I bought a new 13" MBP with touchbar and I'm returning it on Monday. I don't like the keyboard and I _really_ don't like the touch bar, and I seem to only get about 3 hours of battery life. I'm going to stick with my early 2014 MacBook Air until Apple figures their stuff out.
The smaller battery is disappointing. Yep, the CPU uses less power but that only counts if your MBP is more or less idle. In the end, footprint matters and not thickness … Apple abandoned too much battery capacity IMHO.
The non-TB version is nice with a lower power CPU and a higher capacity battery, BUT only has 2 ports instead of 4, which is nothing short of absurd. They really screwed up on this front IMO.
Hell yeah! I sincerely regard those 2 ports on the cheaper model simply as hardware crippling. Much like AV manufacturers punish you by giving you less audio/hdmi ports if you go for their entry models.
What's the use case for needing 3 USB? Wherever you sit normally (home or work) just get a usb hub/dock and use the single connection to the laptop for keyboard, mouse, charging, and driving a monitor.
When out and about, when do you need 3? Can't ever recall seeing someone at a coffee shop, conference, etc needing 3 USBs.
Sometimes I work at home and hook my laptop up to my keyboard, mouse, monitor, and outlet at the same time. Admittedly I don't do this very often but it's nice to be able to do this as I need to.
I think the idea is you would have a USB-C hub that has all of those ports on it, so you come to your desk to work and plug in a single plug and away you go with charging/monitor/keyboard/mouse/ethernet.
3 seems like a minimum to me. Power, mouse (yeah, bluetooth, but the only ones I like require a dongle), and phone. My current laptop has two USB ports, and it covers about 99% of my needs, but it's also frequently full.
Yes, I've been hearing about the battery life from several people now. I was very excited to get one but I tried it at the store and really didn't like the keyboard. If, in the future apple just decides to do the whole keyboard as a screen, then I guess I'll just have to always use an external keyboard.
The keyboard feels like a plastic tube – including about the same noise. I'm glad that my student days are over and I don't use my MBP in the library anymore!
I have one of those: Lenovo Yoga Book - the virtual keyboard uses haptic feedback, and I actually like it less than the new MacBook Pro keyboards.
That said, while I feel that the new keyboard is slightly better than the last new keyboard, the sound of it makes me want to rip the keys out - it is very loud in a not-so-good way.
It took me a couple of days to get used to the Macbook keyboard. I had a similar transition time the last time Apple made a major change in their keyboards.
I'm kind of astonished at how many people turn their noses up at different things based on a first impression, even in groups that you might consider early adopters of tech.
> I'm kind of astonished at how many people turn their noses up at different things based on a first impression, even in groups that you might consider early adopters of tech.
Some early adopters of tech don't enjoy enduring regressions, and can see the regression from a mile and a month away.
I'm especially grumpy when I see absurd, hyperbolic marketing used to sell anti-consumer regressions.
Doesn't this just support his point? You're more or less saying that you wrote off the keyboard as a regression at least a month before having the opportunity to even try it.
I've used the keyboard for a week at this point and at this point have completely adapted to it. It doesn't feel like a regression to me at all.
Maybe keyboards were already à solved problem. People had no desire for change here. I find recent Apple quite off its market. They push markers higher because it was 'apple genius' before, without checking if the crowd still Dreams about that. A bit lazy and Self centered.
This is a terrible attitude for a technologist to have. Cellphones were a "solved problem" before the first iPhone came out. Laptop monitors were a "solved problem" before the first retina MacBook Pro came out. Look where we are now.
Of course, this doesn't mean every change made to an existing technology will be an improvement and/or be embraced right away and by everyone, but I see it as a Good Thing that a major technology player is still experimenting with things that everyone else has written off as "already solved."
Cellphones I can agree, retina display not at all. This was not just about technology but how Apple is approaching its products. Latest MBP felt too much like technology solving non problems: bestest trackpad (too big, "no" palmrest), thinnest keyboard (no tactile feedback, needs to spend 1s on ensuring your fingers are at the right location), dynamic touchbar: too dynamic, forces people to leave the content and focus down. All this surrounded by this feel that what Apple did since the iPod/iPhone, cross coupling all their technological improvements along their product line (ipod helped the iphone, iphone helped the macbook air, etc etc) is now applied blindly because it worked before and Apple has to occupy the terrain and grab the spotlight.
I didn't want to say this, but indeed calling someone with a 2016 smartphone isn't quite an improvement. If I was a genius, I'd retrofit my old Motorola v50 with few sensors and wifi capabilities.
That's reading a lot into my words. I was happy to "get used" to the new keyboard because I thought it was awesome that my laptop had become thinner and lighter... two things that I value more than having a keyboard that might be slightly better.
To me that sounds like you're the target market for what was the Air, or what is now the MacBook. The MacBook Pro is their top of the line and shouldn't be diminishing something as important as the keyboard which people use all day for an extra mm off the thickness. They've crossed the line on form over function.
Thinner and lighter only matter when carrying it around. Keyboards matter when you're using the computer. Most folks who use their computer 8 hours or more a day that I know tend to do more with the keyboard than they ever do lugging it around. So the keyboard really matters, even in small increments.
I'm also going to make what I think is a reasonable assumption and say that a vast majority of folks are going to carry their laptops around in bags. In which case, the 7 ounces saved (for reference sake, this is about the same weight as a 45 watt power brick, minus the extension cord) is nearly meaningless, and the half inch on each dimension will be completely meaningless.
The difference between 13" and 15" for size and weight is much greater than the size and weight savings afforded by the new keyboard. Also, both the 13" and 15" MacBook Pros have the same keyboard.
On a side note, I think that a 13" monitor hits a sweet spot. It fits in a lot of bags, has just enough screen size to be productive without requiring an external monitor, and the performance difference between 13" and 15" computers is usually quite small (if it exists at all).
> The difference between 13" and 15" for size and weight is much greater than the size and weight savings afforded by the new keyboard. Also, both the 13" and 15" MacBook Pros have the same keyboard.
It's a cumulative process. My first Macbook was a white 13.3" polycarb core 2 duo. The new 15" MBP is a pound lighter, almost half as thick, and only half an inch deeper and an inch wider. Samsung has a 15" laptop that's under 3 pounds, making it very palatable even for people used to a 13"-er.
At what point along that evolution should Apple have stopped striving to get smaller?
Actually no. You have to get used to any keyboard that's functionally different from the previous one. It's very common in the mech keyboard communities.
You get a rock out of your shoe and it feels like a relief. But to me, going back to a keyboard with a lot of key travel feels like walking around in deep snow.
I tried switching to the 12" earlier this year. I ended up giving up due to the poor performance of the machine relative to my needs, but I did get used to the keyboard - once I got used to it, was able to pretty fast on it. (Then again, my work and home setups feature Das Keyboard Pros, one brown, one blue switches)
When I first saw the touchbar, I immediately thought of a plastic, overheating, underpowered piece of crap laptop you find at any Retail store. Literally looking at that touchbar makes me think of having to uninstall 20 HP bloatware apps from a family's shiny new craptop.
My experience with two 2015 rMBPs and an Air has shown that for light work, 10 hours is a completely reasonable estimate, which matches what Apple estimates.
Of course driving an external monitor, streaming video from the Internet, and using your computer for more than just word processing and web browsing, your system will use more power.
Ditto on the 2015 rMBP. The moment you get beyond light work you're looking at 5 hours but for light internet browsing it really does push towards 10. It's awesome.
Well, my almost an year and a half old Dell Inspiron 5558 gives me 5 to 6 hours (gave 7 to 8 when new) with just web browsing. I don't think that's all that great.
And mind you, I am the kind of person who has managed to accrue about 13 months of hard disk head flying hours according to the SMART stats so the battery isn't exactly in a good condition.
With AS? Yeesh. Mine (previous gen) will drain in about 2 hours with that or PyCharm open. IntelliJ stuff is super power-hungry unless you put it in power-save mode (and then it's not even as useful as a "plain" editor like sublime text or something).
I mean, I like all the power-hungry features, and I'm usually plugged in - I'd prefer they keep adding useful things rather than worry about my battery. But it does hurt at times :)
Did you double check that Spotlight isn't still indexing, etc.?
Also, for what it's worth, I love the new keyboard. It took me a few days to get used to it but just yesterday I measured myself typing on it at 130 wpm, the same speed I can do on normal keyboards. It's very satisfyingly clicky.
No, I decided that the keyboard is terrible. Does anyone that agree with you have hands-on experience and anyone that disagrees got its facts off the internet?
It was more a comment on internet group-think and how people on places like reddit become an echo chamber where people complain about things they haven't even tried themselves.
It is a perfectly reasonable opinion to like or not like the keyboard, if you have actually tried it for a while.
Same here. I find it, on the other hand, very plausible that some people will like it, in theory, but a lot of the good things I heard about the keyboard seem to come from people who just received their computer. I generally take those kind of feedbacks with a grain of salt as the buyers remorse bias is now a very well understood phenomenon :D
Just to add some anecdata: I tested the keyboard for 10 minutes with TypeRacer in an Apple Store and I found it to be OK. The clicking certainly does provide enough feedback and since I am used to mechanical keyboards it also does not bother me how loud it is (I actually like loud keyboards). I also liked the short key travel.
I remember when I first got my MacBook with the Force Touch trackpad (that doesn't physically move but instead using haptics to simulate the 'click' feeling) and how much I hated it initially. The illusion of the click worked fine, it just wasnt nearly as strong enough. A week later and I love it and hate the previous buttons which just feel mushy and archaic.
Similar story with iPhone 7 home button, except I've just come to accept it and ignore it but wish we still had a proper physical home button.
Making any judgments like this on battery life after a single day or even a few days of use is VERY unwise.
The main reason is that your system needs to index your entire drive; this will require MUCH more power than typical power use until this process is complete. Should give a new system at least a week to shake out before freaking out about battery life.
I've also noticed the battery life is quite bad. My first one might have been defective as it only gave about 3 hours of battery life (from the in computer estimate), which is the same as my 4 year old 2012 macbook pro.
Second 13" touch bar machine now reports about 5 hours, which is still not great.
I've been on the non-touch 13" for about a week now and I'm really happy with it. I moved over from a 2012 11" MBA. The form factor of the 13" is great for grabbing 30 minutes here and there during travel to do some work.
Battery life is good, and 16GB is a big step up from the 8GB I had on the MBA. I've been running a decent-sized system in minikube with no problems.
The only issue I still seem to have is that Hangouts absolutely obliterates the battery. A one-hour call took battery life from 9:45 to 1:15!
I bought a 13" MBP with the Touch Bar too, and I am also getting bad battery life, on the order of 3-5 hours depending on the workload. I've ordered a 13" without the Touch Bar in hopes that the lower wattage CPU, lack of the Touch Bar, and bigger batter will result in much more battery life.
I'd honestly love to use my laptop's Ethernet dongle with my iPad or iPhone, but that won't happen. Apple has just recently doubled down on Lightning with the Apple TV Remote, the iPhone 7 headphones and the new Magic Trackpad/Mouse/Keyboard trio. For iPad accessories, they've even introduced the all-new Smart Connector instead of a USB-C port on the side of the iPad.
You can't be serious in thinking PCs haven't started offering USB-C ports. Go to MicroCenter or Fry's and try to find a motherboard for a current-gen proc without USB-C.
Most modern motherboards have USB-C, but they treat it as a special case -- you typically get one or two USB-C ports at best, and the rest are type A. (Often, some of those are even USB2.)
Probably a chicken-egg thing. I, for one, don't have a single USB-C device at home. Zero. Nothing that can plug into a USB-C port without an adapter. No plans to buy anything that does, unless I'm forced to by computer/phone manufacturers. I would be... unenthusiastic about a motherboard that emphasized USB-C over other ports. Includes it, so I have the option to start transitioning? Sure.
Work's similar. There are a couple USB-C Android phones floating around, but the other end of their cables is—drum roll—USB-A.
I think that's my point. PC vendors are slow to change. Not to worry, 2017 will be the breakout year for usb-c. Several hundred million phones will ship with it:
PC vendors can't afford to tell users to throw away all of their accessories every time a sexier connector comes along. Some other vendor will include a ps/2 port or a parallel port or USB type A and if buyers want to keep using the stuff they have, they'll buy the new computer that has the ports they want. Apple can do whatever because if you buy the old model for better ports, you're still buying from them.
Absolutely no one said that they need to replace all their legacy ports. Adding a couple of the small USB-C ports to the front and back is all that's needed on desktops. On laptops, putting one on each side should be doable.
A computer that you buy today will last 7-10 years. I guarantee that there will be lots of USB-C devices in 3 years.
Same here. After giving it quite a bit of thought, the only project of mine that could foreseeably benefit from USB C is the little peltier minifridge I keep a few cans of soda in, currently running off of a USB 3 connection, which isn't quiiiite enough power to keep things as cold as I'd like.
Which is exactly what this generation MBP should have done— maintained 2 conventional USB ports and the HDMI port, and then included two new USB-C ports.
That would have been a far better and gentler transition.
> The new charging block that comes with the MBP looks exactly the same as any traditional MBP charger
Actually not, the convenient little 'arms' for the cord are missing. And the cord itself is rather stiff and not very flexible … and there's no green / red charging status light either. It's OK as a USB-C charger but it looks and feels different from a traditional MBP charger.
The "arms" on MagSafe adapters are actually bad for the cable - wrapping it around them puts undue stress on the cable, which causes them to fray faster. And a stiff/inflexible cable should also prevent it from fraying.
Seems like Apple took an proprietary, easily-damaged charging cable and replaced it with a standard, less easy to damage one.
The charging indicator light is a definite loss, though.
As someone who took good care of my MacBook charging adaptors and cables, I found them to be perfectly durable. Those arms are only problematic when one wraps the cable 'immediately', instead of giving an extra loop and then beginning the winding.
>Those arms are only problematic when one wraps the cable 'immediately', instead of giving an extra loop and then beginning the winding.
True, but I've literally never seen anyone do that in public. I do (the 2 times I've done so), one coworker does, everyone else grabs and wraps as quickly and tightly as possible.
They can be used "safely", but the affordance isn't there. It practically begs to be misused. Bad design in a nutshell.
I'm away from my laptop at the moment so I can't see which brand/model I have exactly, but there are a number of accessories for chargers that I find more convenient than the built-in arms, especially because I use the "long" power cable. It's something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Organizer-Macbook-Power-Adapter...
TL; DR: "USB-C all the things" is great... if you use android phones.
Author conveniently avoids mentioning that the charger is another usability step back (no more plastic hooks to keep cable tidy), or that those external USB-C batteries are not really powerful enough to give you anything but a handful of extra minutes, or that, er, Apple's own phone doesn't get any of these wonderful improvements. and of course...
> You can buy tiny little USB-C adapters
It's well-known that the current quality of USB-C cables and adapters is very random, to say the least, up to and including serious electrical damage.
Interoperability is good, but it looks like Apple just introduced a new series of trade-offs that are sub-optimal. Regardless, to say that a laptop is great "for hackers" because it has USB (A,B,C, whatever) ports is just silly. I mean, you can't even change your hard drive here.
Yes. The title could have been "USB Type-C is kind of great for hackers", but would that get the same amount of readers? Probably not.
I think the next iPhone will have USB-C. It would make little sense for Apple to commit this heavily on the laptop side while keeping their proprietary connector in their phones.
This entire article is raving about a single, relatively small but important detail that Apple has been notoriously hostile towards and worst at up until now: cross-manufacturer port compatibility. So hostile that they went out of their way to find ridiculous loopholes in their compliance with the EU's Common EPS Memorandum of Understanding on USB-B.
Yes, it's a great feature, but giving Apple so much credit for introducing it is the ultimate irony.
The EC organized a voluntary Memorandum of Understanding for mobile phone chargers, where the major phone companies stated their intent to standardize on a common phone charger. (depending on who you ask, to avoid the EU making a binding rule about it otherwise)
Apple signed this too, but as we all know didn't actually add a micro-USB-B connector to their phones like everybody else, but just providing an adapter to USB, which was not forbidden, but arguably against the spirit of the memorandum.
Citing wikipedia, Some observers, noting Apple's continued use of proprietary, non-micro USB charging ports on their smartphones, suggested Apple was not in compliance with the 2009 Common EPS Memorandum of Understanding. The European Commission however, confirmed that all MoU signatories, "have met their obligations under the MoU,"[15] stating specifically, "Concerning Apple's previous and present proprietary connectors and their compatibility with the agreement, the MoU allows for the use of an adaptor without prescribing the conditions for its provision"
I would disagree with their choice if micro-USB wasn't so lousy mechanically.. I've had more Micro-USB devices fail due to socket failure, than anything else.
I don't know the specs of the new MBPs, but my mid-2015 MBP's battery is 7530 mAh at full charge. You can get portable charger batteries that are much more than that these days; this one [1] is 26,800 mAh, which in theory could charge my MBP 3.5 times. In practice, less than that, but still probably at least two full charges.
You can't directly compare mAh values, as they're an unit of electric charge. The amount of energy depends on voltage, too. Power bank manufacturers are basically running a marketing scam; the batteries they sell have 3.7V while USB uses 5V. What's more, the MBP battery voltage is something around 12V.
So the 26,800 mAh power bank has a capacity of 26,800 mAh * 3.7V = 99,600 mWh = 99.6 Wh of energy. Meanwhile, the 15" MBP has a 76 Wh battery. So theoretically you can do about 1.3 charges; realistically I'd say one full charge.
A Macbook Pro (or indeed any laptop) battery operates at a voltage much higher than that of your phone or a powerbank. The actual power available from the battery (in Wh) can therefore only be compared with another battery's quoted capacity if the voltage is taken into account.
A MBP battery might be a 11.1V battery, while a portable power bank capacity is almost certainly quoted as a summation of the capacities of the 3.7V cells inside. The capacity of the power bank must therefore be divided by 3 to give the equivalent capacity in mAh at 11.1V.
The largest Mi power bank is 16000+ mAh, smallest is 5000. MPB is 6000, phone is about 3500. So you could get about 1 or 2 charges depending on battery size of course.
The macs battery is about 50 or so watt hours, your average $40 external battery is around 70. Disregarding inefficiencies of charging a battery from a battery, about one.
I don't get it. It's bad for hackers because of the tepid software updates, increasingly developer unfriendly application environment, lack of full touch in an age where every other manufacturer does that ad a standard, and awkward meshing with its own ecosystem.
USB-C is pretty great, actually. Still pretty raw for the mainstream tech crowd, but it's not like that for tech-literate consumers.
I only speak for myself when I say it's something I would love to have at my disposal.
Seeing my colleague intuitively reach out to the screen to use the Android Virtual Device when we're discussing something convinced me it was actually a nice thing to have.
Mobile and web are touch native now. It's fantastic for mobile developers to be able to have a similar input method for testing as use.
I'm not sure what makes touch not poweruser and "hacker" friendly, but it's not the 80s anymore. Most of us have significant portions of our workload on the web and the web is, by and large, an extremely touch-friendly medium.
Hello. This subtle "you seem different from my dated 80s image of hackers so you aren't one" game you're playing is boring, and if you check out the score no one is buying what you're selling.
It's faster to pop up to the screen to press a link and return to the home row than it is to pop to the trackpad and do the same unless the pointer is quite close to target. Both have similar repetitive strain implications.
It is discussed here that you could charge one laptop off another. Okay, cool. But what if they are both plugged in, then you attach them over USB? Do they both send a charge out, possibly cause one or both to fry? And what if you have multiple sources of charging plugged into the machine?
I assume there's some form of auto negotiation? For what it's worth, I connected two laptops via USB, Nothing happened (though most likely they had built-in protection against that kind of bullshit)
In the case you plug two Macbooks together and to the powerpoint, it charges the electricity back on the grid, which paves the way to infinite energy. More seriously the macbook can choose one source for its power.
I would imagine there's both software and hardware limits to how much current the charging circuit can accept, since having multiple chargers to one device is pretty likely with USB C. Like imagine hooking up two USB C displays which both act like chargers.
Good questions! It's all in the USB Power Delivery [1] spec. The devices will do reasonable things.
For example if you plug four power sources into the MacBook Pro (one in each port), it will take power only from the source that is supplying the highest power.
Or if you plug a cell phone into a USB-C hub, it will suck as much power as it can to charge it's battery as quickly as possible. But if the hub needs more power temporarily to spin up a hard drive, the charging device can momentarily reduce it's power draw and then resume charging when the extra power is available again.
> Now I only need to bring one power cable to the café instead of two and I can charge my computer or my phone interchangeably. This is so nice!
I've never even thought of bringing a phone wall charger with me when I have my laptop and laptop charger. Just plug the phone into the laptop if it needs charging.
Currently have an early 2014 MBP, and I never take my charger to the café. My laptop has more than enough juice to last a couple of hours. Never really bought into idea that spending $6 bought me an office for half a day or more.
Not saying anything about the new MBP, but I would be really wary of connecting a $2000+ device to a random no-name $9 car charger. Heck, I'm not sure if I'd even want to connect my smart phone to that.
Author forgot to mention new MBPs dont use USB-C, they use _special Apple variant_ of USB-C. Variant that doesnt work with ordinary dongles, from hdmi dongles producing flickering mess to USB 2.0 dongles _silently corrupting files_ from pendrives.
Thats one of the ways to cope with cognitive dissonance. Its obviously slander and trolling when someone says something bad about your multi $thousand purchase.
USB-C is awesome. It is the future and in some ways it is good Apple are being the way they are.
But... I wish Apple would put USB-C in the iDevices (honestly why does the iPhone and iPad use Lightning when USB-C exists??). It is annoying that I can ditch all my cables except that one fucking extra Apple cable.
Time will tell, but I wonder if reliability will be the issue. USB-C has 24 contacts crammed in there. That's a lot of tiny parts for something that gets manhandled and lint packed as much as a phone charger connection.
If I was on the hook to warranty replace $600 devices when the internal connector gets ruined I might take my time jumping on board too.
It isn't like Lightning is super reliable. I have had many official cables fall apart within a year of normal business travel and at least one port on an iPhone 6 fail most likely due to something getting in the port (although Apple never stated that obviously).
I doubt USB-C is that much worse than Lightning. Even if it is say 10% less reliable as a cable it would still be much better to have a USB-C port simply because you are more likely to have a USB-C cable if everything else uses it.
Sadly nothing fixed it and I tried a dozen things.
Totally anecdotal but I have had a Nexus 6P for over a year now and no issues with the USB-C port so, for me, it is just as durable so far as Lightning :)
You may have just saved me a trip to the Apple Store, thanks. I hadn't realized there was a build up of lint, and cables were failing to "clip" into my phone.
I'd think (but have zero experience here, would love to hear otherwise if I'm wrong) that C would be better for RF interference purposes. C has the contacts inside a solid shroud, lightning has them exposed. Seems like lightning would need extra shielding on the port side, where C takes care of some / all on the cord?
They'll probably change to USB-C eventually though, and the smart time to do that was in the same year that they did on all their other hardware, which is also the same year that they dropped the headphone jack.
IMHO they should have done it with the iPhone 7 has they ditched the 3.5mm jack forcing people to buy headphones that will only work with an Apple iPhone or iPad. Hell not even their laptops have Lightning ports so they are literally useless for anything else.
I also find it amusing that they released the new MacBook Pro with a 3.5mm jack when they clearly don't need it. It makes even less sense on a laptop than a phone IMHO.
Because Lightning is significantly thinner, also less wide, and mechanically superior in very way. There's a much firmer "snap" when you plug it in, the connection stays connected, and the port itself is more durable as well, due to not having a plasticy thin thingy in the middle that holds all the contacts.
Couldn't agree more. I recently used Type C for the first time and it just feels so cheap in comparison. Nowhere near as bad as microUSB but still, there's just something about it.
The only problem I have with their use of Lightning in phones is that they want headphone manufacturers to switch to Lightning...
My (crazy) theory is that they will remove all ports on the iPhone soon, and rely on wireless charging and data. It may be necessary to achieve Ives (well documented) dream of a screen that covers the entire front edge-to-edge.
They havent switched to USB-C because people will br super annoyed if they just supported it for a couple of years.
It also explain headphone jack removal. Removing two ports at the same time would make people super mad. And they also need to stimulate the wireless headphone market.
> It may be necessary to achieve Ives (well documented) dream of a screen that covers the entire front edge-to-edge.
Source on this?
I didn't know this is what Ive wants to achieve, but it's something I've assumed every device manufacturer will be racing towards (even if it is on a niche device to test market reaction) and I've wondered why no one seems to be boldly pushing this?
Sadly the Nexus 6P doesn't support any kind of direct video-out (USB-C, HDMI or otherwise). It came out before the USB-C screen mirroring specs were finalized. All you can do is chromecast over the network.
But hopefully by this time next year, new cell phones will generally support screen mirroring over USB-C. Some phones (like the LG G5 [1]) already support it.
USB-C charging looks great on paper but disappoints when devices don't charge.
Your device may support a subset of the different USB charging protocols:
* USB 1.1 lo power: 5V/100mA
* USB 2.0 hi power: 5V/500mA
* USB 3.0: 5V/900mA
* USB BC (battery charging): 5V/1.5A
* USB quickcharge 1.0/2.0/3.0, proprietary Qualcomm standard
* USB PD (power delivery) 5 profiles offering up to 100W (5/12/20V @ 1.5/2/3/5A)
MacBooks also use a nonstandard 15V USB-PD profile.
Unrelated to the MacBook, but problems i see with USB-C are:
Chargers may offer cryptographic signatures in the future for authentication against a whitelist at the device.
Second and most problematic:
The MacBook is a good citizen here, but many laptops (HP business series, Dell XPS series) only support USB-C PD with profile 4&5 (20V/3A+).
This rules out the car dongle as well as cheap USB power banks.
The connector is always the same, the customer cannot deduce charger/device compatibility. The experience will suck.
That argument looks like FUD to me. That would be a surefire way to get shunned by the USB-IF and be forbidden from using official USB identification on your products.
Apple is already doing something similar though on the new MacBook Pro, there is a software block on Thunderbolt 3 devices that haven't also been "macOS certified" by Apple:
There will be the cheap Chinese chargers that will suck. Then customers will complain, and Belkin and others will notice and make good chargers with proper marks on the packaging. It won't take too long before customers and shops know what to buy or sell.
I have that car adapter as well as a USB power bank. Both don't charge the Dell XPS 13, because it wants 20V/3A. The docs of both chargers and the Dell are light on the USB-PD details. The chargers are great for phones so i didn't return them.
However there's not a single car charger nor a power bank that does usb-pd at 20V/3A at the moment. So sad.
Wow, that's more horrible than I thought. Thanks for the summary.
I am honestly befuddled by USB-C. The allure of a universal connector? That's kinda pointless when the cables look mostly the same but support different feature subsets. It's insanity.
It's bad enough that many manufacturers (I'm looking at you, Dell) don't differentiate between USB 2 and 3 Type A. C is so much worse for this.
Instead of a pretty good $1200 13" Air we have a $1800+ cersion that's lost features (MagSafe, worse keyboard) to be a hair thinner that also requires $200 in dongles to connect to anything.
I haven't come to a conclusion w/r to those "shiny" new MacBook features yet, but I'm not an Apple user either. Time will tell though.
I hope Dell will improve its power circuitry in the future and support USB BC and PD 5V/3A. Let's hope it's just that current power chipsets lack those modes because of time to market pressure and Apple is ahead of its competitors here.
I can understand your anger at Apple, I hear the same a lot from design and audio professionals... You may have got some downvotes for that last statement.
I don't know why you are getting downvoted(I guess it's the fuck you at the end), but I absolutely agree - if a cable fits in a port, it should just work. Anything else is horrible design that's user hostile. Apple sells an LG USB-C display, and if you use the USB-C cable bundled with the MacBook Pro, it doesn't work. And you don't get an error message - it just doesn't work.
Some companies, for example Nintendo, figured this out a long time ago. Notice how with their consoles, if the disc/cartridge fits in the console, the console will always play it, even between generations. The customer shouldn't have to research arcane names and study symbols on cables - if it fits, it should just work. And USB-C is just a mess at the moment.
The reason why is probably because he assumes a negative thing that hasn't happened and then rants against something that isn't a problem while being a bit of a dick...
I plugged my new macbook pro into an OWC usb-c hub with the apple cable and nothing happened. Tried the (annoyingly short) cable that came with the hub and it works.
> Notice how with their consoles, if the disc/cartridge fits in the console, the console will always play it, even between generations.
Well, that's not quite true. Both the Wii and Wii U have a standard-sized disc slot; on the Wii you can insert small GameCube discs into that slot and they'll play, but on the Wii U they won't. On the portable side, 3DS cartridges do have a tab to prevent them from fitting into a DS, but that wasn't the case for the handful of games exclusive to the brief-lived DSi.
Recent Nintendo consoles have also had compatibility issues with standard storage devices. The Wii supported SD cards, but wasn't compatible with SDHC cards, which are almost all cards with a capacity of 4GB or higher. This was eventually rectified with a software update... but the update only applied to the system menu, not to games which could access SD cards themselves, including notably Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The Wii U, for its part, supports storing games on external hard drives, but doesn't provide as much power over USB as most hosts do, requiring the use of a USB Y cable and a separate USB power source even for drives that don't normally require external power.
In other words, exactly like the early days of usb-micro/mini? I distinctly recall having chargers from blackberries that wouldn't support my first android phones due to being underpowered. I would imagine over time we'll see something almost identical only with two unofficial categories instead:
One set of chargers will be for mobile devices and just support the highest standard we see in them.
One will be for laptops and the same - just supports the highest profile for them.
Both chargers and devices need not support all charging standards/profiles and thus may disagree on working together. A working (all USB PD profiles up to 100W supporting) charger looks inherently the same as a profile-1 only one, and both may even say "USB PD" in the specs.
Thank god the MacBook accepts the widespread 5V/3A USB-PD power level and even USB BC.
> In other words, exactly like the early days of usb-micro/mini?
Overall worse, because USB-C may also be used for other connections (eg DisplayPort), adding to the confusion.
Plus all the different cables which can do different things and not support specific profiles of some things and others but they all have the same connectors. Confusing as heck.
This is not harder the the issue of 8P8C connectors.
Depending on cable configuration, pinout, wall plate and structured wiring system that 8P8C might be usable (or not) for multiple different types of data networking, from the assorted ethernet speeds to E1 to token ring, or for a serial console, or delivering power and audio to a remote speaker, or hdmi-over-utp, or even -48V telephony, and let's not even get started on the only-subtly-different but actually incompatible RJ45 connector, or people sticking RJ11 plugs in 8P8C ports.
And yet the world has coped with this proliferation.
Nontechnical people tend not to deal with multiple usecases for 8P8C connectors in everyday life. Despite being fairly technical, until I googled I would have called them RJ45.
The generic term is 8P8C for the multitude (and I've seen many of them in Telecom) uses, RJ-45 is one specific use - ethernet cables.
Over time, as you've noted - the vast majority of uses of 8P8C has turned out to be networking - it will be interesting to see if USB-C likewise, makes a similar evolution.
I almost always hear "RJ45" to identify the 8-conductor ethernet female or male connector - depending on the context. It is universally understood, and there is no confusion about it. There is nothing wrong with using it in everyday conversation.
I have never once heard the phrase "8P8C" used to refer to an ethernet jack. Not once (outside of this thread) - but I have heard it used that way when referring to various 8-pin telco connections - it was a common term of art in the 90s when describing telco installations that used that configuration. When talking about Ethernet, and people are trying to be specific, they usually reference EIA-TIA-568B/A.
There are certain words, like "Bandwidth" - that, might technically mean the width of the band (typically in Hz), but have grown over time to refer to data rate as well. And that's cool - language is versatile that way.
This interesting tangent about common parlance for connector names demonstrates another way in which USB Type-C's adoption trajectory is characteristically similar to 8P8C: people are already giving it a technically incorrect common name, "USB-C".
Having had the Macbook 12" for a year and a half now and a Nexus 6p for a year, it's really been quite wonderful. I can charge my laptop or phone using the same charger – of course not as fast as the OEM charger, but wonderful for being on the move. I love that I can use a typical battery backup to charge my Macbook. I really wish everything of mine USB-C, and it will be soon.
Right now it feels wonderful with OEM chargers, but you do have me worried about the future buying replacements and accessories.
After a week with a 13 inch, what I've mainly noticed is how physically unwelcoming it is:
The edges are very sharp, and the air vents on the bottom are right where you grab the laptop to pick it up, which gives it a knife-like feel. Also, by expanding the track pad far beyond it's useful size, there is now no gap between it and the space key. I have discovered that I have a habit of resting my thumb just below the space bar and now I tend to bump the pointer on accident now. The arrow keys are now a continuous run of keys with no way to orient quickly like previously (where the side arrows were slightly smaller and made it obvious where the up key was without looking.) . Finally, the keyboard action is very short, as you would expect with such a thin laptop.
I do most of my work with an external keyboard and monitor, so it isn't that big a deal to me, but I can see it being hard on people who use their laptop exclusively.
> I have discovered that I have a habit of resting my thumb just below the space bar and now I tend to bump the pointer on accident now
This is surprising and disappointing. I really enjoyed using Apple's touchpads with tap to click because their accidental press recognition was good enough that I never really worried about this. I typically had to turn tap to click off when using Linux because I would randomly click while typing.
I wonder why they haven't been able to get it to work as well on the new touchpad
Just speculating here, but this is precisely the sort of thing Apple generally fine-tunes and fixes with software updates in very short order. I would expect it will be so this time, too.
Not sure why you're being downvoted; I appreciate the advice.
However, I don't think all drivers have palm detection unless I'm mistaken?
Also, unfortunately while I would have enjoyed configuring the system to my personal desires, these days with the limited free time I have, I'd rather be able to just do what I was going to do on my laptop instead of having to spend time tinkering with it to get it right. Apple seems to do very well in this respect since it almost always knows when I want to tap vs when I just have my palm there.
"...what I've mainly noticed is how physically unwelcoming it is: The edges are very sharp..." - I noticed this too on the early Microsoft Surface power-bricks (not sure if it applies to the later Surface models), the power-bricks had unusually sharp-edges, at the time it struck me as unnecessary and not human-centric. I wondered if the designer ever had the opportunity to interact with the tactile experience before it went into production. Has the design process broken down and designers no longer see a production prototype before they sign-off?
Sharp edges seems to be a trend that has migrated to other manufacturers as they ape Apple's design. My three year old Lenovo, and new work supplied Dell are both unforgiving to type on for the same reason.
Yes, I have the 2014 version of the 13 inch macbook pro. The increased sharpness is very noticable to me, particularly where the underside vents are now placed, creating that knife-like feel when you pick it up.
Be careful with the idea that the charger is just a regular USB-C charger. These laptops will draw 3-4 amps at 20 volts. Most phone chargers are designed for 1-3amps at 5 volts, so they would only provide a trickle of charge to these laptops. Older chargers (and computers ports!) can be damaged by these higher power draws. Also, the USB-C cable the Macs come with is rated up to a hefty 5 amps. Some of the cheap phone cables out there could actually pose a fire danger if they were to handle 5 amps.
Are the MacBook USB-C ports special in some way that makes them USB-C and also a non-standard charger port?
If not, then they must be compliant USB-C ports and therefore would not be supplying an incorrect voltage. As far as I understand the fundamentals of electricity, current doesn't matter. A 5v USB power source that can supply 100 amps would still only supply whatever the device was designed to draw when charging.
But all of that is moot if the MacBook ports are "special" USB-C ports and somehow they negotiate a voltage higher than 5V.
The USB Power Delivery (USB-PD) spec allows devices to negotiate up to 20V - the key word, however being "negotiate", means this is no different than how older USB charging solutions work (start at 5V+100mA, negotiate to whatever the client device can handle and what the host will allow).
I'm always amused by how uninformed many people are about USB and power supply, if devices can't negotiate something that works for both ends they just stop. It's a shitty situation to be in if your device fails to charge, but devices that follow the USB-IF rules will never draw more current than the power source can supply, and the power source will never supply more than the device has requested.
So if I plug a dumb device into it that only makes electrical contact, it won't make that negotiation.
So, so long as Apple's MacBook USB charger is compliant, it won't destroy anything USB that I plug into it, so long as those devices are also compliant. Right?
A "dumb" device that doesn't negotiate will get the minimum 5V@100mA that the USB spec allows, dedicated chargers often decide to not drop the power after the negotiation window is over but a proper host device (laptop, etc.) will drop all power if a device fails to negotiate.
So yeah, if you plug something into the Macbook charger it will either not charge (dunno if it supports traditional USB power specs since it's a type-C only charger) or charge as any other charger already does.
Re: "dumb" devices, this is how it's supposed to work, yes, but I don't think I've ever seen a charger that won't happily dump 1A into a resistor wired over the power pins - including brand name (Apple) chargers and yes, the USB ports on a MacBook Pro. I've never seen a modern device supply only 100 mA.
For devices that DO attempt to negotiate, yes in those cases usually you'll see it work according to spec.
I haven't tried USB-C yet, it would be interesting to see if devices have gotten stricter.
Isn't there also a spec for passive power supply over USB, used by chargers. Something about combinations of resistances across the pins to signal current requirements.
USB-C is a collection of standards rather than one standard. As others have pointed out, two USB-C devices can use the same standard yet not operate together.
The standard covers both 20V and 5V power supply. If the device needs 20V and only gets 5V, there is nothing that says it must work, or even inform the user that it, in fact, is not working.
Only chargers that don't follow the spec can be damaged by the power draw. That is the problem with adapters and USB-A cables that use wrong resistor and USB-C device will pull 3A from USB-A charger that can only provide 2.4A at most.
Also, the charge cable is electronically marked for 5A. Regular USB-C cables only do 3A, which limits them to 60W with USB-PD.
> I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until Amazon is flooded with cheap versions of this idea that tweak it just enough to avoid patent issues. I look forward to buying $3 breakaway USB-C cables in the future.
Has this guy not seen what's going on with Amazon and the cheap USB-C cables that are flooding it[0]? They're literally destroying people's laptops by drawing too much power and frying either end.
"It’s not the Nexus’ fault that my MacBook got fried — it was just doing what it was supposed to do: ask for as much power as it can get. It’s not the MacBook’s fault either — its ports weren’t designed to handle delivering that much juice nor to know that they shouldn’t even try. It is the fault of the cable, which is supposed to protect both sides from screwing up the energy equation with resistors and proper wiring."
This is simply not true. Both the device that is supplying and receiving power should be regulating. The cable should just be "dumb". I've done a bunch of testing on various chargers using cheap USB power meters and 2A USB dummy loads. For instance iPhones/iPads will monitor the voltage of the charger and if it starts sagging will reduce the amperage they draw. (my own testing has only been with "classic" USB type A stuff though)
The only cable I've heard of that actually fried anything was one that was wired completely wrong putting power on the data pins or something like that.
Are you familiar with Benson Leung (Google hardware engineer working on the Pixel) work reviewing various USB-C cables and accessories? He's extensively demonstrated that there are USB-C cables on the market that are dangerous.
Yes, he is who I was referring to when I mentioned "The only cable I've heard of that actually fried anything was one that was wired completely wrong putting power on the data pins or something like that."
edit: I will admit I am partially wrong though - checking a sample of his reviews reveals the case of Type A <> C cables, where as a bridge between the standards the cable is presenting as a charger - in those cases, yes it should not just be "dumb". I still maintain that well-behaved chargers should not supply more power than they are capable of, and well-behaved devices should (and many do) monitor their charging environment and back off when the voltage sags.
I fried my Nexus 5 with the original google USB-C cable and charger.
It's not always a wrong cable. It can be a small connection problem.
Then the USB-C power protocol goes up with it's power, similar to cell power with a bad signal.
Then it gets hot and catches fire.
Beware if you charge via USB-C in our bed. you can be dead.
While we're at it... I just got my 15" MBP and I can't get pass the fact that the keyboard backlight is noticably uneven - e.g. the clover logo in Command buttons isn't fully lit, "alt" text on option etc.
Is anyone else seeing this or is it a faulty unit?
Same here. Also my down arrow is really loud on release. Scheduled an appointment with Apple to sort these issues out.
When I look at the black screen from a wide angle (either from left or right) the surface looks uneven. This doesn't have any impact on picture quality though. Does somebody know whether this is due to the anti-glare coating?
Otherwise I'm really happy with my non-Touch Bar 13" model (i7, 16GB).
I have an 13" since almost a week. I think it's great. 95% of my time is spent in iTerm/VSCode/XCode/Android Studio.
Some remarks:
- Keyboard, especially arrow keys, took me 2 days to get used to, but now it feels weird typing on a old macbook. I actually love it and prefer it now.
- The thumb + touchpad thing mentioned elsewhere here was definitely a big problem in the first day or two. It isn't anymore (guess I got used to it? not sure because I didn't try to avoid it)
- USB-C is freaking awesome. I bought an adapter with ethernet, HDMI, usb 3 and SD that actually replaces the 3 adapters I had to carry around. And because of UPD, I only have one cable to plug to the mac and everything is there including power.
- I don't miss magsafe as much as I thought I would. Although I would happily buy an adapter if it is thin enough (some are coming).
- Touchbar is actually pretty great, although it being a touch screen, the lack of touch feedback can be annoying at first. Pretty ESC is annoying at first, but I got used to it and don't mind it now.
- Touchbar would be an _awesome_ medium to get notifications (such as long running terminal jobs etc...)
- I didn't get any of the battery life issues people are talking about. Actually, I get 8-10 hours out of it easily (ie plug it at the end of the day because I forgot it was unplugged).
- Thinner bezels around the screen makes it somehow look bigger (even though the visible area is the same size and the screen/lid itself is smaller).
- HiDPi is freaking great. Finally I can use a 4k monitor smaller than 32" and still get retina display (1440p HiDPi and other intermediate resolutions up to native 3820x2160 are fully supported)
- It is really thin (no thinner that a Macbook Air, but still). It's feels really great.
- Actually, I just noticed that because it is thinner, my wrists don't get hurt by the edges like they used to (the exact opposite of what someone mentioned here).
Although don't use it for 4k, as it is only HDMI 1.4 (4k@30hz). I am not aware of hubs like this with HDMI 2.0 yet. I bought a USB Type C => DisplayPort adapter for the 4k monitor.
Assuming you're a touch typer, how on earth do you manage to use AS without real function keys? Almost everything beyond just typing code requires them.
As a daily user of various JetBrains IDEs, the lack of a proper keyboard makes the new MB Pro inconceivable for me. I'm actually going to have to go Win or Linux for my next machine.
I've never really used the F-keys since my Visual Studio days (F5/F9/F10/F11) when I used to to .NET 2.0 on Windows. However with the touchbar, when you press Fn, the touchbar displays the F-keys instantly (you can choose for them to be displayed by default).
For Android Studio, I also remap the keys to Cmd+something out of consistency with XCode. For instance, I mapped build to Cmd+B etc...
For those of us who use a variety of JetBrains products, the F-key shortcuts are the consistency. Having them faked on a minuscule screen, rather than being findable by touch, would make the new MacBook unusable for me.
Sad, as I find OSX to be the best in a bleak landscape of OS's, but given Apple's obtuse insistence on knowing what's best for all, to the extent of removing critical components of the universal standard keyboard, my current MB Pro will certainly be my last. Ugh Windows!
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadWhen out and about, when do you need 3? Can't ever recall seeing someone at a coffee shop, conference, etc needing 3 USBs.
As I speak I'm using magsafe + thunderbolt2 + HDMI + 2 USB, 1 for peripherals and the other for playing back video.
That said, while I feel that the new keyboard is slightly better than the last new keyboard, the sound of it makes me want to rip the keys out - it is very loud in a not-so-good way.
I'm kind of astonished at how many people turn their noses up at different things based on a first impression, even in groups that you might consider early adopters of tech.
Some early adopters of tech don't enjoy enduring regressions, and can see the regression from a mile and a month away.
I'm especially grumpy when I see absurd, hyperbolic marketing used to sell anti-consumer regressions.
I've used the keyboard for a week at this point and at this point have completely adapted to it. It doesn't feel like a regression to me at all.
This is a terrible attitude for a technologist to have. Cellphones were a "solved problem" before the first iPhone came out. Laptop monitors were a "solved problem" before the first retina MacBook Pro came out. Look where we are now.
Of course, this doesn't mean every change made to an existing technology will be an improvement and/or be embraced right away and by everyone, but I see it as a Good Thing that a major technology player is still experimenting with things that everyone else has written off as "already solved."
To be (un)fair, you can get used to a rock in your shoe as well. That doesn't mean you should.
Having to "get used" to a keyboard to return to your previous typing ability seems to be a contra-indicator of the new Macs having a good keyboard.
I'm also going to make what I think is a reasonable assumption and say that a vast majority of folks are going to carry their laptops around in bags. In which case, the 7 ounces saved (for reference sake, this is about the same weight as a 45 watt power brick, minus the extension cord) is nearly meaningless, and the half inch on each dimension will be completely meaningless.
On a side note, I think that a 13" monitor hits a sweet spot. It fits in a lot of bags, has just enough screen size to be productive without requiring an external monitor, and the performance difference between 13" and 15" computers is usually quite small (if it exists at all).
It's a cumulative process. My first Macbook was a white 13.3" polycarb core 2 duo. The new 15" MBP is a pound lighter, almost half as thick, and only half an inch deeper and an inch wider. Samsung has a 15" laptop that's under 3 pounds, making it very palatable even for people used to a 13"-er.
At what point along that evolution should Apple have stopped striving to get smaller?
Nicely put!
Of course driving an external monitor, streaming video from the Internet, and using your computer for more than just word processing and web browsing, your system will use more power.
And mind you, I am the kind of person who has managed to accrue about 13 months of hard disk head flying hours according to the SMART stats so the battery isn't exactly in a good condition.
I mean, I like all the power-hungry features, and I'm usually plugged in - I'd prefer they keep adding useful things rather than worry about my battery. But it does hurt at times :)
Also, for what it's worth, I love the new keyboard. It took me a few days to get used to it but just yesterday I measured myself typing on it at 130 wpm, the same speed I can do on normal keyboards. It's very satisfyingly clicky.
...I actually really like it too.
I am not, so... works for me.
I'm guessing you're more heavy in terms of key strike?
It is a perfectly reasonable opinion to like or not like the keyboard, if you have actually tried it for a while.
Similar story with iPhone 7 home button, except I've just come to accept it and ignore it but wish we still had a proper physical home button.
The main reason is that your system needs to index your entire drive; this will require MUCH more power than typical power use until this process is complete. Should give a new system at least a week to shake out before freaking out about battery life.
Second 13" touch bar machine now reports about 5 hours, which is still not great.
Battery life is good, and 16GB is a big step up from the 8GB I had on the MBA. I've been running a decent-sized system in minikube with no problems.
The only issue I still seem to have is that Hangouts absolutely obliterates the battery. A one-hour call took battery life from 9:45 to 1:15!
I'd honestly love to use my laptop's Ethernet dongle with my iPad or iPhone, but that won't happen. Apple has just recently doubled down on Lightning with the Apple TV Remote, the iPhone 7 headphones and the new Magic Trackpad/Mouse/Keyboard trio. For iPad accessories, they've even introduced the all-new Smart Connector instead of a USB-C port on the side of the iPad.
NooQee USB Type C Adapter to Lightning 8-Pin 2-Pack [0]
NooQee Lightning 8-Pin to USB Type C Adapter 2-Pack [1]
[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M340K3B/
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K496YTC/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9360128
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9490224
The new USB-C iMacs ship in the spring. I'm not sure why PC's haven't started the transition. USB-C is a no-brainer.
Work's similar. There are a couple USB-C Android phones floating around, but the other end of their cables is—drum roll—USB-A.
https://www.cnet.com/pictures/phones-with-usb-type-c/
It'll be common on Dell's, HP's, etc. Get ready for your usb-c headphones: http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-offering-free-usb-c-35mm-h...
A computer that you buy today will last 7-10 years. I guarantee that there will be lots of USB-C devices in 3 years.
Apple is the driver for innovation in the PC industry. Not just their own, but industry standards as well.
tl;dr- I'm in no hurry for a new port standard.
That would have been a far better and gentler transition.
Actually not, the convenient little 'arms' for the cord are missing. And the cord itself is rather stiff and not very flexible … and there's no green / red charging status light either. It's OK as a USB-C charger but it looks and feels different from a traditional MBP charger.
That really sucks.
Seems like Apple took an proprietary, easily-damaged charging cable and replaced it with a standard, less easy to damage one.
The charging indicator light is a definite loss, though.
True, but I've literally never seen anyone do that in public. I do (the 2 times I've done so), one coworker does, everyone else grabs and wraps as quickly and tightly as possible.
They can be used "safely", but the affordance isn't there. It practically begs to be misused. Bad design in a nutshell.
Did Apple finally fix the incredibly shitty and prone to fraying soft rubber on the cables?
Author conveniently avoids mentioning that the charger is another usability step back (no more plastic hooks to keep cable tidy), or that those external USB-C batteries are not really powerful enough to give you anything but a handful of extra minutes, or that, er, Apple's own phone doesn't get any of these wonderful improvements. and of course...
> You can buy tiny little USB-C adapters
It's well-known that the current quality of USB-C cables and adapters is very random, to say the least, up to and including serious electrical damage.
Interoperability is good, but it looks like Apple just introduced a new series of trade-offs that are sub-optimal. Regardless, to say that a laptop is great "for hackers" because it has USB (A,B,C, whatever) ports is just silly. I mean, you can't even change your hard drive here.
I think the next iPhone will have USB-C. It would make little sense for Apple to commit this heavily on the laptop side while keeping their proprietary connector in their phones.
Yes, it's a great feature, but giving Apple so much credit for introducing it is the ultimate irony.
Care to explain? I'm not familiar :)
Apple signed this too, but as we all know didn't actually add a micro-USB-B connector to their phones like everybody else, but just providing an adapter to USB, which was not forbidden, but arguably against the spirit of the memorandum.
Citing wikipedia, Some observers, noting Apple's continued use of proprietary, non-micro USB charging ports on their smartphones, suggested Apple was not in compliance with the 2009 Common EPS Memorandum of Understanding. The European Commission however, confirmed that all MoU signatories, "have met their obligations under the MoU,"[15] stating specifically, "Concerning Apple's previous and present proprietary connectors and their compatibility with the agreement, the MoU allows for the use of an adaptor without prescribing the conditions for its provision"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
That is kind of cool -- but how many batteries is it going to take, in practice, to juice up a MBP from empty?
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Charger-RAVPower-26800mAh-Re...
So the 26,800 mAh power bank has a capacity of 26,800 mAh * 3.7V = 99,600 mWh = 99.6 Wh of energy. Meanwhile, the 15" MBP has a 76 Wh battery. So theoretically you can do about 1.3 charges; realistically I'd say one full charge.
A MBP battery might be a 11.1V battery, while a portable power bank capacity is almost certainly quoted as a summation of the capacities of the 3.7V cells inside. The capacity of the power bank must therefore be divided by 3 to give the equivalent capacity in mAh at 11.1V.
Realistically, closer to two.
To do your own math, it's mAh * voltage / 1000
The 1 / 1000 is a millisecond? Otherwise the units work out to power and not potential energy?
Wh is energy, dividing through time would be power.
USB-C is pretty great, actually. Still pretty raw for the mainstream tech crowd, but it's not like that for tech-literate consumers.
Seeing my colleague intuitively reach out to the screen to use the Android Virtual Device when we're discussing something convinced me it was actually a nice thing to have.
I'm not sure what makes touch not poweruser and "hacker" friendly, but it's not the 80s anymore. Most of us have significant portions of our workload on the web and the web is, by and large, an extremely touch-friendly medium.
It's faster to pop up to the screen to press a link and return to the home row than it is to pop to the trackpad and do the same unless the pointer is quite close to target. Both have similar repetitive strain implications.
For example if you plug four power sources into the MacBook Pro (one in each port), it will take power only from the source that is supplying the highest power.
Or if you plug a cell phone into a USB-C hub, it will suck as much power as it can to charge it's battery as quickly as possible. But if the hub needs more power temporarily to spin up a hard drive, the charging device can momentarily reduce it's power draw and then resume charging when the extra power is available again.
[1] http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/
I've never even thought of bringing a phone wall charger with me when I have my laptop and laptop charger. Just plug the phone into the laptop if it needs charging.
2016 MBP corrupting files _silently_ when using third party dongle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCCvEzqDq8U&t=76m10s
https://thunderbolttechnology.net/products?tid=14&field_comp...
But... I wish Apple would put USB-C in the iDevices (honestly why does the iPhone and iPad use Lightning when USB-C exists??). It is annoying that I can ditch all my cables except that one fucking extra Apple cable.
If I was on the hook to warranty replace $600 devices when the internal connector gets ruined I might take my time jumping on board too.
I doubt USB-C is that much worse than Lightning. Even if it is say 10% less reliable as a cable it would still be much better to have a USB-C port simply because you are more likely to have a USB-C cable if everything else uses it.
I've found a wooden toothpick works wonderfully to clear out accumulated pocket lint from the port every 6 months or so.
Totally anecdotal but I have had a Nexus 6P for over a year now and no issues with the USB-C port so, for me, it is just as durable so far as Lightning :)
I also find it amusing that they released the new MacBook Pro with a 3.5mm jack when they clearly don't need it. It makes even less sense on a laptop than a phone IMHO.
It didn't when Apple started using Lightning.
Lightning is a superior connector design.
The only problem I have with their use of Lightning in phones is that they want headphone manufacturers to switch to Lightning...
They havent switched to USB-C because people will br super annoyed if they just supported it for a couple of years.
It also explain headphone jack removal. Removing two ports at the same time would make people super mad. And they also need to stimulate the wireless headphone market.
Source on this?
I didn't know this is what Ive wants to achieve, but it's something I've assumed every device manufacturer will be racing towards (even if it is on a niche device to test market reaction) and I've wondered why no one seems to be boldly pushing this?
Unless you have the two most common phones (Apple or Samsung), or any of the many others that don't yet support USB-C.
But hopefully by this time next year, new cell phones will generally support screen mirroring over USB-C. Some phones (like the LG G5 [1]) already support it.
[1] http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/blog/2016/06/connect-your-lg-g5-t...
Your device may support a subset of the different USB charging protocols:
MacBooks also use a nonstandard 15V USB-PD profile.Unrelated to the MacBook, but problems i see with USB-C are:
Chargers may offer cryptographic signatures in the future for authentication against a whitelist at the device.
Second and most problematic: The MacBook is a good citizen here, but many laptops (HP business series, Dell XPS series) only support USB-C PD with profile 4&5 (20V/3A+). This rules out the car dongle as well as cheap USB power banks.
The connector is always the same, the customer cannot deduce charger/device compatibility. The experience will suck.
Edit: typos/formatting
Who would ever expect Apple to do something like that? Oh wait...
https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/21/tb3-enabler-enable-unsupporte...
However there's not a single car charger nor a power bank that does usb-pd at 20V/3A at the moment. So sad.
I am honestly befuddled by USB-C. The allure of a universal connector? That's kinda pointless when the cables look mostly the same but support different feature subsets. It's insanity.
It's bad enough that many manufacturers (I'm looking at you, Dell) don't differentiate between USB 2 and 3 Type A. C is so much worse for this.
Instead of a pretty good $1200 13" Air we have a $1800+ cersion that's lost features (MagSafe, worse keyboard) to be a hair thinner that also requires $200 in dongles to connect to anything.
Seriously, fuck you, Apple.
I hope Dell will improve its power circuitry in the future and support USB BC and PD 5V/3A. Let's hope it's just that current power chipsets lack those modes because of time to market pressure and Apple is ahead of its competitors here.
I can understand your anger at Apple, I hear the same a lot from design and audio professionals... You may have got some downvotes for that last statement.
Some companies, for example Nintendo, figured this out a long time ago. Notice how with their consoles, if the disc/cartridge fits in the console, the console will always play it, even between generations. The customer shouldn't have to research arcane names and study symbols on cables - if it fits, it should just work. And USB-C is just a mess at the moment.
No clue why.
Well, that's not quite true. Both the Wii and Wii U have a standard-sized disc slot; on the Wii you can insert small GameCube discs into that slot and they'll play, but on the Wii U they won't. On the portable side, 3DS cartridges do have a tab to prevent them from fitting into a DS, but that wasn't the case for the handful of games exclusive to the brief-lived DSi.
Recent Nintendo consoles have also had compatibility issues with standard storage devices. The Wii supported SD cards, but wasn't compatible with SDHC cards, which are almost all cards with a capacity of 4GB or higher. This was eventually rectified with a software update... but the update only applied to the system menu, not to games which could access SD cards themselves, including notably Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The Wii U, for its part, supports storing games on external hard drives, but doesn't provide as much power over USB as most hosts do, requiring the use of a USB Y cable and a separate USB power source even for drives that don't normally require external power.
One set of chargers will be for mobile devices and just support the highest standard we see in them.
One will be for laptops and the same - just supports the highest profile for them.
Both chargers and devices need not support all charging standards/profiles and thus may disagree on working together. A working (all USB PD profiles up to 100W supporting) charger looks inherently the same as a profile-1 only one, and both may even say "USB PD" in the specs.
Thank god the MacBook accepts the widespread 5V/3A USB-PD power level and even USB BC.
Overall worse, because USB-C may also be used for other connections (eg DisplayPort), adding to the confusion.
Plus all the different cables which can do different things and not support specific profiles of some things and others but they all have the same connectors. Confusing as heck.
Depending on cable configuration, pinout, wall plate and structured wiring system that 8P8C might be usable (or not) for multiple different types of data networking, from the assorted ethernet speeds to E1 to token ring, or for a serial console, or delivering power and audio to a remote speaker, or hdmi-over-utp, or even -48V telephony, and let's not even get started on the only-subtly-different but actually incompatible RJ45 connector, or people sticking RJ11 plugs in 8P8C ports.
And yet the world has coped with this proliferation.
Over time, as you've noted - the vast majority of uses of 8P8C has turned out to be networking - it will be interesting to see if USB-C likewise, makes a similar evolution.
There's an RJ45S, but that's definitely nothing to do with Ethernet. Use of the term RJ45 is simply wrong, in any circumstance, as far as I can tell.
There's no term for the use of 8P8C for Ethernet purposes other than well, Ethernet, or its specific profiles ...BASE-T, as far as I can tell.
I have never once heard the phrase "8P8C" used to refer to an ethernet jack. Not once (outside of this thread) - but I have heard it used that way when referring to various 8-pin telco connections - it was a common term of art in the 90s when describing telco installations that used that configuration. When talking about Ethernet, and people are trying to be specific, they usually reference EIA-TIA-568B/A.
There are certain words, like "Bandwidth" - that, might technically mean the width of the band (typically in Hz), but have grown over time to refer to data rate as well. And that's cool - language is versatile that way.
In fact, language and terms are not set in stone.
Right now it feels wonderful with OEM chargers, but you do have me worried about the future buying replacements and accessories.
The edges are very sharp, and the air vents on the bottom are right where you grab the laptop to pick it up, which gives it a knife-like feel. Also, by expanding the track pad far beyond it's useful size, there is now no gap between it and the space key. I have discovered that I have a habit of resting my thumb just below the space bar and now I tend to bump the pointer on accident now. The arrow keys are now a continuous run of keys with no way to orient quickly like previously (where the side arrows were slightly smaller and made it obvious where the up key was without looking.) . Finally, the keyboard action is very short, as you would expect with such a thin laptop.
I do most of my work with an external keyboard and monitor, so it isn't that big a deal to me, but I can see it being hard on people who use their laptop exclusively.
This is surprising and disappointing. I really enjoyed using Apple's touchpads with tap to click because their accidental press recognition was good enough that I never really worried about this. I typically had to turn tap to click off when using Linux because I would randomly click while typing.
I wonder why they haven't been able to get it to work as well on the new touchpad
Palm detection should typically be tweaked through various driver parameters.
However, I don't think all drivers have palm detection unless I'm mistaken?
Also, unfortunately while I would have enjoyed configuring the system to my personal desires, these days with the limited free time I have, I'd rather be able to just do what I was going to do on my laptop instead of having to spend time tinkering with it to get it right. Apple seems to do very well in this respect since it almost always knows when I want to tap vs when I just have my palm there.
Just curious, have you used Mac laptops previously? Because sharp edges are something that have existed since the original MacBook Air.
I do agree they are annoying though. I always have outlines on my wrists after using my laptop on my lap for a while.
I'm using a late 2011 MBP and the corners where you open the top are deadly.
If not, then they must be compliant USB-C ports and therefore would not be supplying an incorrect voltage. As far as I understand the fundamentals of electricity, current doesn't matter. A 5v USB power source that can supply 100 amps would still only supply whatever the device was designed to draw when charging.
But all of that is moot if the MacBook ports are "special" USB-C ports and somehow they negotiate a voltage higher than 5V.
I'm always amused by how uninformed many people are about USB and power supply, if devices can't negotiate something that works for both ends they just stop. It's a shitty situation to be in if your device fails to charge, but devices that follow the USB-IF rules will never draw more current than the power source can supply, and the power source will never supply more than the device has requested.
So, so long as Apple's MacBook USB charger is compliant, it won't destroy anything USB that I plug into it, so long as those devices are also compliant. Right?
So yeah, if you plug something into the Macbook charger it will either not charge (dunno if it supports traditional USB power specs since it's a type-C only charger) or charge as any other charger already does.
For devices that DO attempt to negotiate, yes in those cases usually you'll see it work according to spec.
I haven't tried USB-C yet, it would be interesting to see if devices have gotten stricter.
The standard covers both 20V and 5V power supply. If the device needs 20V and only gets 5V, there is nothing that says it must work, or even inform the user that it, in fact, is not working.
Also, the charge cable is electronically marked for 5A. Regular USB-C cables only do 3A, which limits them to 60W with USB-PD.
> I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until Amazon is flooded with cheap versions of this idea that tweak it just enough to avoid patent issues. I look forward to buying $3 breakaway USB-C cables in the future.
Has this guy not seen what's going on with Amazon and the cheap USB-C cables that are flooding it[0]? They're literally destroying people's laptops by drawing too much power and frying either end.
[0]: http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10916264/usb-c-russian-roul...
"It’s not the Nexus’ fault that my MacBook got fried — it was just doing what it was supposed to do: ask for as much power as it can get. It’s not the MacBook’s fault either — its ports weren’t designed to handle delivering that much juice nor to know that they shouldn’t even try. It is the fault of the cable, which is supposed to protect both sides from screwing up the energy equation with resistors and proper wiring."
This is simply not true. Both the device that is supplying and receiving power should be regulating. The cable should just be "dumb". I've done a bunch of testing on various chargers using cheap USB power meters and 2A USB dummy loads. For instance iPhones/iPads will monitor the voltage of the charger and if it starts sagging will reduce the amperage they draw. (my own testing has only been with "classic" USB type A stuff though)
The only cable I've heard of that actually fried anything was one that was wired completely wrong putting power on the data pins or something like that.
https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJwqv3rTNmORXz-XJsQa...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A25GROL6KJV3QG/ref=cm_...
http://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2015/11/5/9674462/usb-t...
www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2015/11/16/9742360/oneplus-usb-type-c-cable-adapter
edit: I will admit I am partially wrong though - checking a sample of his reviews reveals the case of Type A <> C cables, where as a bridge between the standards the cable is presenting as a charger - in those cases, yes it should not just be "dumb". I still maintain that well-behaved chargers should not supply more power than they are capable of, and well-behaved devices should (and many do) monitor their charging environment and back off when the voltage sags.
It's not always a wrong cable. It can be a small connection problem. Then the USB-C power protocol goes up with it's power, similar to cell power with a bad signal. Then it gets hot and catches fire.
Beware if you charge via USB-C in our bed. you can be dead.
Is anyone else seeing this or is it a faulty unit?
When I look at the black screen from a wide angle (either from left or right) the surface looks uneven. This doesn't have any impact on picture quality though. Does somebody know whether this is due to the anti-glare coating?
Otherwise I'm really happy with my non-Touch Bar 13" model (i7, 16GB).
Some remarks:
- Keyboard, especially arrow keys, took me 2 days to get used to, but now it feels weird typing on a old macbook. I actually love it and prefer it now.
- The thumb + touchpad thing mentioned elsewhere here was definitely a big problem in the first day or two. It isn't anymore (guess I got used to it? not sure because I didn't try to avoid it)
- USB-C is freaking awesome. I bought an adapter with ethernet, HDMI, usb 3 and SD that actually replaces the 3 adapters I had to carry around. And because of UPD, I only have one cable to plug to the mac and everything is there including power.
- I don't miss magsafe as much as I thought I would. Although I would happily buy an adapter if it is thin enough (some are coming).
- Touchbar is actually pretty great, although it being a touch screen, the lack of touch feedback can be annoying at first. Pretty ESC is annoying at first, but I got used to it and don't mind it now.
- Touchbar would be an _awesome_ medium to get notifications (such as long running terminal jobs etc...)
- I didn't get any of the battery life issues people are talking about. Actually, I get 8-10 hours out of it easily (ie plug it at the end of the day because I forgot it was unplugged).
- Thinner bezels around the screen makes it somehow look bigger (even though the visible area is the same size and the screen/lid itself is smaller).
- HiDPi is freaking great. Finally I can use a 4k monitor smaller than 32" and still get retina display (1440p HiDPi and other intermediate resolutions up to native 3820x2160 are fully supported)
- It is really thin (no thinner that a Macbook Air, but still). It's feels really great.
- Actually, I just noticed that because it is thinner, my wrists don't get hurt by the edges like they used to (the exact opposite of what someone mentioned here).
Although don't use it for 4k, as it is only HDMI 1.4 (4k@30hz). I am not aware of hubs like this with HDMI 2.0 yet. I bought a USB Type C => DisplayPort adapter for the 4k monitor.
... but at that point the problem isn't with the tech
I do enjoy this laptop a lot, thank you very much.
As a daily user of various JetBrains IDEs, the lack of a proper keyboard makes the new MB Pro inconceivable for me. I'm actually going to have to go Win or Linux for my next machine.
For Android Studio, I also remap the keys to Cmd+something out of consistency with XCode. For instance, I mapped build to Cmd+B etc...
For those of us who use a variety of JetBrains products, the F-key shortcuts are the consistency. Having them faked on a minuscule screen, rather than being findable by touch, would make the new MacBook unusable for me.
Sad, as I find OSX to be the best in a bleak landscape of OS's, but given Apple's obtuse insistence on knowing what's best for all, to the extent of removing critical components of the universal standard keyboard, my current MB Pro will certainly be my last. Ugh Windows!