving away from "if it's the right shape it's compatible" to "everything fits in the port but they also need to speak the same protocol to talk".
This isn't completely new, a lot of non-standard USB hardware needed a driver (possibly in userspace) to work. However it is going to be much wider.
I think we will need to find methods to advertising to consumers how to figure out if things work together. The single port solution is technically superior but there are definitely human disadvantages that I think we can overcome with a little work.
"I liked when we just had USB2 and all you had to do was try to plug it in once, flip it over, try to plug it in again, flip it over once more, now it plugs in, and now you're reasonably sure it'll work."
Ah yes, the old proof that USB-A connectors exist in the 4th dimension. :)
> And now the near-future seems to be full of dongles
That's not necessarily a bad thing. With the right dongle you can now connect almost anything you want to a laptop. It was just a few years ago that it was simply impossible to connect some devices externally or at minimum there was a major performance penalty.
Personally, I am rather sad to see the Magsafe connector go, and having to sacrifice IO for charging while mobile seems like quite the headscratcher.
It's somewhat funny that not only will you have to carry dongles for everything for a few years time, but also make sure you carry the right USB-C cables, as your friend's might not work. Yay we have superlight laptops, but need to carry a backpack full of spaghettied cables.
Eventually there should be type-c charge cables that also act as usb hubs (if there aren't already). This is part of the promise of unifying charging and data into one port.
I have a Dell XPS13 Developer Edition that came with such a hub (they call it a dock, but you don't dock to it, you plug it in to the charge port with a USB-C cable). It has DVI, USB, Ethernet, and charges the laptop.
It's a nice concept but it does not work well under linux. Most times I plug in the dock, a random port will not work.
Right, we are definitely seeing this happening already, but I meant specifically chargers for on the go. There's no really good reason they can't also be hubs. There just aren't a lot of them yet.
You're not sacrificing anything. The old MBP had two usb ports and the new one has 3 available while charging. The only thing that has changed is now you can use the charging port for IO when not charging. Framing this as a "sacrifice" doesn't make any sense.
>make sure you carry the right USB-C cables, as your friend's might not work
With the old Magsafe chargers, and for laptop chargers in general, it's the same deal. If you want to charge your laptop, you have to bring your charger. The fact that the charger is USB-C doesn't make the situation worse.
But the old MBP had two thunderbolts and an HDMI connector, on top of the two USB. You could plug in 3 displays, charge it and still have room for a mouse and a keyboard. Now it's always a trade-off, so on top of DVI/HDMI/DP dongles, you'll have to carry a USB hub.
Why the snark? It'll probably take a year before you can get a cheap throw-away mouse with USB-C at Staples or Best Buy.
But assuming you're a professional, you either already have a bluetooth mouse/trackpad or you'll want some quality and order a mouse from a reputable brand.
Heh, that's an interesting point you make. Assuming you can't or don't want to use Bluetooth, I was surprised to see that in The Netherlands, there's only 1 brand that carries an USB-C mouse, and it's a budget brand as well:
http://www.trust.com/en/product/20969-usb-c-retractable-mini...
So I have to admit it's indeed very, very slim pickings.
Nothing special about it, its standardized. Actually Apple just released a Notebook that has NO proprietary ports anymore. As a Surface User I find this astonishing and great.
On top of this I find it weird that people say they have to carry 20 Apple branded dongles. Depending on your use-case there is already type-c usb hubs with HDMI Ports, or Ethernet Ports, or both.[1]
The thing is, I love the USB-C TB3 Ports and I love Apple's decision to drag the industry kicking and screaming into a reality where an Office can have a Monitor that is a Thunderbolt 3 Hub, connected with Ethernet and peripherals, that work with both Windows and Mac. This will revolutionize flex-desk setups for big organizations and Co-Workingspaces everywhere. Imo it's worth to have this transition period where people drag a dongle with them to achieve this.
macbook users tend to overlap with iphone users. so there's that, no hub I know has also a thunderbolt. will happen given enough time and the current demand, but if this was the direction engineering went with the laptop, a revolutionary iphone would have had two usb c
My flash drives will be a minor pain in the rear, but the disks I use more often (4TB+ externals) just take a C-to-B cable and I'm done.
I don't think this is going to be as big a deal as people say. Honestly, the biggest beef I have is removing the SD card slot, because I do a lot of photo/video work.
>> I don't think this is going to be as big a deal as people say.
I think it depends on the type of user you are. If you're a true "mobile user", it's probably not a big deal, because you put a value on mobility over other stuff.
If you treat your laptop as a "portable desktop", it can get annoying. The ability to not have dongles for everything is one less thing to think about. Yes, it's not the end of the world to have dongles, but if you're used to not needing dongles, being forced to use them is going to make you unhappy.
I'm not really a "mobile user". But I'll be happy to be able to run my entire desk off of one plug rather than the five (power, two monitors, two USB, one of which is a hub) that are currently plugged into my 15" MBP.
Where could you possibly go where (a) there are three monitors, a mouse, and keyboard waiting for you, and (b) none of those devices have a built-in USB hub, and you did not think to keep a USB hub there?
Either you're mobile and need the USB ports, or stationary and there's a hub there. What use case am I missing?
> (a) there are three monitors, a mouse, and keyboard waiting for you, and (b) none of those devices have a built-in USB hub.
I don't know of a monitor that doesn't require a USB A-B cable to provide USB, so you're looking at three $70 adapters, plus three USB A-B cables. Sure maybe all that lives at the office. It's still less convenient.
I still can't get over the fact that you can't plug your new iPhone 7 into your new Macbook Pro without a dongle.
My Apple monitor at work provides USB and Ethernet over the same cable (mini-DP) it uses for video. Every day I go in I just connect the mini-DP and MagSafe (both of which come from the monitor) and magically all my peripherals are connected.
It seems like in the new USB-C world, I'd only have to connect one cable. Bonus points if it's sturdier than mini-DP and less flaky than MagSafe. Sure beats those weird-ass proprietary docks that used to be common ~10 years ago.
> It seems like in the new USB-C world, I'd only have to connect one cable.
That's something I've never seen properly explained. Can you charge at 100W at the same time as using Thunderbolt 3 connectivity? It strikes me as unlikely since the power delivery and the signaling would have to share the same pins/wires.
Edit: I stand corrected after seeing that new LG monitor. Now I'm just curious how it works. Even PoE can't deliver 100w and Thunderbolt 3 uses much higher speeds while having to inject power.
There's no physical reason that power and signal can't share lines. Any particular device or protocol might fail to implement that, but PLC and even POTS show that it's possible and not even new.
The principle of power and signal separation has been used to send multiple signals over a wire since the duplex telegraph in 1872. It's one of the few things in this world older than the headphone jack standard that we've been using since 1878.
You may be surprised when you stick a multimeter into a standard POTS jack and read 48V. (Admittedly, the voltage is lower when the line is in use, but it's still there, which is why old-fashioned phones don't need separate power cords.)
The USB-C connector dedicates 4 pairs of pins (8 total) to power transmission (VBUS and GND). It only does that to give enough contact area and enough conductor circumference in the cable to support 100w transmission.
It also has two pairs of unshielded twisted pair for non-superspeed (USB 2.0) though only one pair is used in the cable apparently; which USB 2 channel you get depends on which way the cable is plugged in I guess.
It has a pair for sideband use. A pair for configuration and control.
The data primarily travels over the four high-speed differential signal pairs; two TX pairs and two RX pairs.
All USB 3 cables must have a chip in them. It communicates over the C&C channel to select how the high-speed pairs are used. When a display is connected, one TX/RX set are used for USB 3 and the other for DisplayPort.
USB 3 also supports "alternate" modes, so the C&C can negotiate that all high-speed pairs are used for Thunderbolt which is just the PCI-Express bus. Intel added the ability to interleave DisplayPort packets with the PCI-Express data. I assume that displays with USB 3 built-in are simply connecting a PCI-E USB hub to the Thunderbolt interface since in that mode there is no actual USB signal in the cable. USB 2 can use the dedicated signal pair for that and not interfere with DisplayPort or Thunderbolt traffic.
Thunderbolt is a nicer standard in some ways - interleaving means if you aren't using a 16bpp 5K display at max refresh rate you have more bandwidth available for other devices. With USB 3 you get half the available bandwidth if you connect a display. Thunderbolt is also old-school in the sense that it projects the CPU's bus to external peripherals... something all early computers used to do. Everything old is new again!
It is obvious USB-3 was very forward-looking. The C&C channel means some future version of the standard can drop USB-2 support and start connecting the unconnected pair if both ends negotiate for it. Now you have an extra TX/RX channel to give you +50% bandwidth. You can also imagine taking over the side channel pins. If you assume the next-gen standard can double USB-3's 10Gbps and add in double the data pairs that would be 40Gbps which matches Thunderbolt 3. Apply the same math to Thunderbolt and that's 160Gbps.
That's kinda the point, the new USB-C monitors have built-in USB hubs and charging. So you only need one cable to plug in all of your monitors and USB devices. It's going to take a little while for everyone to get there, but for now there are ~$80 hubs that will break out all of these ports.
> I still can't get over the fact that you can't plug your new iPhone 7 into your new Macbook Pro without a dongle.
You've never been able to though? There is a USB-C to Lightning cable.
I think he means, it doesn't even come in the box. Buy a MacBook Pro, buy an iPhone, and you can't even use one to charge the other without buying a separate cable or an adapter.
No, I just think the one cable solution with a USB-C monitor is really neat. I won't be getting one for personal use because they're too expensive right now.
I'll be picking up one of the $60-100 hubs/docks that have a single USB-C connector and HDMI/Ethernet/USB-A to connect all of my devices. When the monitors are cheaper in 4 years I'll buy one of those.
My point was that we're actually moving to a really good solution where you can plug in a single, non-proprietary cable and get all the throughput and peripheral connectors you could ever need. It's not even particularly expensive compared to a dock 5-10 years ago.
> Where could you possibly go where (a) there are three monitors, a mouse, and keyboard waiting for you, and (b) none of those devices have a built-in USB hub
That describes my workplace. (But with two rather than three monitors.) Standard monitors that operate over HDMI/DVI/etc don't have USB hubs without a separate USB connection, most keyboards are the same way.
> Either you're mobile and need the USB ports, or stationary and there's a hub there. What use case am I missing?
Sure, you can work around the lack of IO by buying a hub, but the point was that previously you would not have needed yet another dongle.
So buy the USB-C hub/dock/whatever and leave it at work. No need to carry it around with you. This isn't really any different than the case of a traditional laptop with a dock, except instead of some weird giant proprietary connector, you have a small standardized connector.
Because Apple does not NEED to make every single necessary object in the universe. LG is making them, they are 5k, they have wide color gamut and 3x USB-C out, and they are in the Apple Store. That's good enough. This enables Apple to focus on what they are good at.
If we stretch this approach, Apple will become good at making the iPhone and nothing else.
The display was the soul of the desktop Mac. It's easier to perceive your Macbook as another PC when your window into it is another mostly generic-looking LG display, even if the panel in the Apple branded display was manufactured by LG.
Perhaps they want to focus on the iMac again and don't want the MBP + display combo to cannibalize it. But again, with extreme focus soon they'll be abandoning the iMac for good.
(I still love macOS and I enjoy how the new MBP looks)
Can I tempt you over to the Microsoft side? The Surface Dock has exactly those connections - I leave everything connected to the dock as my "workstation", and carry my Surface Book travelling when need be.
If you're being tempted over to the Microsoft side, you might as well just buy a Dell or HP or Thinkpad or whatever, and get Mac-level specs at half the price, and usually a good collection of today's standard ports.
It's hard to match the Surface Book on specs, at least if you care about the size and weight and resolution and touchscreen. I went shopping 6 months ago with requirements of: thin and light (13" or smaller), available in the UK, NVidia graphics, 12gb or more of RAM, reasonable processor, and touchscreen; I wasn't expecting to walk out with Microsoft hardware but the Surface Book was the only laptop I saw that (more-or-less - it's 13.5") matched up to that.
I think the Surface Pro is still pretty competitive, though the Book and Studio are really out there on price. But that's the great thing about the Microsoft side... You have choices like buying the HP it the Dell.
Can we say that, at this time, Apple's idea here is a bit dumb/half-baked/incongruent/silly/frustrating and it will materially hurt them in the longer term?
None of what you said is remotely true. Betting entirely on USB-C as the one true connector is not half baked and is quite reasonable. And by using it solely it will force accessory manufacturers to build the docks, monitors etc.
This has all happened before with the original iMac. And it was universally seen in the long run as one of the best decisions they made.
It's the short term where the pain will be felt if there is any. The long term is clear, USB-C throughout which I think is a good thing. What I'm confused about is why the iPhone7 was also not USB-C. I fully expect to see the next iPhone switch over.
while I 100% agree the next iPhone SHOULD switch over to USB-C I'd be very surprised if it actually does...Apple isn't going to want to go through a second port transition in such a short period of time (30 pin to lightening) and certainly won't want to change anything after the headphone port this year. Especially b/c next year is the 10th anniversary, and it's understood that they really want it to be something special,
On the contrary, it is exactly what I want. And also exactly what I do now with the 27" thunderbolt display. The same way my TV is now my universal HDMI switch.
Monitor-as-dock makes a great deal of sense for the roving user with a fixed base.
I wouldn't buy a $1300 monitor that worked only with a Thunderbolt 3 device. It must work with USB-C and DisplayPort, even if only at UHD resolution than 5K. If I buy a Windows laptop tomorrow, and it doesn't have Thunderbolt 3, I can't throw away my monitor and buy a new one. Or if I want to plug my new monitor into any existing Mac model, which doesn't have Thunderbolt 3.
I would be happy if an adapter exists for this job. The monitor needn't natively support DisplayPort.
> That describes my workplace. (But with two rather than three monitors.) Standard monitors that operate over HDMI/DVI/etc don't have USB hubs without a separate USB connection, most keyboards are the same way.
But your run of the mill Dell office monitors do have a USB hub, most often 2 ports on the back panel for keyboard/mouse and 2 ports on the side for flash drives and other transient accessories.
colanderman's point is that you should get a USB cable and use that hub instead of individually plugging everything into the laptop. Three video connections and one hub connection gets you all the connectivity you need at a desk. If you're mobile, you'll certainly need less.
I have a Dell U2410, which, while not exactly run-of-the-mill (it is wide-gamut), isn't that fancy yet does have all the ports wlesieutre mentioned. (Granted, they require a separate USB connection, but it is an older monitor.)
At work I have an Apple monitor that has multiple USB ports and an Ethernet port on the back of it. I think it has speakers too. All that and the display run across the mini-DP connection. Again, not exactly run-of-the-mill, but well within the price range of Apple's target market, and given Apple's push in that direction, it's liable to be commonplace in a couple years anyway.
Yup. My MBP at work: one thunderbolt port for an external monitor, the other for ethernet. One USB port for my nice keyboard, the other free. And the magsafe for charging. So I'm currently using 4 of 5 connections, and the new MBP will only have 3?
I'm guessing people don't upgrade their TVs, monitors, and projectors as often as they upgrade their laptops. I can't even find a USB-C adapter that would work with my current display (which was made by Apple)
You'll be able to use a single thunderbolt 3 port to get power, monitor, ethernet, and USB accessories, sit down, plug one cable in and you're off to the races.
I'm a VJ. You absolutely need that many ports when doing visuals at a concert or venue. That was the whole reason I bought a MBP. Now it looks like PC might be a better choice; Apple has abandoned the professional "workhorse" market and is leaning towards the Facebook/email machine market.
First of all, that's Windows only. Says so right there in the listing.
Second of all, it's yet another dongle I have to carry around and potentially lose. There's often not a whole lot of room on stage, so space is precious.
Thirdly, those dongles that convert video are usually slow garbage. If I am performing as a VJ, I need the video to be frame-synced and perfectly synced to the music without lag. I can do that just fine on my current MBP (run 3 monitors at once from the ports built-in to the computer. That's specifically why I bought it.) And now I can do that just fine from some Asus laptop since Apple doesn't seem to want my business anymore.
The new 5k monitor display[1] not only connects with a USB-C but it also provides charging power (85W) to the Macbook at the same time.
Plus, it has an additional 3 USB-C ports, meaning you plug one cable in to your Macbook Pro, and you are left with a total of 6 USB-C slots free, which you don't need because power is provided over the same cable anyway...
You're right that if you've maxed out the old MBP's ports, the new one supports fewer connections at once.
But I still think it's a net win because:
- We need to buy and manage fewer cables.
- We'll no longer have the problem of having a free port, but not the right kind.
- When we buy a device, we don't have to decide which ports it should plug into. Like, when I buy a monitor, I don't have to decide whether it should have DisplayPort, HDMI, both or either.
Only one major generation of MacBooks (2013~2016) used a different MagSafe connector. AFAIK any charger will work with any MacBook, just at different rates of charging.
> If you want to charge your laptop, you have to bring your charger.
That's not really correct regarding MacBooks. If you've got the same Magsafe adapter (gen 1 or gen 2) the charger will work. It just charges at a faster or slower rate than intentional.
It's interesting to note that the fancy LG 5k monitor announced alongside the new MBP also charges the MBP. One cable connection and you have a monitor, a docking station with ports, and power. All while leaving three extra ports free.
IMO, that's the real potential of this style of multi-use connector.
In addition to spending $2400 on a basic 15" MBP, we can buy the fancy monitor that has actual USB connections for $1300 more! Don't forget a few $$$$ in dongles for the times when you aren't connected to the 5K beauty. +/- $4000 dollars for a "touch of genius"... Makes me vomit a little in my mouth.
I am the "tech guy" for my circle of friends. Apple has lost all recommendations from me.
Yes, because we should all still be using SCSI on our laptops. With cables thicker than your thumb that had to be handled with utmost care or else they'd fail. And single-purpose connectors, where even the compact form was bigger than a lot of device chargers these days.
USB-A is certainly ubiquitous, which is a good thing. But it was never going to last forever. USB-C vastly improves on the physical design (reversible, symmetric, easier insertion, etc.) and I expect will carry us forward for even longer than USB-A has.
Thus Apple and everyone else are moving towards adopting USB-C, which means there will be ever more widespread and cheap docking and peripheral options. Yes, these transitions are painful but at least there are dongles this time, which hasn't always been the case. Such transitions are also a part of living during the historically amazing times of an accelerated tech curve. Enjoy that while it lasts!
> Such transitions are also a part of living during the historically amazing times of an accelerated tech curve.
The MBP is not bleeding edge on that curve, it is (kind of, sort of) near the top-ish. They made a lot of changes for the Future! without adding, you know, actual cutting edge components (from ram to the cpu/gpu chip(s)).
The whole thing breaks down further when you compound this new (old) hardware with the problems macOS will inevitably have. As each release, in my experience, has had significant issues for months with sometimes show stopping bugs. Can't wait to be served an ad on that shitty little screen...
Why would you ever recommend a high end 15" laptop to average people in the first place. I'd agree with the other commenter that recommends a new tech guy for your friends.
Why? I don't know... maybe it has to do with not wanting to buy a shit laptop at bestbuy/costco and calling it a day. Anyone can do that, and a lot of my friends ask a very specific question: "Dude, I want a good laptop that will last a few years without breaking like the POS stuff I usually buy for $500 at Costco... what do you recommend?" I would say, head to our local Apple store. I am no longer going to say that.
Are they throwing their laptops down a flight of stairs on a regular basis? What exactly is breaking? My Dad is still rocking a 4 year old "POS $500 Costco laptop" and it runs as well as it did the day I bought it.
I added an SSD and upgraded the memory to 8GB and it's more than fast enough for everything the normal person would do outside of kids that are trying to game (in which case you shouldn't be buying a laptop anyway).
Good point, and that's why, six months back, I chose to buy an iMac 5k instead of a laptop. I saved a couple of thousand dollars, got four USB ports instead of two, and a gorgeous 27-inch 5k monitor that I couldn't buy separately [1].
In my case, mobility wasn't a requirement, so a desktop was fine.
If mobility is a requirement for you, maybe you could buy an iPad Pro or a cheaper laptop than you otherwise would buy, like the single-port Macbook.
[1] It wasn't available in India, and even if it was, it wasn't compatible with most Macbooks. The single model it was compatible with, it required two cables to be plugged in. And the monitor would have been out-of-date quickly, since it didn't support Thunderbolt 3.
You're not sacrificing anything. The old MBP had two usb ports and the new one has 3 available while charging. The only thing that has changed is now you can use the charging port for IO when not charging.
The MacBook Escape—which history says will be the most popular new MacBook Pro by far—has only two USB-C ports and a phono jack. There are no other ports at all.
"MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016) draws up to 85W. Use the Apple USB-C charge cable that came with your MacBook Pro, or a certified USB-C cable supporting 5A (100W), to power and charge your MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016) at its full capability.
"MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) and MacBook (13-inch, Late 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports) draw up to 60W."
…
"You should not connect any power supply that exceeds 100W, as it might damage your Mac.
"Using a power supply that doesn't provide sufficient power can result in slow or delayed charging. It's best to use the power supply that came with your Mac.
"MacBook Pro can receive a maximum of 60W of power through the Apple USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter or USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter. For the best charging performance on MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016), connect the power supply directly to your Mac."
If you miss the safety aspect of MagSafe, Griffin Technology sell a USB-C charge cable for the 12" Macbook with a magsafe-like magnetic breakaway connector:
Well... Anything that requires more than 3 pins (which is apparently all that power requires) is going to much harder to build. A 24 pin, magnetically aligned connector seems pretty difficult to me.
Only if it detects it uses a 60W cable. Which I really doubt.
You can pump 100 watts through a 60W rated cable - it will probably work because the rule is "users are dumbasses, rate it for 60 on paper and 120 in reality".
Or it could heat up, maybe to the point of damage.
Yes, just because you charge up a computer with a 60W A/C adapter but it can take 87W, doesn't mean the A/C adapter is all of a sudden putting out 87W. The cable itself doesn't create more or less flow.
You guys really should spend a few moments doing a quick google search before responding. USB doesn't just magically deliver power, its negotiated between the device and the power source. In the case of USB-C, the cable is involved in the negotiation.
The default condition of cables is that they can conduct much more current than is safe, and it takes extra effort to limit this. (Yes, there's a limit to what you can put through a wire, but it's enough to melt the metal, and you wasn't too avoid softening the plastic around it.) If you put twice the rated current through a cable, the conductors will handle it just fine. However, the resistance of the wires will dissipate 4× the power the insulation is designed for (twice the current times twice the voltage drop), and the inside of the isolation will get somewhat warmer. How much of a problem this is in real life depends on the ambient temperature, the thermal conductivity of the insulation, jacket, and wire, the temp the plastics can withstand, etc.
The safe thing is to use wire from a vendor that rates it honestly to conservatively, and start within the ratings.
> I think it just charges slower, it doesn't magically pump 87 watts over the cable, just 60.
Please do not post such dangerous unsubstantiated comments which illustrate your lack of understanding of basic electronics principles. Recommending a cable rated for 60W for an 87W scenario puts peoples lives at risk. Nothing "magical" about that either.
You are unconsciously incompetent. Take a USB cable and touch both ends to the terminals on your car battery if you want a dramatic learning experience. Wear gloves, long sleeves, and eye protection.
It should still have 87W through, might heat up a tiny bit more, but I really, REALLY doubt that a power cord rated for 60W would be unable to handle 87W too, the safety margin would be way too low.
Also, your dramatic learning experience is dumb, shorting a car battery will do probably do a few hundred amperes, two orders of magnitute more than in any laptop charger ever...
i live offgrid and observe my 13" MBP with an 85w power supply actually pulling around 10-19 watts during typical usage...(my inverter has an output readout)
FWIW... doubtless heavy gaming would be different...
compiling gets it up to the upper 30s...
I have my MBPr (2013) running fine with a MB 60W Magsafe charger for overnight charging (think it's from my 2008 unibody MB). Been this way for 2 years, no problems.
Yeah. You will notice that if the battery is dead flat it won't let you turn the laptop on for a bit with a 60W charger but with the 85W or whatever it is it will power up immediately.
As I've mentioned before, they really should have recessed this port so a solution like BreakSafe could be done and not stick out like an exposed wart. Ideally such a device would also be first-party (with 3rd party version available to reduce price).
Wattage issue aside, it's half an inch of protruding metal.
What I really want (and I'm prepared to pay up to $100 for) is a low-profile (near-flush-mount, maybe 3mm max) Magsafe 2 female to USB Type-C male adapter that I can leave permanently in one of the ports.
I've read that Apple have consistently declined to license the Magsafe patent, so I'd settle for a magsafe-like solution.
There's pretty interesting options that we didn't have before with Magsafe.
You can connect a single USB-C port to a monitor that has a USB-C video in. This monitor will then charge your Macbook and on top of that if the monitor has a built in USB hub it will also do that.
Or if your monitor doesn't support this then you can buy a dock/hub to which you connect your charger, monitors etc and the Mac with one cable.
For me personally that's what I've been missing most since I switched from Lenovo to Macs a few years ago - a docking station. For me plugging in only a single cable is as good as that.
and having to sacrifice IO for charging while mobile seems like quite the headscratcher.
I have an odd hypothesis about this --- the less time people spend charging/running from AC, which is inevitably going to happen when there is no separate power input that can be used easily, the more they'll be cycling the batteries, and the faster they'll wear out.
It seems more likely that we're in the midst of the early days of a transition away from USB-A cables to USB-C for most uses. There are a lot of advantages, namely connector size, reversibility, full power delivery, the unification of ports with Thunderbolt 3 and DisplayPort, etc. Plus, it's designed to be future proof for some time. Maybe I've missed something, but is there a specific benefit to USB-A beyond the current ecosystem and common use? Not that I'm discounting that. I'm not a dongle fan by any stretch of the imagination, though small USB-C hubs can alleviate the use of multiple dongles somewhat.
But I think that, as peripherals and other devices begin to switch over to USB-C, we'll eventually see dongle use become less and less common except for older peripherals and devices. And that's nothing new. Eventually, it'll go the way of the PS/2 port: included on motherboards, but not really used much (relatively speaking; the analogy breaks down a bit when you think of gamers and the mechanical keyboard community, where it still gets some use for n-key rollover).
Transitions between interfaces, as a matter of principle, suck. But we wind up going along with them because there's benefit to do so. I'm curious how this will play out in five, or even ten, years. Not that I want those years to speed by to find out :).
Razor or somebody could introduce a protocol using iso or interrupt or something and others could adopt it, the device would still support HID/bootp so it would retain compatibility. This would also offer better support for analog inputs or higher resolution mice.
Maybe I've missed something, but is there a specific benefit to USB-A beyond the current ecosystem and common use?
I'm worried about the DRM situation, myself. My suspicion is that all of the engineering effort that should have gone into ensuring cable quality and spec compliance is instead being spent on new, innovative ways to lock me out of my own hardware.
USB-A was large enough to fit entire devices (wireless, storage, crypto) inside the port, whereas the USB-C equivalents protrude, and risk getting snapped off.
The removable cable is a huge win, though. The magsafe cables are horrendously prone to fraying and cable jacket tears. My own Magsafe 2 cable's jacket inexplicably tore after a month of using it.
Whilst the Magsafe port has saved my bacon when tripping on a power cord its second variant Magsafe 2 has proved to be a tremendous headache.
On my 2015 Macbook Pro the port seems pretty finicky and requires fiddling with to get it to light up. The Magsafe connector on my Thunderbolt Display is even worse and a real lesson in patience. It's a Magsafe 1 port which requires a Magsafe 2 adapter - this thing is quite possibly the flakiest Apple hardware I've ever used - needing constant cleaning, fiddling with and blowing on. An absolute and utter piece of garbage - so yeah, I'm not going to miss Magsafe (version 2 at least). Although I suspect I might regret this statement the day I trip over my shiny Thunderbolt 3 cable...
>The core issue with USB-C is confusion: Not every USB-C cable, port, device, and power supply will be compatible
Not every USB-A port, device, cable, and power supply are compatible. I'm not sure I understand what his point is. That people who refuse to do research are going to occasionally run into incompatibility problems? Like they have since the dawn of the computing age? And?
As far as I'm aware it is only out-of-spec cables that can cause damage. If everything is in spec then the worst case is just reduced performance or the connection not working. I'd add that – IMO – if an out of spec cable causes damage, then the cable manufacturer should be held responsible.
I'm sure that an out of spec USB 2 cable can cause damage as well.
Right -- it's cables that do not comply with the USB-C spec that can cause damage. It's not as if plugging a Thunderbolt 3 device into a laptop that doesn't support Thunderbolt will damage the laptop. It just won't work.
and trying to argue that out-of-spec cables causing damage to your computer is a deficiency in the spec makes about as much sense as saying the etherkiller demonstrates a problem with the RJ45 spec.
The out of spec cable problem is slowly beginning to resolve itself. Major online retailers, starting with Amazon, seem to be taking action. Between that and possible product liability issues for bad cables (though that's more hope than anything likely for various reasons), we can expect cable manufacturers to get with the program by the time USB-C is further mainstream. Right now, aside from some brand-new Android devices, USB-C is still trickling in on laptops and other devices.
The really crazy thing is that there's very little reason to build crappy cables. Per unit, your savings from cutting major corners are as close to zero as you can get. Judging by Benson Leung's Surjtech[0] testing woes, even cutting out any QA testing to save money wouldn't be sufficient to explain all of the cable problems. QA testing certainly can't explain how you can completely forget to wire in the SuperSpeed wires despite labeling it as such. That's not the sort of thing to happen as a one-off. Losing your sales channels, facing potential class action lawsuits, and seeing your brand dragged through the mud all add up to far more significant costs.
The biggest problem, IMO, will be when USB-C becomes prevalent enough that we see the $1 cables in checkout lines and gas stations. If there's anywhere we're going to see bad cables being hocked, it's there. Hopefully by that point, manufacturers will have gotten burned enough that good QA will become the norm.
> Not every USB-A port, device, cable, and power supply are compatible.
While strictly true and you could drag up some pretty bad abuses of USB A especially as used for mobile charging, the peripherals / protocols usually just work. But here, if you have a cable in your hand with a USB-C and a DisplayPort connector it's pretty much anyone's guess whether a) it'll work with the given machine at all b) if it does, which version of DP will be supported with the given machine.
So you'd rather have 8 different standards? I know I love having to have a DVI, displayport, VGA, and HDMI adapter in my bag in order to have my bases covered for presentations.
I'm confused the scenario you're imagining in which someone both doesn't have their own, known good cable, and also is in a place that doesn't provide a cable, where displayport would even come into play.
I can think of exactly 0. If the projector needs a displayport capable usb-c, it's going to already be attached to the projector. If I need one for home, I'm going to buy one that supports it.
> So you'd rather have 8 different standards? I know I love having to have a DVI, displayport, VGA, and HDMI adapter in my bag in order to have my bases covered for presentations.
If there are 8 different cable types I'd rather have 8 different connectors, yes. Remember going around the office asking to borrow a cable to charge your 'phone and having to figure out micro vs mini vs sony's weird thing vs apple's weird thing? It was a bit silly but at least having physically different connectors meant that you could tell whether a given cable would charge your phone or not. Now it sounds like that's no longer true.
The point is that due to the much better backward compatibility and do-it-all nature of USB Type-C, consumers are much more likely to run into incompatible devices and cables than ever before. Walk into any store and you'll see dozens of cables and peripherals that look the same but perform differently (or not at all) based on a confusing array of protocols and standards.
It's true that USB has always been a bit confusing, but now we have many, many more incompatibilities to worry about.
Tetraphobia is the practice of avoiding instances of the number 4. It is a superstition most common in East Asian nations. … The Chinese word for four sounds quite similar to the word for death in many varieties of Chinese. Similarly, the Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean, and Sino-Vietnamese words for four sound similar or identical to death in each language.
Wikipedia's "Examples of sensitivity to tetraphobia applied" section is interesting:
USB3 ports and cables are (when spec compliant) easily distinguishable from USB2 due to them being blue. Why was the same not done for USB-C (black for USB3, red for Thunderbolt)?
At least you (or technical support) can look up the difference. If the cables all look the same then you need to physically test the cables to know their capabilities, which is a waste of time and resources.
Colour is one of the easiest communication methods we have with 'Regular users' as they already use them as a natural key elsewhere - even things like credit/loyalty cards (Chase, Virgin) or games consoles (green vs blue vs white)
USB3 ports and cables are (when spec compliant) easily distinguishable from USB2 due to them being blue. Why was the same not done for USB-C (black for USB3, red for Thunderbolt)?
But Ethernet isn't included on many laptops anymore...
This rush to be "thin" has required changing the physical ports, and has contributed heavily to this issue.
For a few years there will be confusion as cables/connectors/standards shake out, but it's gonna be awesome after that when we have super thin laptops that just use one connector.
I bet it has more to do with the amount of use these ports get (i.e. less and less people using ethernet). And besides, when I get to work, I hook up my laptop to a plain old USB hub which has an ethernet connection.
Exactly, anyone sitting down at a desk would prefer to plug in one cable that include power, ethernet, keyboard, mouse, and external display. These thunderbolt cables are the dream, it's just going to take a couple years for the peripheral market to catch up (surprisingly the iPhone is included in this).
The 8P8C/RJ45 connector which was used from 10Mbps to 10Gbps might be the same end, but different speeds when different cabling grades (CAT3/5/6, etc.) were used.
While most 1Gbps equipment can work in 10/100Mbps mode, most 10Gbps equipment can only downgrade to 1Gbps mode.
It's actually a pretty good comparison to USB-C - lots of different modes with one physical interface and many things that don't work quite right or have significant caveats.
Start getting involved with 10Gb Ethernet and it is no longer trivial. You've got Cat 6, 6A, and 7, and all sorts of different length and shielding considerations and often don't get anywhere close to 10Gb.
The mistake this article makes is thinking that the typical person will interact with many different USB-C ports and cables than his or her own. The reality, is that people will get to know their own ports, buy their own cables and devices, and things will work 99% of the time.
Only occasionally they'll need to use a friend or coworker's device or cable and then there could be confusion. Although, even then, assuming the friend also has one of the most popular computers/phones/cables, it'll probably still work.
Yah, apparently you don't have my wife/kids/in-laws/cousins/etc. Where the rules for USB chargers seems to be, plug your phone/etc into whatever charger you happen to find, and possibly take the cable/charger home when your done leaving your old crappy one.
There's actually a semi-legit reason to make a usb2-only c-c cable: because it can get away with not having the high-(super)speed differential pairs, it can be thinner, lighter and cheaper than a full-function cable. Compare to charge-only microusb cables - they are indistinguishable from real cables, but lack critical functionality. If they were easily distinguishable, this would not be nearly as much of a problem.
One really major (to me at least) concern with moving from USB to thunderbolt is that thunderbolt is a PCIe connection, with the same security issues as firewire (a device can basically access all your RAM, extract keys and passwords, plant exploits etc). By bundling that into the same form factor as the (by comparison) far safer USB and hdmi/displayport we're putting users at risk.
Why doesn't the USB consortium standardize (and, ideally, enforce) labeling of ports and cables by capabilities? Kind of like washing instructions labels on clothes, only printed on the cable.
The ports on a laptop wouldn't have to be physically labeled if the OS could display a list of their capabilities in a user-friendly manner. Or, perhaps, they should have the most important label (e.g. thunderbolt or not). Something the committee would decide.
Well the USB IF does have standard naming and labels for the protocols. The issue is that USB Type-C is a cable/port standard, not a protocol standard. Makers ought to label the USB Type-C port with the highest USB speed it can handle ("SuperSpeed" or "SuperSpeed+" typically) but they don't. And Apple left the Thunderbolt icon off the ports on the new MacBook Pro! So buyers have no immediate way to know if a MacBook supports USB 3.1 gen 1, 3.1 gen 2, or TB3. (hint: gen1)
How many color bands would you have to have one each end? The point of USB-C is that it can support many, many protocols. Labeling that is legitimately hard without a massive book.
At least some basic coloring would be nice. Let's say (For the sake of discussion) blue for USB-C (maybe a different shade for 5 ws 10GBits if you want), a black one for a Thunderbolt 3 connection, a white one that only has charging pins (hello Macbok Air cable). Still better than the mess we have now.
That's just the start of it. So the new MBP has what, four USB-C ports.
Can I put power into all of them?
What if I try to do 4xHDMI for all of them?
Surely I can't connect four external graphics cards over Thunderbolt 3? Can I chain Thunderbolt devices?
The author also missed the "audio accessory mode". That's right, in some unique star constellation, some of these USB-C pins can be repurposed for pumping out analog audio!
Supported? Who knows.
I think before long every USB-C accessory will have to come with some sort of EEPROM that the host reads first to figure out 1) what is this you are plugging in and 2) is this going to work. So that there is at least some user feedback instead of "plain doesn't work" or "oopsie now the port is dead".
> All USB-C to USB-C cables are considered full-featured USB Type-C cables and must be active, electronically marked cables that contain a chip with an ID function based on the configuration channel and vendor-defined messages (VDMs) from the USB Power Delivery 2.0 specification.
The answers to all of the questions in your second paragraph are easily available and in most cases the answer is yes (you can do 4x HDMI if they're 4K or less on the 15", 2k on the 13" - video card limitation, not port limitation).
Yes though it will only charge from one of them. A neat consequence of this is you can now connect multiple power supplies for redundancy. Not at all important for most people but there are some scenarios where it's nice feature to have available.
And here I am wishing HD-BaseT would catch on, but I don't think the people behind that (and USB-C) have any intention of actually making our lives easier -- it's just to having something new to sell :(
This strikes me as being the same situation as hdmi cabling. Anyone who has bought a 1080p tv then a 3D tv then a 4K tv then an hdr tv knows that not all hdmi cables are made equally. This is not great, but it's very far from a nightmare.
Is the long term dongle free? C to C everywhere? My TV could have USB-C instead of HDMI ports. I could use the same cable I use for charging my phone to hook my laptop up to the TV.
This solves the cable problem (every cable should support the full spec) but it doesn't quite solve the support question. Just because I have a cable that works between my phone and TV doesn't mean it will actually do anything.
I hope so. It also solves the hub or dock problem in one go. I just get back to my desk, plug in one USB-C cable and I now have all of my devices plugged in.
The USB 3.1 gen1 and gen2 thing still really boggles my mind. It's almost as if the USB-IF was trying to confuse people. Who retroactively renames a standard?
Yeah it's one of the stupidest choices they made. Also, the idea that not all cables must support 100W (20V, 5A) so now the cheap chinese cables are all going to report they can but will catch fire the instant they do.
Disagree. This is an engineering failure. You have to look at reality; it's often not easy to tell what kind of cable you are planning to use. Any command line interaction is decidedly more involved than the typical user plugging in a cable. This type of interaction should have been planned for and mitigated.
It has to do with designing a system to be used by people. UNIX is a system designed to be used by people.
- "Any command line interaction is decidedly more involved than the typical user plugging in a cable."
Right. "The typical user plugging a cable". I expect the user to become a "typical user" after learning how to choose and use a cable, and getting acquainted with his hardware and software. One is not born a typical user, as you seem to imply (plugging a cable is not a complex task). It is. Everything is complex. Using the command line is complex, and then you factor your "typical uses" into aliases or scripts.
Or maybe you curl | bash scripts from the web, and then cry when they fail / your box catches internet aids.
Or you use an ipad for all the computing you do, and expect things to just work.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 302 ms ] thread"MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) The two right-hand ports deliver Thunderbolt 3 functionality, but have reduced PCI Express bandwidth."
In the end, what's really going to dictate how this shakes out is what chipset manufacturers decide to do. And there aren't as many of those as there used to be. Most likely, eventually, all intel chipsets are going to do thunderbolt 3 over usb type-c and everyone else will follow.
Apple could have solved this by connecting a PCIe switch to the root complex and attaching both Thunderbolt controllers below it, but that would have consumed additional energy. Alternatively they could have used a beefier CPU with more PCIe root ports on the CPU, but I guess those available would have been too energy hungry. Which kind of means this is Intel's fault for not providing a low-energy chip with enough PCIe root ports on the CPU.
I'm wondering what the situation is like on the 15" version with discrete graphics. This would require 3 root ports directly on the CPU to drive both Thunderbolt controllers and the GPU with full speed, I assume that's indeed the case since it's not mentioned in the document.
Another thing not mentioned in the document is that energy consumption will be suboptimal if one device is attached on both sides of the machine because it prevents one of the Thunderbolt controllers from powering down. One should connect both devices on one side to improve battery life.
Edit: On Skylake the PCH is apparently optional, the functionality is mostly integrated into the CPU, so the limitation is really the number of lanes provided by the CPU, and this wasn't sufficient to connect both Thunderbolt controllers with 4x. The CPUs used in the 13" model all have 12 lanes, the ones in the 15" model have 16 lanes. So for the top-of-the-line model this could be 4x for each of the Thunderbolt controllers, 4x for the GPU, 2x for the SSD, 1x for Wifi, 1x for HD Audio?
I mean, I'm not sure how you can get 40 GBit/s with 4x PCIE 3.0 in the first place, every quote I find says 32 GBit/s. Maybe there is that much overhead in Thunderbolt.
But surely 4x40 Gbit/s would require 16 lanes at least. I don't think Intel makes any consumer CPUs with more than 16.
I've got an ivybridge i7 with 40 lanes right now in my system.
My understanding is that that's total bandwidth across all protocols. So the mix of Displayport and PCIe 3.0 can't exceed 40 GBit/s. The 4x PCIe 3.0 on it's own is 32 Gbit/s, as you mentioned.
Each controller provides two Thunderbolt ports, which share bandwidth. For the 15", 4x PCIe to the left side Thunderbolt controller, 4x PCIe to the right side Thunderbolt controller, and 8x to the GPU would be a sensible configuration. Though who knows if Apple took this approach.
4x Thunderbolt + 4x Thunderbolt + 8x GPU, with everything else on the PCH would make sense for the 15". Or maybe they connected the SSD (also 4x PCIe) to the CPU, and one of the Thunderbolt controllers to the PCH.
Hopefully they used the full set of CPU lanes. Most laptop manufacturers have a tendency to under utilize the CPU lanes and put things on the bandwidth constrained PCH for some reason.
It’s just not your problem because, really, how many people are going to be inconvenienced by the right Thunderbolt ports being slightly slower than the left Thunderbolt ports?
And now the near-future seems to be full of dongles, shame.
[UPDATE] Well, I stand corrected. It is actually possible to stuff a USB A connector into an ethernet socket. (You learn something new every day.) But come on, folks, telling the difference between a USB socket and an ethernet socket is really not that hard. You don't even have to look, you can do it by feel. But all these different USB-C/Thunderbolt ports are physically identical. They are literally and by design impossible to distinguish.
Not necessarily. Ethernet jacks are often wide enough that a USB-A plug can be partially inserted, and it's pretty common to stack the two types of ports. If one isn't looking directly at the connector (common when dealing with the back side of a tower or docking station), it's a surprisingly easy mistake to make.
This isn't completely new, a lot of non-standard USB hardware needed a driver (possibly in userspace) to work. However it is going to be much wider.
I think we will need to find methods to advertising to consumers how to figure out if things work together. The single port solution is technically superior but there are definitely human disadvantages that I think we can overcome with a little work.
Ah yes, the old proof that USB-A connectors exist in the 4th dimension. :)
No, it proves that USB-A connectors have half-integer spin:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spin-%C2%BD&oldid...
"logo up or to the left"
All these old adages will be lost in Internet Time, like tears in the rain...
And sometimes it takes a long time to look for the logo (both side has different logo etc.)
That's not necessarily a bad thing. With the right dongle you can now connect almost anything you want to a laptop. It was just a few years ago that it was simply impossible to connect some devices externally or at minimum there was a major performance penalty.
It's somewhat funny that not only will you have to carry dongles for everything for a few years time, but also make sure you carry the right USB-C cables, as your friend's might not work. Yay we have superlight laptops, but need to carry a backpack full of spaghettied cables.
It's a nice concept but it does not work well under linux. Most times I plug in the dock, a random port will not work.
[1] http://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62LL/A/lg-ultrafine-5k-...
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital-av...
You can pass power through it and it adds USB-A and HDMI.
You're not sacrificing anything. The old MBP had two usb ports and the new one has 3 available while charging. The only thing that has changed is now you can use the charging port for IO when not charging. Framing this as a "sacrifice" doesn't make any sense.
>make sure you carry the right USB-C cables, as your friend's might not work
With the old Magsafe chargers, and for laptop chargers in general, it's the same deal. If you want to charge your laptop, you have to bring your charger. The fact that the charger is USB-C doesn't make the situation worse.
But assuming you're a professional, you either already have a bluetooth mouse/trackpad or you'll want some quality and order a mouse from a reputable brand.
So I have to admit it's indeed very, very slim pickings.
On top of this I find it weird that people say they have to carry 20 Apple branded dongles. Depending on your use-case there is already type-c usb hubs with HDMI Ports, or Ethernet Ports, or both.[1]
The thing is, I love the USB-C TB3 Ports and I love Apple's decision to drag the industry kicking and screaming into a reality where an Office can have a Monitor that is a Thunderbolt 3 Hub, connected with Ethernet and peripherals, that work with both Windows and Mac. This will revolutionize flex-desk setups for big organizations and Co-Workingspaces everywhere. Imo it's worth to have this transition period where people drag a dongle with them to achieve this.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Resolution-Aluminum-MacBook-ChromeBoo...
Belkin, Elgato, OWC and others sell them. I use the Belkin one and it works great.
I don't think this is going to be as big a deal as people say. Honestly, the biggest beef I have is removing the SD card slot, because I do a lot of photo/video work.
I think it depends on the type of user you are. If you're a true "mobile user", it's probably not a big deal, because you put a value on mobility over other stuff.
If you treat your laptop as a "portable desktop", it can get annoying. The ability to not have dongles for everything is one less thing to think about. Yes, it's not the end of the world to have dongles, but if you're used to not needing dongles, being forced to use them is going to make you unhappy.
Either you're mobile and need the USB ports, or stationary and there's a hub there. What use case am I missing?
I don't know of a monitor that doesn't require a USB A-B cable to provide USB, so you're looking at three $70 adapters, plus three USB A-B cables. Sure maybe all that lives at the office. It's still less convenient.
I still can't get over the fact that you can't plug your new iPhone 7 into your new Macbook Pro without a dongle.
It seems like in the new USB-C world, I'd only have to connect one cable. Bonus points if it's sturdier than mini-DP and less flaky than MagSafe. Sure beats those weird-ass proprietary docks that used to be common ~10 years ago.
That's something I've never seen properly explained. Can you charge at 100W at the same time as using Thunderbolt 3 connectivity? It strikes me as unlikely since the power delivery and the signaling would have to share the same pins/wires.
Edit: I stand corrected after seeing that new LG monitor. Now I'm just curious how it works. Even PoE can't deliver 100w and Thunderbolt 3 uses much higher speeds while having to inject power.
1) PoE only uses two pairs of wires for transmitting current, USB-C PD uses four pairs.
2) Ethernet cables are rated for much longer lengths, show me a 100m USB cable.
3) Ethernet is typically run in walls and more often than not is grouped into bundles, so heat dissipation is an issue.
4) PoE delivers power at ~50v, USB-C PD does 20v.
Also, piggybacking on the other commenter's reply, PoE voltage is carried on the same wires that are transmitting data (for 1000Base-T anyway)
It also has two pairs of unshielded twisted pair for non-superspeed (USB 2.0) though only one pair is used in the cable apparently; which USB 2 channel you get depends on which way the cable is plugged in I guess.
It has a pair for sideband use. A pair for configuration and control.
The data primarily travels over the four high-speed differential signal pairs; two TX pairs and two RX pairs.
All USB 3 cables must have a chip in them. It communicates over the C&C channel to select how the high-speed pairs are used. When a display is connected, one TX/RX set are used for USB 3 and the other for DisplayPort.
USB 3 also supports "alternate" modes, so the C&C can negotiate that all high-speed pairs are used for Thunderbolt which is just the PCI-Express bus. Intel added the ability to interleave DisplayPort packets with the PCI-Express data. I assume that displays with USB 3 built-in are simply connecting a PCI-E USB hub to the Thunderbolt interface since in that mode there is no actual USB signal in the cable. USB 2 can use the dedicated signal pair for that and not interfere with DisplayPort or Thunderbolt traffic.
Thunderbolt is a nicer standard in some ways - interleaving means if you aren't using a 16bpp 5K display at max refresh rate you have more bandwidth available for other devices. With USB 3 you get half the available bandwidth if you connect a display. Thunderbolt is also old-school in the sense that it projects the CPU's bus to external peripherals... something all early computers used to do. Everything old is new again!
It is obvious USB-3 was very forward-looking. The C&C channel means some future version of the standard can drop USB-2 support and start connecting the unconnected pair if both ends negotiate for it. Now you have an extra TX/RX channel to give you +50% bandwidth. You can also imagine taking over the side channel pins. If you assume the next-gen standard can double USB-3's 10Gbps and add in double the data pairs that would be 40Gbps which matches Thunderbolt 3. Apply the same math to Thunderbolt and that's 160Gbps.
> I still can't get over the fact that you can't plug your new iPhone 7 into your new Macbook Pro without a dongle.
You've never been able to though? There is a USB-C to Lightning cable.
I think it was more a complaint about the fact that you'd have to buy an additional adapter to be able to connect the two.
I'll be picking up one of the $60-100 hubs/docks that have a single USB-C connector and HDMI/Ethernet/USB-A to connect all of my devices. When the monitors are cheaper in 4 years I'll buy one of those.
My point was that we're actually moving to a really good solution where you can plug in a single, non-proprietary cable and get all the throughput and peripheral connectors you could ever need. It's not even particularly expensive compared to a dock 5-10 years ago.
That describes my workplace. (But with two rather than three monitors.) Standard monitors that operate over HDMI/DVI/etc don't have USB hubs without a separate USB connection, most keyboards are the same way.
> Either you're mobile and need the USB ports, or stationary and there's a hub there. What use case am I missing?
Sure, you can work around the lack of IO by buying a hub, but the point was that previously you would not have needed yet another dongle.
There aren't that many good one's. What I would need would be one which handle's at least, 4-6 USB, two HDMI, Ethernet and charging would be a bonus.
The display was the soul of the desktop Mac. It's easier to perceive your Macbook as another PC when your window into it is another mostly generic-looking LG display, even if the panel in the Apple branded display was manufactured by LG.
Perhaps they want to focus on the iMac again and don't want the MBP + display combo to cannibalize it. But again, with extreme focus soon they'll be abandoning the iMac for good.
(I still love macOS and I enjoy how the new MBP looks)
This has all happened before with the original iMac. And it was universally seen in the long run as one of the best decisions they made.
Monitor-as-dock makes a great deal of sense for the roving user with a fixed base.
I would be happy if an adapter exists for this job. The monitor needn't natively support DisplayPort.
came up in a quick search. Looks good to me!
But your run of the mill Dell office monitors do have a USB hub, most often 2 ports on the back panel for keyboard/mouse and 2 ports on the side for flash drives and other transient accessories.
colanderman's point is that you should get a USB cable and use that hub instead of individually plugging everything into the laptop. Three video connections and one hub connection gets you all the connectivity you need at a desk. If you're mobile, you'll certainly need less.
At work I have an Apple monitor that has multiple USB ports and an Ethernet port on the back of it. I think it has speakers too. All that and the display run across the mini-DP connection. Again, not exactly run-of-the-mill, but well within the price range of Apple's target market, and given Apple's push in that direction, it's liable to be commonplace in a couple years anyway.
And they can all be 4k.
Second of all, it's yet another dongle I have to carry around and potentially lose. There's often not a whole lot of room on stage, so space is precious.
Thirdly, those dongles that convert video are usually slow garbage. If I am performing as a VJ, I need the video to be frame-synced and perfectly synced to the music without lag. I can do that just fine on my current MBP (run 3 monitors at once from the ports built-in to the computer. That's specifically why I bought it.) And now I can do that just fine from some Asus laptop since Apple doesn't seem to want my business anymore.
Plus, it has an additional 3 USB-C ports, meaning you plug one cable in to your Macbook Pro, and you are left with a total of 6 USB-C slots free, which you don't need because power is provided over the same cable anyway...
[1] http://www.apple.com/shop/product/HKN62LL/A/lg-ultrafine-5k-...
The old Apple Lightning Display was a nice everything-dock.
It has exactly what you want: hook it up with USB-C, and on the back it has ethernet, three USB-A, audio in and audio out. Fantastic thing. Resolution is 2560x1440. http://images.philips.com/is/image/PhilipsConsumer/258B6QUEB...
But I still think it's a net win because:
- We need to buy and manage fewer cables.
- We'll no longer have the problem of having a free port, but not the right kind.
- When we buy a device, we don't have to decide which ports it should plug into. Like, when I buy a monitor, I don't have to decide whether it should have DisplayPort, HDMI, both or either.
That's not really correct regarding MacBooks. If you've got the same Magsafe adapter (gen 1 or gen 2) the charger will work. It just charges at a faster or slower rate than intentional.
IMO, that's the real potential of this style of multi-use connector.
I am the "tech guy" for my circle of friends. Apple has lost all recommendations from me.
Maybe your friends need a new tech guy.
USB-A is certainly ubiquitous, which is a good thing. But it was never going to last forever. USB-C vastly improves on the physical design (reversible, symmetric, easier insertion, etc.) and I expect will carry us forward for even longer than USB-A has.
Thus Apple and everyone else are moving towards adopting USB-C, which means there will be ever more widespread and cheap docking and peripheral options. Yes, these transitions are painful but at least there are dongles this time, which hasn't always been the case. Such transitions are also a part of living during the historically amazing times of an accelerated tech curve. Enjoy that while it lasts!
The MBP is not bleeding edge on that curve, it is (kind of, sort of) near the top-ish. They made a lot of changes for the Future! without adding, you know, actual cutting edge components (from ram to the cpu/gpu chip(s)).
The whole thing breaks down further when you compound this new (old) hardware with the problems macOS will inevitably have. As each release, in my experience, has had significant issues for months with sometimes show stopping bugs. Can't wait to be served an ad on that shitty little screen...
I added an SSD and upgraded the memory to 8GB and it's more than fast enough for everything the normal person would do outside of kids that are trying to game (in which case you shouldn't be buying a laptop anyway).
In my case, mobility wasn't a requirement, so a desktop was fine.
If mobility is a requirement for you, maybe you could buy an iPad Pro or a cheaper laptop than you otherwise would buy, like the single-port Macbook.
[1] It wasn't available in India, and even if it was, it wasn't compatible with most Macbooks. The single model it was compatible with, it required two cables to be plugged in. And the monitor would have been out-of-date quickly, since it didn't support Thunderbolt 3.
The MacBook Escape—which history says will be the most popular new MacBook Pro by far—has only two USB-C ports and a phono jack. There are no other ports at all.
https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-po...
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207256
Quote: "60W is fine unless you're pegging your CPU/GPU constantly."
Translation: Your house will only burn down if your laptop goes into a busy loop.
"MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) and MacBook (13-inch, Late 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports) draw up to 60W."
…
"You should not connect any power supply that exceeds 100W, as it might damage your Mac.
"Using a power supply that doesn't provide sufficient power can result in slow or delayed charging. It's best to use the power supply that came with your Mac.
"MacBook Pro can receive a maximum of 60W of power through the Apple USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter or USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter. For the best charging performance on MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016), connect the power supply directly to your Mac."
Source: Apple https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207256
Sure a bad USB-C cable that doesn't negotiate properly may be a danger, but likely the Macbook simply won't charge on such a cable.
I trust Apple knows what they're dealing with (in regards to poor 3rd party cabling) and not end up like a Note7 situation.
https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-po...
It's not Thunderbolt 3 compatible yet but making a version that is would appear to be a no-brainer.
You can pump 100 watts through a 60W rated cable - it will probably work because the rule is "users are dumbasses, rate it for 60 on paper and 120 in reality".
Or it could heat up, maybe to the point of damage.
> In the box: BreakSafe USB-C cable with quick disconnect magnetic connector
See slides 7&9 here specifically: http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/PD_1.0_Introduct...
More details here: http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/
https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/TkAnhK84TT7
There is nothing in the cable that would prevent the current from flowing.
The safe thing is to use wire from a vendor that rates it honestly to conservatively, and start within the ratings.
Please do not post such dangerous unsubstantiated comments which illustrate your lack of understanding of basic electronics principles. Recommending a cable rated for 60W for an 87W scenario puts peoples lives at risk. Nothing "magical" about that either.
You are unconsciously incompetent. Take a USB cable and touch both ends to the terminals on your car battery if you want a dramatic learning experience. Wear gloves, long sleeves, and eye protection.
Also, your dramatic learning experience is dumb, shorting a car battery will do probably do a few hundred amperes, two orders of magnitute more than in any laptop charger ever...
(That's why out-of-spec cables are dangerous)
The charger offers 87W because it is meant to be able to provide enough power to charge the battery while the CPU/GPU/external devices run at 100%.
The worst you are going to experience with 60W while everything is running at 100% is that the battery isn't charging or charging very slow.
If you're running on the dedicated GPU with high load, a smaller adapter might not have enough power to charge the battery at all.
What I really want (and I'm prepared to pay up to $100 for) is a low-profile (near-flush-mount, maybe 3mm max) Magsafe 2 female to USB Type-C male adapter that I can leave permanently in one of the ports.
I've read that Apple have consistently declined to license the Magsafe patent, so I'd settle for a magsafe-like solution.
You can connect a single USB-C port to a monitor that has a USB-C video in. This monitor will then charge your Macbook and on top of that if the monitor has a built in USB hub it will also do that.
Or if your monitor doesn't support this then you can buy a dock/hub to which you connect your charger, monitors etc and the Mac with one cable.
For me personally that's what I've been missing most since I switched from Lenovo to Macs a few years ago - a docking station. For me plugging in only a single cable is as good as that.
I have an odd hypothesis about this --- the less time people spend charging/running from AC, which is inevitably going to happen when there is no separate power input that can be used easily, the more they'll be cycling the batteries, and the faster they'll wear out.
But I think that, as peripherals and other devices begin to switch over to USB-C, we'll eventually see dongle use become less and less common except for older peripherals and devices. And that's nothing new. Eventually, it'll go the way of the PS/2 port: included on motherboards, but not really used much (relatively speaking; the analogy breaks down a bit when you think of gamers and the mechanical keyboard community, where it still gets some use for n-key rollover).
Transitions between interfaces, as a matter of principle, suck. But we wind up going along with them because there's benefit to do so. I'm curious how this will play out in five, or even ten, years. Not that I want those years to speed by to find out :).
I'm worried about the DRM situation, myself. My suspicion is that all of the engineering effort that should have gone into ensuring cable quality and spec compliance is instead being spent on new, innovative ways to lock me out of my own hardware.
For every button apple removes they add at least one dongle.
On my 2015 Macbook Pro the port seems pretty finicky and requires fiddling with to get it to light up. The Magsafe connector on my Thunderbolt Display is even worse and a real lesson in patience. It's a Magsafe 1 port which requires a Magsafe 2 adapter - this thing is quite possibly the flakiest Apple hardware I've ever used - needing constant cleaning, fiddling with and blowing on. An absolute and utter piece of garbage - so yeah, I'm not going to miss Magsafe (version 2 at least). Although I suspect I might regret this statement the day I trip over my shiny Thunderbolt 3 cable...
Not every USB-A port, device, cable, and power supply are compatible. I'm not sure I understand what his point is. That people who refuse to do research are going to occasionally run into incompatibility problems? Like they have since the dawn of the computing age? And?
I'm sure that an out of spec USB 2 cable can cause damage as well.
(http://etherkiller.org/)
But see http://www.computerworld.com/article/3133627/technology-law-...
The really crazy thing is that there's very little reason to build crappy cables. Per unit, your savings from cutting major corners are as close to zero as you can get. Judging by Benson Leung's Surjtech[0] testing woes, even cutting out any QA testing to save money wouldn't be sufficient to explain all of the cable problems. QA testing certainly can't explain how you can completely forget to wire in the SuperSpeed wires despite labeling it as such. That's not the sort of thing to happen as a one-off. Losing your sales channels, facing potential class action lawsuits, and seeing your brand dragged through the mud all add up to far more significant costs.
The biggest problem, IMO, will be when USB-C becomes prevalent enough that we see the $1 cables in checkout lines and gas stations. If there's anywhere we're going to see bad cables being hocked, it's there. Hopefully by that point, manufacturers will have gotten burned enough that good QA will become the norm.
0. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds...
While strictly true and you could drag up some pretty bad abuses of USB A especially as used for mobile charging, the peripherals / protocols usually just work. But here, if you have a cable in your hand with a USB-C and a DisplayPort connector it's pretty much anyone's guess whether a) it'll work with the given machine at all b) if it does, which version of DP will be supported with the given machine.
I'm confused the scenario you're imagining in which someone both doesn't have their own, known good cable, and also is in a place that doesn't provide a cable, where displayport would even come into play.
I can think of exactly 0. If the projector needs a displayport capable usb-c, it's going to already be attached to the projector. If I need one for home, I'm going to buy one that supports it.
If there are 8 different cable types I'd rather have 8 different connectors, yes. Remember going around the office asking to borrow a cable to charge your 'phone and having to figure out micro vs mini vs sony's weird thing vs apple's weird thing? It was a bit silly but at least having physically different connectors meant that you could tell whether a given cable would charge your phone or not. Now it sounds like that's no longer true.
It's true that USB has always been a bit confusing, but now we have many, many more incompatibilities to worry about.
Wikipedia's "Examples of sensitivity to tetraphobia applied" section is interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia
This rush to be "thin" has required changing the physical ports, and has contributed heavily to this issue.
For a few years there will be confusion as cables/connectors/standards shake out, but it's gonna be awesome after that when we have super thin laptops that just use one connector.
Oh well, I'm a late-twenties dinosaur that still expects to be able to remove batteries and pop off panels to upgrade hard disks and RAM...
While most 1Gbps equipment can work in 10/100Mbps mode, most 10Gbps equipment can only downgrade to 1Gbps mode.
It's actually a pretty good comparison to USB-C - lots of different modes with one physical interface and many things that don't work quite right or have significant caveats.
Only occasionally they'll need to use a friend or coworker's device or cable and then there could be confusion. Although, even then, assuming the friend also has one of the most popular computers/phones/cables, it'll probably still work.
One really major (to me at least) concern with moving from USB to thunderbolt is that thunderbolt is a PCIe connection, with the same security issues as firewire (a device can basically access all your RAM, extract keys and passwords, plant exploits etc). By bundling that into the same form factor as the (by comparison) far safer USB and hdmi/displayport we're putting users at risk.
The ports on a laptop wouldn't have to be physically labeled if the OS could display a list of their capabilities in a user-friendly manner. Or, perhaps, they should have the most important label (e.g. thunderbolt or not). Something the committee would decide.
Can I put power into all of them? What if I try to do 4xHDMI for all of them? Surely I can't connect four external graphics cards over Thunderbolt 3? Can I chain Thunderbolt devices?
The author also missed the "audio accessory mode". That's right, in some unique star constellation, some of these USB-C pins can be repurposed for pumping out analog audio! Supported? Who knows.
I think before long every USB-C accessory will have to come with some sort of EEPROM that the host reads first to figure out 1) what is this you are plugging in and 2) is this going to work. So that there is at least some user feedback instead of "plain doesn't work" or "oopsie now the port is dead".
> All USB-C to USB-C cables are considered full-featured USB Type-C cables and must be active, electronically marked cables that contain a chip with an ID function based on the configuration channel and vendor-defined messages (VDMs) from the USB Power Delivery 2.0 specification.
[0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Type-C
[1] http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/
Also says nothing on the four external graphic cards, but frankly the answer is probably going to be no as well.
That's the principal problem here: there is now a port for things that the underlying hardware can't even offer.
Yes though it will only charge from one of them. A neat consequence of this is you can now connect multiple power supplies for redundancy. Not at all important for most people but there are some scenarios where it's nice feature to have available.
http://hdbaset.org/
This solves the cable problem (every cable should support the full spec) but it doesn't quite solve the support question. Just because I have a cable that works between my phone and TV doesn't mean it will actually do anything.
Also I don't think USB-C is the deciding factor here, it'll still have to use Tunderbolt to provide the hub functionality.
Having the higher data rate be "same name gen 2" is beyond dumb.
USB 3.1 gen1 => USB 3.1, USB 3.1 gen2 => USB 3.2
I don't know why they would do differently.
I know
- "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
is a thing, but so is
- "UNIX was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things, as that would also stop them from doing clever things."
This also has nothing to do with UNIX.
- "Any command line interaction is decidedly more involved than the typical user plugging in a cable."
Right. "The typical user plugging a cable". I expect the user to become a "typical user" after learning how to choose and use a cable, and getting acquainted with his hardware and software. One is not born a typical user, as you seem to imply (plugging a cable is not a complex task). It is. Everything is complex. Using the command line is complex, and then you factor your "typical uses" into aliases or scripts.
Or maybe you curl | bash scripts from the web, and then cry when they fail / your box catches internet aids.
Or you use an ipad for all the computing you do, and expect things to just work.
See: a typical everyday usecase: https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when
Did the user write "oogle.com" instead of google, and got malware? ....Inexcusable, as you said? Should it just work?
I say: "why did the user write oogle.com? Did he want malware?"
Simple stuff.