Technology

This is my ~8 month old work laptop.

Is a Dell.

2 usb c not pictured.

You have options.

I dunno - I’m pretty sure I’d choose the modern MacBook Pro’s ports over any of these other options.

Fuck firewire. Glad it's dead. USB C is the best thing to happen to peripherals since the mouse.

I dont know why this is controversial. I'm way more happy with 4x USB-C, than 5 unique ports, that will likely never be used on a regular basis, even when they were relevant

As long as a computer has 4 usb-c ports, I think you’re covered for everything.

Yes we had more different ports back in the days, but most were never used.

Usb-c is way more practical. Still that implies that you have more than 2 Usb-c ports.

I'm no Apple fanboy (never owned a product of theirs and never will) but to be fair, those two USB-C ports can do everything the old, removed ports can do and more. The real crime here is not putting enough of them on the laptop.

Edit: The only port I'll lament the removal of is the headphone jack. USB-C headphones are rare, adapters get lost, and bluetooth headphones compress the audio and have input lag. Everything else can go, though, and won't be missed. (Okay fine ethernet can stay too.)

And there's the soldered RAM and storage, and glued-in or screwed-in battery...

To make our laptops look clean and minimalistic, they made us buy a bunch of dongles and adapters.

Screw it, I'm buying a rugged laptop with the thickness of a desktop PC next

Is this rage bait? Those are different macbooks. I think the bottom ones are pros. My current Pro M2 has HDMI and magsafe. My M1 (Air?) is like the top one, but is not in fact a pro and therefore does not provide as many ports.

I’m glad I can plug in one port and have a dual display setup, all peripherals, speakers, ethernet, charging, etc connected at my desk in one go.

If I want to leave, unplug one thing and I’m good to go.

I'm on the other side wishing peripherals would catch up and all become USB-C already. I'm tired of USB-A.

They remove the extra ports because they take up space in the board.

That aside if you’re buying Mac you took it from yourself. No one made you buy it.

As someone who daily drives a laptop for work and does field work on server facilities, finding a modern replacement that has both a RJ45 port and square USB (USB-A?) ports available on both sides, has been a pain in the hassle.

And I'm not even crying over the loss of VGA any longer. That one I can live without.

The annoying thing is they're not even that much thinner. They've just reshaped the edge to make it look like there isn't room for real ports.

USB-C does a lot of heavy lifting. Also, MagSafe™ is still there. A little surprised there is also a SD card slot. And a HDMI port. Not complaining about their inclusion, and I do use them regularly, but why did the dongle company give these to us?

That's what happens when designers boss engineers around. Form over function is pure cancer and it's becoming pervasive in our civilization due to the overwhelming ubiquity of propaganda(marketing). I have nothing but contempt for these trends.

I miss having a thousand different cables to keep track of /s

really, all we need is the companies to start packing those laptops with thunderbolt3 or equivalent USB-C (USB 4). I love the old ports, but they were unnecessary. I'd rather the industry finally takes on the open thunderbolt standard and we're all good to go. With 10 thunderbolt ports you have 10 HDMI, or 10 USB, or 10 Ethernet, or 10 headphone jacks, or 10 RJ45 or whatever you need + PCIe tunneling.

I'm good with it to be honest. One port that can do it all. Not proprietary.

The longer we keep including legacy ports the longer they'll stick around on peripheral devices

Manufactures won't change until forced. The transition period might be a bit painful, but worth it.

USB-C is awesome though. I carry one charger amd dongle for HDMI and ethernet. It serves my many devices including Steam Deck, phone and laptop.

I actually prefer the standardization here. Sick of having 2 boxes of different cords.