Jesus, designing a usable ultrabook must be very difficult.
We have one contender from California, but their ideology has them offer just a single USB-C port. Now we get the competitor from Mountain View, who have rightly recognized the need for more than one fucking port when that's how you charge the damn thing, and what do they decide?
What most people have missed is that USB allows charging and data over the same port. So you can easily get a power adapter that has a charging tip which has on the same cord another USB-C port (socket) which you can plug into your display chain, or port replicator or what not.
In Apple's case I fully expect they will make it so that when you plug your Apple display into your laptop it also charges it since the charger is permanently connected to (or built into) the Apple monitor/display.
You might win 500k or more a year, good for you, you are successful. But for people who have kids who will have to go to University ,even at 100k a year , $1300 isn't a small amount of money.
If you think people buy laptops like they buy candies well you're a privileged man, and again I wish you the best,but that's not the reality for most of us.
It's not even so much about it being affordable but rather how much it costs relative to other devices on the market. $1300 is a pretty high price point for a laptop and in that range you're competing with high-end notebooks like Apple. A Chromebook fits a niche for lightweight web-browsers, but I'm not prepared to spend $1300 for a notebook built solely to surf the net.
The thing runs linux. Like if you ever wanted a linux laptop this is for you. I just bought a toshiba cb2, and with crouton installed it's one of the best laptops I think I've ever owned (for the price).
All my laptops run Linux. Two of them came with Linux preinstalled. Two of them came with Windows preinstalled. All four had the preinstalled OS overwritten by my Linux distro of choice. So what they came with isn't really that important. (Granted, if something comes with Linux then that saves you the step of making sure all the hardware has Linux support before you buy it.)
(Random and probably a little minor) But what about those keyboards? How about those Ctrl and alt keys? Have both on each side? Actually in the same order, and spaced well for programming / emacs? That's the reason I hate my Mac pro so much, and I haven't seen a win based keyboard doing much better. The CB key layout is the best I know of.
Well, my current ASUS laptop (about $700 ~3 years ago, including the Swedish 25% VAT, Windows preinstalled) has so far worked almost flawlessly with Linux. My bottom row is Ctrl Fn Super Alt Space AltGR Menu Ctrl. Some keys are a smaller than on a full-size keyboard, but everything (except for home/end/pg/...) is in its usual spot and it works absolutely fine for me (I'm primarily writing in IntelliJ or Vim though, not Emacs).
spot on my friend, I do better than most, and still have to budget for a purchase like that.
what this does mean for me, is that older models will come down in price and become much more affordable. might even be able to pick up last years for $2-400 on ebay.
$500K/year for a developer is generally unrealistic. (Not that they don't exist, but even if you made it your life goal to obtain one of these jobs you probably still shouldn't count on it.) $100K/year for a developer is very realistic, but keep an eye on the cost-of-living; even in the US that can be anything from upper-middle class lifestyle for an individual to "barely getting by" for a family.
I live in the Midwest and have what in the US would be a sanely priced house that bears some resemblance to its cost-of-construction. I have done business trips to Silicon Valley to developers who are making only modestly more than me, if not the same as me, who are living in houses worth 5 times as much on paper (and in their mortgage payments), and they'll be in there putting in top-of-the-line granite countertops or something that I wouldn't dream of putting in. My theory is that their house is just so gosh darned expensive that the idea of dropping $2K on a new laptop or getting The Very Best Countertops (TM) seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the debt they're already carrying anyhow. While I could certainly afford a $2K laptop, it's certainly enough to make me think twice, thrice, and a fourth time before I bought it (and I tend to come in more in the $1K price range when I do, since I run Linux and not Mac. There's some nice stuff at that price point).
While many of us routinely spend this amount of money on laptops or other hardware, the average Joe doesn't want to spend more than 600-700 euro on a laptop (which translates to up to $650 in practice).
So yes, for most people, this sounds like a fortune for a laptop.
I think it's actually addressed half of shortcomings of the old Pixel: 4GB of memory has been upped to a reasonable 8GB or a generous 16GB. The CPU bump is also a welcome change. Only the limited disk space is an issue.
I just wished they doubled the storage (at least) and sold them with plain old Linux as developer machines. Would be a great way to get into the hearts and minds of many programmers.
To ghrifter (I couldn't reply to your thread): yes it's a tax thing, and also the cost associated with the EU mandated 2 year minimal warranty programs. Electronics are generally more expensive in euros than in dollars, even though the exchange rate of a dollar is still below 1.0 euro.
A friend of mine just sold his 2009 MacBook Pro for $1500, he originally purchased it for $2400 IIRC. That's only $900 worth of deprecation in 6 years.
I agree, it isn't a fortune, but it isn't cheap either. The people who complain about the price can't/don't want to spend the money to buy a high end device, but they want a high end device.
The people who wine about the costs of going high end (MacBook , Watch, whatever) aren't part of Apple's target demographic. Apple wants to (and always has) sell well made devices to people who don't want cheap, and aren't afraid to pay for it.
I'm typing this on Thinkpad T430s with i7, two SSDs (one of them in ultrabay), 3G modem... when it was bought, it was as expensive, as Macbook Pro can be. Yet, I consider the Thinkpad worth the asking price and Macbook Pro not.
It is entirely about what you value in the product you buy. You may be totally utilitarian, or you may want fashion item. In the end, it is just stuff anyways ;)
> In Apple's case I fully expect they will make it so that when you plug your Apple display into your laptop it also charges it since the charger is permanently connected to (or built into) the Apple monitor/display.
Adapters will exist for now. I think a solution to a single port (though, having more than 1 is probably better) is great. Why do we need 8 different port types? We should have one and it should do everything. But we should have 2 of them.
I haven't seen anybody complaining about the move to a single port type. Most of us in the tech world recognize that as a Good Thing. What many of us don't like is that you have to unplug the power adapter just to plug in a flash drive unless you have a dongle.
It does not. Here's the adapter; the separate USB-C cable (one is required to use this adapter) Apple sells for $30 does not include a hub or extra ports either. I'm sure there will be some third-party option that does this.
Because if anyone has ever thought that Thunderbolt would be used for all accessories they were very, very, very wrong. You wouldn't plug in a printer, or a flash drive, directly to a Pciexpress bus, would you? There's simply no need. And yet, this is pretty much exactly what Thunderbolt is. It's fantastic for things which need this kind of connector - external graphics cards, 10Gb optical network cards, RAID controllers - but not pendrives.
But if I have external storage plugged in (I'm copying a large file), and I need to charge the laptop, then I need to disconnect the drive in order to charge the laptop?
There are countless examples where daisy-chaining these devices becomes very inconvenient.
"In Apple's case I fully expect they will make it so that when you plug your Apple display into your laptop it also charges it since the charger is permanently connected to (or built into) the Apple monitor/display."
Some of us are still waiting for our Displays with MagSafe2 and USB3... when was the last MagSafe1 laptop made? Yet Apple is still manufacturing the TB display as-is.
> What most people have missed is that USB allows charging and data over the same port. So you can easily get a power adapter that has a charging tip which has on the same cord another USB-C port (socket) which you can plug into your display chain, or port replicator or what not.
What you seem to have missed is that this is nobody cares.
Nobody is going, "I really wish I could charge my laptop through the same port I connect my external hard drive to." This just isn't a problem people have.
However, plenty of people say about the MacBook Air, "I really wish I could transfer data from my external storage hard drive to my thumb drive while my MacBook Air is plugged into my monitor." The new MacBook Air that they've oddly rebranded to confuse with the entire MacBook brand will have a much worse problem in this respect.
It's a problem I have. Apple don't have docking stations; it's frustrating unhooking multiple devices so I can wander to a meeting room, only to hook them up again later. A single cable would be amazing (even more so if it was MagSafe, but oh well).
You could certainly do that with 2 ports, or 4, but you're being forced to do it now. I'm not okay with that. Just a simple scenario where you're charging and want to connect your 6th gen iPod to the computer needing an adapter is mildly annoying. 2 would be preferable. Apple should really host a survey on their site regarding this.
That doesn't account for my screens, charger, etc. It's an admittedly minor concern, but I imagine it'll be very nice when I can just plug in a single cable :).
The thing I've come to appreciate better is that everybody needs different tools. When I was working as a Systems Engineer and needed to connect via serial port to ratty old servers, this new Macbook would have had me screaming. As a developer at my current workplace, I don't need infinite connectability, just portability :).
Consider the people you are hearing it from and are around.
Most of the people in my life (outside of work) have no issue. Most of them don't have second monitors or external hdds. They might have a thumb drive or a Chromecast.
If you're a power user get a power user machine. Get a MacBook Pro.
If your MacBook Air is connected to your monitor then it will likely have standard USB ports on it like most do today. That said few people use external storage or thumb drives anymore especially the target demographic of the MBA.
Gotta admit it'll be pretty cool when Apple updates the Studio Display to provide your MacBook with video, audio, power, and USB over one cable. A return to the dream that ADC promised.
With the amazing difference of being an industry standard, so I can get that experience with Dell products if I desire.
So I have to purchase and carry around peripherals just to use my machine in anything but the most basic scenario? Not a fan.
To be clear, I am a Mac laptop user and have been for years. I love them from a build perspective, but I don't agree with the one-port-to-rule-them-all decision.
What about when you're not using the power adapter?
Even two USB ports on my MacBook "Pro" is too limited for my daily use case. I use a USB yubikey for multifactor auth with LastPass and it takes up one USB slot permanently. I prefer wired mice, so my mouse takes up the second USB port.
If I want to charge my phone, Fitbit or in the past Google Glass with the USB port, I have to unplug my mouse.
I would not buy the new MacBook as it's unusable for me unless I carry around a hub everywhere.
Having two of them on opposite side as the new Pixel does is certainly convenient, even more so because the port is flexible: you can just plug your stuff in whichever port is more convenient in terms of distance/position. Have a power plug to the left? Plug it to the left port. To the right? Plug to the right port. That is by far the main reason why I'm bothered by Apple's MB and its single Type C, while having a single one may be sufficient having one on each side is significantly more convenient.
At this point, I find this whole thing funny. Again.
How many times has Apple done this in modern times? Remember the outrage when Apple removed floppy disk drives? Optical drives? Ethernet ports? Remember how mad everyone got when Apple replaced their old, thick connector on the iPhone 5? Nobody complains about how thin their phone is now that the old 30pin connector is no longer the limiting factor on size. Nobody is bemoaning the fact that they can't watch a DVD on their laptop - we've moved on from optical media.
Nobody will even bother examining the bellyaching about this in a couple of years because we'll all be so happy with the obvious (in hindsight) decision to switch to USB-C.
What happens if that port fails or beaks? Your laptop stops working...
I'm not a fan of their single-port decision either, but in fairness: Every laptop stops working when the charging port breaks. No matter how many other ports it may have.
> Every laptop stops working when the charging port breaks
That is true, however if you are using the same port for a multitude of things (plugging/unplugging USB sticks, monitors, etc...) it's going to get a lot more use, and therefore increases the likelihood of something breaking.
I've broken USB ports before on laptops, usually by crushing the floating center plastic thing (USB cable gets ripped out weirdly or something), but I have other USB ports so life goes on. USB-C has the same center floating plastic bit -- just waiting for it to get broken off.
DC ports tend to be pretty robust, but do break from time-to-time. Apple's solution to this was the Magsafe connector, which avoided the issue for the most part. Seems like a step backwards for laptops to now rely on a single, potentially fragile port for everything.
> That is true, however if you are using the same port for a multitude of things (plugging/unplugging USB sticks, monitors, etc...) it's going to get a lot more use, and therefore increases the likelihood of something breaking.
By design it allows at least 10000 cycles of insertion/removal. Using it 8 times a day every single day you'd need about 3.5 years to end them. It's probably ok for most workloads.
Of course this is purely anecdotal, but amongst my friends and coworkers I've seen magsafe connectors fail at about the same rate as normal power adapters. Usually at the end where the wire goes into the wall plug brick part.
Yes the cheap to replace wire end breaks easily. But the expensive-to-repair computer side port is solid. You're going to see a lot more expensive computer repairs with the USB-C charging port.
True. Although I think it would be much better for durability if Apple used the same wire/power brick layout as everyone else: have the power brick in the middle of the wire, accepting 120/240 V from a standard "figure-eight" cord. Then that cord would be the one that breaks, and they cost $1 to replace. Of course this conflicts with Apple's business model...
At least over here in Europe, you can attach a bog-standard 240V cord to the Apple power brick so it sits in the middle of the cord. However, this does not help if the computer-side plug does not disengage if your lovely child barrels down your living room.
Magsafe has prevented a costly fall or other here.
All the Apple laptop and iPad adapters I've gotten accept a standard figure-8 cord if you just slide off the national plug. For my it's the slim cord between the charger and the machine that wears out.
Interesting. I've never seen anyone using it with the figure-8 cord. My intuition was that having the adapter stuck to the wall tends to often bend the thin cord on the DC side. As you say, that's what usually fails.
MagSafe was great when laptops got 3-4 hours (or less) of battery life which required re-charging in hostile conditions. MagSafe3 is 8-10 hours of battery life. No one can possibly trip over your charger if it's not plugged in.
that's an interesting point-- i was wondering why not having MagSafe anymore wasn't making me that upset (considering how magical and awesome i thought it was when it came out) and it definitely comes down to this. i guess we hit the point where the magnetic fanciness has become less useful than reducing cableage sometime in the past few years...
What I hear people complaining about is that the product isn't complete out of the box: You immediately have to go out and buy a hub, or at least a charger that also acts like a hub, and/or an HDMI adapter. Some of these gadgets are, for now, a little expensive -- $40 for something that used to be built in is, for some people, an insult. (I don't mind myself; I take the long view about things like this.)
The product is complete out of the box, just not complete for every use case. Even as a commercial editor my need for multiple ports decreases every year. Currently I work on broadcast spots with one client using one drive and dropbox. If I was on the print or web side I could get rid of that drive. I haven't used a thumbdrive in probably a year. Everything is dropbox or google drive if it's not large video files that require a raid. Two years ago I cut spots for Reebok on location using a 13" air, I have no doubt I could do the same with the new Macbook.
Now I wouldn't buy the new Macbook for my main editing rig, but I might buy it to use when traveling and consulting. I don't understand people complaining about a product that was obviously not designed for their use.
It's complete, but most people will want and need to buy some kind of adapter for their external drives or whatever.
Some of the anger seems to stem from confusion about what the new MacBook is. It's clearly a smaller version of the Air, not a replacement for the Pro.
If you have devices that immediately require you to buy a hug for the new MacBook, it's obvious you're not the target market, and you need to buy one of the more "Pro" ones.
I see people complaining about the Macbook like Apple is forcing you to buy it. You're exactly right, for the people who are complaining, Apple makes a Macbook Pro with multiple ports on it. Or even a Macbook Air with a couple extra ports.
Just because Apple has an iPad doesn't mean you can't buy a Mac Pro, you know?
It's intended to be used with a Bluetooth mouse (if the user wants to use something other than the trackpad).
Even now, this is sort of like saying 'Forget about watching a movie on these laptops' about it since it doesn't have a DVD drive! (I was going to say 'in a little while', but really, wireless mice are so common now)
High end mice still don't come in plain-bluetooth version. I've a couple of Logitech Performance MX and there's still no succesor (either from Logitech or an alternative from another company) that's just plain bluetooth with no dongle.
> [...] wireless mice are so common now)
I never made any mention of a non-wireless mouse. All highend mice come with USB dongles, regrettably.
Lack of optical drive is still annoying. And I still have a good laugh every time I watch an Apple user trying to give a presentation, struggling to connect to wifi because they don't have an ethernet port, and then not having the right adapter to connect to the projector. Or failing to find a charger for their phone.
You're right that this is classic Apple, but I wouldn't call any of those decisions obviously right. And there have been plenty of bad calls along the way - remember when Apple tried to get you to use Firewire hard drives rather than USB? Remember PERCH? Remember those magnetic ethernet cables? Having fun adaptering back and forth between DisplayPort and Thunderbolt?
Totally! And moreover, Apple's been on this get-rid-of-all-the-cables kick since at least the introduction of AudioVision 14 Display... in 1993. Anyone else remember the NeXT's unified power/display/keyboard/mouse/audio cable? ADC cables that passed power, display, and USB through the Cinema displays?
Aside from not relying on outside technologies for their success, eliminating cables has basically been Apple's central theme since (and before) their comeback. At least it's based on a standard this time.
While Apple has been in the business of simplifying ports there is a difference at least in previous cases we were ready to move on I'd argue. Back in 1999 I don't think I had used a floppy for a few years, zip drives? Sure, but not a floppy. Dropping the optical drive was bound to happen, I don't think I've really used a optical media bay outside of a game console for years.
However, every day at work, I plug my MacBook Retina into two monitors, plug in my USB 3.0 drive, sometimes my iPhone to charge or do dev stuffs, and charger, and frequently use my SD card slot as a 3rd HDD. Apple now is in the business of offloading the problem of I/O to the user, they haven't fixed it. It wouldn't have hurt the MacBook to include 2-4 ports, all USB3c
I'm more than ready to move on to this, and would have been ready years ago. In 1999, floppy disk use was far more prevalent than the need for multiple USB ports is now. For your described use case, you'll just plug your Macbook into a USB3 hub or dongle with HDMI (I don't think this machine has enough graphics power for multiple external screens). You will actually have fewer cables to manage.
And it actually would hurt the Macbook to include more ports. The current port is above the keyboard, likely because it can't fit under the keyboard. Adding more ports would mean increasing one of the dimensions. Given the versatility of the USB3C port, I think it's the best possible tradeoff. If you absolutely use lots of ports day to day, and can't use a hub, then this really isn't the computer for you, and Apple will even sell you one of those.
If you plug all that stuff in every day, why not just get a the inevitable hub apple is going to sell? That way just one cable to plug in each morning instead of 5.
Yeah, every day you are reminded because someone forgot their apple adapter. It's nothing but pathetic.
Optical drives and floppy discs were obvious, they were never used on a daily basis when they were removed and that they remained so long in laptops (macs included) is just astounding. But something like Ethernet is just ludicrous. Unfortunately, if you want a slim laptop Ethernet will have to go - but it sure as hell will be missed in the coming decade.
Non-replacable batteries... Another milestone? No one was stupid enough to come up with that before apple, and thanks to that we all have to throw away all of our devices after a few years. But who cares, right?
You have to plug the non-part-of-the-laptop PCMCIA card, just like you have to plug the non-part-of-the-laptop USB adapter. Not much big of a difference.
Or where you'd needed an adapter dongle that connected to the PCMCIA card.
I know there was a laptop or at least a concept of it with something similar to the (parent) XJACK connector, but have never seen it in real life. Would love to see them in ultrabooks.
"At this point, I find this whole thing funny. Again"
Yup. It's more than just funny. The number of people I know who are carrying around "our thinnest, lightest macbook yet" with a bagful of adaptors that weigh more than the laptop is HILARIOUS.
As for me, I'm carrying around a 2012 Macbook Pro (the last model with a non-glossy screen). Even though my work involves dealing with iOS projects etc., my next laptop will probably be running Linux and I'll learn to rely on my iMac for iOS specific work.
> bagful of adaptors that weigh more than the laptop
They would have to carry around somewhere between 30 to 50 adapters to reach 2 pounds. I'm excluding the power adapter since that's a baseline for any laptop.
But doesn't the giant bag of fiddly adapters become more cumbersome than just a laptop with everything built into it? Like your parent, I am running a non-retina 2012 MBP and it's great - no need for an array of tangled adapters. It's all in there.
> Nobody complains about how thin their phone is now that the old 30pin connector is no longer the limiting factor on size
Yeah, they do. Ask someone whose iPhone has just died (again) if they'd take it being a bit thicker with a bit more battery, and I don't know anyone who wouldn't make the trade.
And I personally still miss living in a world where no matter where you went you were never more than 5 feet from a 30-pin cable.
I think it's great that Apple has replaced all those ports with USB-C, and as you point out it is exactly in line with previous decisions to prune almost obsolete tech which turned out very well. There will be a lot of unjustified moaning and then people will be happy when the whole world runs on USB-C (at last, one fast standard for connectors that everyone can agree on).
I'd rather have two USB-C ports though than a pointless little audio jack - they should have put one on either side as Google have on their pixel. People could use bluetooth headphones with it if they really couldn't find some other place for the headphone jack, but I'm sure they could have squeezed it in if they tried hard enough. As it is one port is rather limiting (yes I know it shares data and power).
It'd be nice to be able to charge an iphone and charge the computer at the same time, so on port means many people will require a hub. They should also have sorted out their monitors with a refresh which actually functions as a hub for USB-A and USB-C - perhaps they'll do that before launch or I hope soon after.
> Remember the outrage when Apple removed floppy disk drives? Optical drives? Ethernet ports?
Not really. What outrage? Floppy and Optical drives were dropped when they were already old. I remember some people complaining about the lack of USB, but you can get a thunderbolt<->ethernet adapter when you purchase it. Also, an ethernet port itself if thicker than the laptop itself, so it's understandable.
> Nobody is bemoaning the fact that they can't watch a DVD on their laptop - we've moved on from optical media.
I bemoan that about my work laptop. It's not possible to legally stream all the things I'd like to watch, and for whatever reason building USB boot drives is still more painful than burning ISOs to DVDs or CDs (no good reason for that, but each time it's been the case).
I understand your general point and think it holds true. However, I would say in my mind that the way Apple can decide to change their connector and suddenly make redundant a full range of downstream devices (house and car chargers, general chargers, audio equipment) is a real negative and one of the 3 or 4 things that keeps me from moving back over from Android.
They kept the 30-pin connector around far, far longer than most companies kept their proprietary power or data connectors. When they switched it was to something robust enough they wouldn't need to fiddle with it for a long time.
Standards change, but at least this one hasn't changed very often. I think "once" is an allowable amount of change.
Your inner fanboy is leaking. It wasn't Apple's lead.
Samsung did it at least twice before Apple switched to Lightning, another time after Lightning and will probably also move to Type C soon. Same for HTC, they switched port choices before Apple did as well, the HTC Dream has a different USB port than the HTC Evo and both came before the iPhone 5, and they're also likely to change to switch to this as well.
So basically Apple is the only choice that comes closest to behaving as you expressed a desire for and instead you shit on them out of complete ignorance. Good job.
Android OEMs recently stabilized onto Mini-B but I've seen Android phones with Micro-B on them in the past and Samsung even had their own Apple 40-pin knock off for a while. Now all signs are pointing towards Android OEMs adopting the Type C port soon too, so you're getting a fourth port option for Android in the last 5 years.
Good point, but you have Mini-B and Micro-B reversed. Mini is the old thicker connector that you don't see much any more, and Micro is the newer thinner one.
Samsung also had USB3 Micro-B (the wide connector) on the Galaxy Note 3, but went back to a regular Micro-B in the Note 4.
Yeah. GP's point is just plain wrong, if he was concerned about 3rd party stuff lasting for more than one phone purchase, iPhones are clearly the winner with only have two connector options since 2008 while keeping their form factor consistent for two generations (and there are adapters for the first switch, and possibly a third switch this fall, where adapters are still plausible all the way back to original accessories).
Samsung and most other Android manufacturers aren't even guaranteed to maintain physical dimension compatibility between different models of the same exact phone (S6 vs S6 Edge, for example), let alone if you were to just stay with Android as an OS and were switching between manufacturers each upgrade. No way in hell you're keeping any nice-fitting docks or cases around for more than one Android phone purchase.
3rd party market lock-in is one of the reasons I switched to Android too. I understand Apple is out to make money like everyone else, but skipping micro-usb is (from my perspective) not a product enhancement.
Their delayed support on NFC arguably killed the user adoption for the tech as well, but i digress.
For all of Apple's focus on "simplicity" and "elegance" in design and whatnot, the company sure makes you carry a shitload of ugly dongles and extra cables and adapters along with your iDevices.
Wouldn't they be more elegant if they would, you know...Just Work?!
During my day to day use, the only time I plug in to anything is when I sit at my desk, power, Thunderbolt and HDMI to get a glorious three display setup out of my MBPr.
That being said, when I am in meetings, or on the move for work, I don't carry dongles with me. Pure laptop for me. All of our meeting spaces have Airplay compatible projectors, so I sit down, make sure I am on wifi and connect to the display.
Transferring large files? We've got 1 Gbit to our desks, I can sling data from our Denver location to our St. Louis location at almost 300 Mbit/sec sustained. Also, wireless N/AC throughout the building.
In the world where you no longer NEED those ports, having a smaller lighter laptop makes all the difference. I already don't carry dongles with me, the new laptop with less ports wouldn't change that.
Depends on the world you travel in. And I don't mean third world, first world, I mean the sort of places you have to visit.
Most defense facilities will NOT have wifi, and their meeting rooms will still have projectors with VGA in only. For travelers in the world that I inhabit, all those ports are a necessity. We would even still love to have a DB9 serial port because we often connect to embedded systems with serial consoles.
You and I live in different worlds, even though we both probably work on very technically involved things.
Eh … if you need a dongle maybe it’s just not, you know, for you? What a novel concept!
I practically never plug anything into my laptop except the charging cable. I suspect there are many people like me out there. This one is for use, not for you. Apple isn’t into being all things to all people, you know. Or at least their single products never are. Sometimes something is just not for you and that’s ok.
Then why put a data port on it at all? Either they expect you to do everything through the cloud or they don't. If they expected enough people to plug stuff into it that it was worth putting a USB port on it, that means expect that the same people would sometimes do that while it was charging (given that these things last through a day of heavy use at best). Which means they do expect people to have to use a dongle.
They don't make you. Apple's approach is you do everything wirelessly. For the laggards, well, you might need an adapter or two, but it's still more portable than a thicker and heavier laptop.
I use a wireless mouse and connect to the Internet wirelessly. My external HDD is over USB, but the latency (from it not being an SSD) is bad enough that wireless would change nothing.
That's great, but even at 1GBit over Google Fiber that has still less bandwidth than an actual SSD. And of course the most important part of why you use an SSD in the first place is latency, where cloud storage is significantly slower than 1995 spinning platter hard disks.
So even if I accept that the storage is in the cloud, it doesn't make sense since the hardware is clearly not there, but the software isn't either. I can't tell VMWare to use Google Drive for storage. It's a propietary data-dump, not an actual drive.
To be fair, you're not running VMWare on the Pixel either (i don't think?). I'm skeptical that it is even a problem for just about anything you can actually run on the OS. It's a Chromebook afterall, running disk-utilizing programs is not it's design speciality.
Sure, you could dump Linux on it - but i'm not sure how many would choose a Pixel over some other highend brands for a Linux machine.
I believe the disk is mainly just used as a cache, for web apps (music/etc). Just about everything is stored in the "cloud".
(I own a first generation Chromebook, but things may have changed)
I'm a huge fan of the Lenovo X1 Carbon. Despite their stupid moves regarding preloaded software, it's tough to beat a Thinkpad for Linux support.
Even better than the Linux support though is their warranty support. For under $100 you can get a year of accidental damage protection with onsite service -- Not long ago I knocked my X230 off a desk, cracking the LCD. Lenovo sent an IBM tech out the next day with an LCD, who then installed it in my home office.
Yea, i'm heavily debating a highend Thinkpad as a replacement for my Macbook Pro.
Mostly, i want Macbook Pro "quality", in a system that has good Linux support - mainly for containers, i'm sick of running a Linux VM on my OSX machine.
Surely a majority of people buying this won't be running the actual Chromebook system on it? What application can you even run on that system that would use 8GiB of RAM and an i5? And last I checked, you couldn't even run Skype on it, so I mean I just come up pretty much empty for the set of people willing to run Chromebook the OS and buy a 1k machine to do it.
Since Chromebook is Linux under the hood, they'll presumably have the driver situation down. So this makes for a very nice Linux system.
Sure, many of the people buying this won't be running ChromeOS.. but then they shouldn't really be complaining that it doesn't fit their needs. A Chromebook is not a general purpose device, it was specifically designed for a narrow use case, ChromeOS. The fact that you can do something else with it, does not mean it was designed for that.
I'm not going to buy a vehicle designed for hauling freight, and complain that it isn't sporty enough. Which, in my opinion, is what complaining about the lack of storage in a "Webbook" is like. You're buying a device, specifically tailored and designed for people who are using a web based operating system. It doesn't even let you install things by default, outside of web apps.
I just bought more RAM for my PC because the 4GB I had wasn't enough for all the tabs I keep open in Chrome. Every time I switch to a tab that wasn't open for a while it would swap like mad and become unresponsive.
... would be fine until I want to talk to my mother, who uses Skype. And then it would feel strangely limiting to not be able to do that on my $999 computer.
The newer versions of VMware are html based instead of using the thick client. Managing them and accessing the console should work in theory. Also the Citrix receiver and Remote Desktop clients both work well on the newer chromebooks. If you mean running vms I would consider a more powerful machine with more ram and a supported operating system.
Too bad that VMWare still hasn't upgraded their VMWare Integration plugin to use the new plugin architecture for Chrome, and that Adobe no longer makes Flash for Linux because right now the only way I can manage my VMWare/vCenter is using the Freshplayerplugin that wraps the Pepper Flash version that comes bundled with Chrome so that I can have the VMWare integration plugin function so that I can upload/download OVF's.
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Suffice to say, the newer versions of VMWare are not HTML based. It's a full on Flash application.
I apologize I read that last line right after I hit reply. I still cannot transfer files. I use it to manage the existing FreeBSD\Windows\Linux boxes that we currently have and have a bunch of templates that I use already.
> The whole point of a chromebook is that the storage is in the cloud.
The whole point of a Chromebook is that the Chrome browser is the app platform. But among the many big pushes of Chrome to enable browser to be a compelling app platform (and one that eventually moved into web standards) is enabling local storage for browser applications so that they don't need to rely on remote storage for everything.
So it makes sense that it would have less storage than a laptop with a traditional OS, but more storage than you would expect from a "the storage is in the cloud" model.
It seems like the first models where initially intended to be more of a thin client type deal, but that doesn't seem to be the case with this model (given that it can go up to an i7 with 16gb of RAM). The disk space is disappointing mark on an otherwise excellent ultrabook report card.
In a world where cable companies monopolize broadband Internet and cell phone carriers charge for data by the megabyte, I'm pretty sure I don't want to rely solely on the cloud.
I upgraded my acer c720p chromebook to 120GB NGFF drive so I'd have more space for my debian chroot. The chromeos is nice. But I really depend on running linux (debian).
It's a nice laptop... but underspec'd for me. I'd like to see USB-C and more than 1920 x 1080 resolution. I don't care as much about the resolution on a 13" screen. But I'd like to be able to drive a 4K monitor. It's not clear to me whether it can drive a 4K monitor with its display port.
What's got USB-C other than the Macbooks released yesterday? If it catches on it might be nice in the future, but unless you're daisy-chaining expensive laptops...
That's because you're supposed to store all your data on Google servers (this is not sarcasm).
For 1000 USD however this is ridiculous. Just go DELL or Asus or similar. The XPS13 is excellent for example, come with proper ports, disk space, is light, is fast, has long battery life, has great screen, etc.
Getting an Apple or Google ultra-light laptop just because they're big, rich, trendy companies doesn't seem like a great idea this year. Maybe they'll catch up next year.
I think if you look at the numbers, they are pretty fine.
The full HD (1080p) version is considered the low-res and according to Anandtech it lasts 15 hours of normal use, while the higher end model with a 3200x1800 screen lasts 10 hours of normal use (according to Anandtech), and 7 hours of video playback according to the CNet review.
1) It's signature edition PC which means it's a pure copy of Windows 8.1. No trialware, no bloat, or any other crap. Even if you end up dual-booting into Ubuntu or Elementary OS, it's nice to have a clean copy of Windows.
2) You can take it into a local Microsoft Store if you have any issues, no need to deal with Dell's often horrid phone support.
3) You can buy Microsoft Complete Care for $130 which includes 3 years accidental warranty. If you break it, they replace it in the store with a brand new model instantly. I've seen them often simply replace it with an "equivalent or better" machine if the item is no longer available as well.
That's an absolutely terrible idea if you intend to run Linux on it. If you select the Ubuntu version and it's preloaded with Ubuntu at factory then Dell knows that it's worth working (and paying for) Linux support. If you take a Windows version and load Linux later then Dell things you are a Windows user and won't care about Linux support.
This is one of the biggest issues with Lenovo even though lots of Linux people run them.
The mystery of Dell's website. Go back to Google and search again. Dell gives you different options (and prices) depending on how you enter and navigate the web site. It's a maze of wonderful discovery!
Dell uses targeted discount links. People post on 'deal' forums. The lower prices available on Google search results are special offers that people posted. They won't be accessible through the standard menu.
It's Dells model: coupons, discounts, offers, combo offers and all.
Google's marketing strategy for the Pixel isn't geared towards the "hacker" and developer type, it's more geared towards students and people who solely use their computers for simple web browsing and document processing. Offering 1TB+ of online storage is enough for all your office/school documents and all the photos you could ever want for the average person. If Google were making hardware only for developers and the hacker type, you bet they'd put more local storage in it and make it more "offline" friendly.
It's a 3:2 display with an i5 upwards and minimum of 8GiB of RAM. That doesn't particularly fit into the simple web browsing and document processing crowd, who would presumably be much better served with something like the Intel Core M Apple uses, which could easily yield twice the battery runtime at a zero cost for these usecases.
Here[1] is a break down of a core M and i5 mobile processor. I don't know if they are the specific processors, but there are some interesting differences, mostly around cache size, graphics chip, and graphics capabilities (the i5 has more hardware decode capabilities it seems). That said, since they are advertising 12 hours of battery, it's not like it's a slouch in that department.
The most important part is TDP, 4.5W versus 15W. Now sure, both processors tick all the boxes, but at the end of the day, you get performance as you put watts in (certainly when you are comparing processors as similar as these two).
So the M will perform perfectly fine for YouTube, web browsing, office etc. but it will suffer significantly in benchmarks (and subsequently any high load / long time situations). Which is a very good tradeoff to make since you get 1/3rd of the power consumption but can run all the important usecases, if the office is what you're targeting.
There is a class of developers these are being marketed towards. For example developers working with c9.io, and other dev tools inside a crouton chroot could be interested. And the heavy weight machines these developers may need would be hosted in the cloud....
You could even triple it with the new 200GB SD cards, but the performance won't be that great. Not so bad for storing documents and large media, I suppose.
Any idea if it uses one of the many standard-ish SSD SATA or PCIe interfaces?
You can upgrade the NGFF drive in many other chromebooks. I suspect you should be able to do the same for the new pixel. For example, see bubble 4 in the image at the bottom of this page: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo... I upgraded my ngff to 128GB on my acer c720P chromebook.
I have bad news -- the SD card reader on both the new and old Chromebook Pixel is hooked up over USB2 (i.e. max 20MB/sec transfer rate). There is no internal expansion via msata/pcie. And the SSD is soldered down.
I guess so. The question is whether it's worth spending $1k on a laptop with such a restriction, vs. just buying a different one for about the same price that's actually expandable.
Most chromebooks these days are NGFF... And you can get a 256GB NGFF on amazon. It's a common upgrade for chromebook users. Especially those running a chroot with crouton.
Neither Apple nor Google, when designing these ultrabooks, really seem to consider 'usability' a top priority in the way the typical HN user would define the term. They seem like fashion accessories first, brand adverts second, and general purpose computers... somewhere further down.
Of course i'm one of those cranky old dinosaurs who likes cords and ports and who doesn't particularly like 'the cloud' so obviously it's not for me anyway.
Is there such a thing like a "general purpose computer" anymore?
My computers need to be light. I don't need a powerful CPU and, since I run small VMs, not a lot of memory. With containers, the needs are even more spartan. What I do need is a good battery, screen and keyboard.
Were I running simulations over large datasets, I would prioritize a large amounts of memory, fast CPUs and the fastest GPUs I could lay my hands on. And a fast network so I could move the datasets easily. My general purpose computer would have Xeons (E7s and Phis), Nvidia GPUs and Infiniband interconnects across multiple chassis.
My mom needs a keyboard, a mouse and a screen. And a browser. And that's about it.
I'd say a general purpose computer at the very least is one that doesn't make too many assumptions about what you should and shouldn't do with it. These ultralight notebooks seem indended primarily for consuming media and the web - which is fine, if that's what you want. But having more ports and more local storage is still less opinionated.
My mom needs a webcam and Skype to chat with her grandkids.
She needs a USB slot so she can load a document from a conference.
She needs flash to play that silly train game she found online that the grandkids admire her for. She needs a decent CPU and RAM because webbrowsing requirements are legit ridiculous these days.
I see this as a slightly more flexible docking station. I don't mind having a hub on my desk. Connecting one cable when I return the laptop to my desk would be amazing - currently it takes 3. I need peripherals frequently - but only at my desk.
Well yes, I think designing an ultrabook probably is difficult. I mean, you have to cram a lot of powerful components into a very small computer. You've only go so much space, so something's gotta give.
if you use a hub as a charger i don't really see a problem. At home i have a usb hub and outside i don't even use usb.
One cable ought to be enough for a portable device.
The first gen Air was probably the most unusable machine Apple has created since the NeXT acquisition. It also didn't sell well, so it hardly 'created a market'. Only when second gen came out, with much better harddisk, more ports and better chipset, they really took off. The first gen was a good investment into the future by Apple, a testbed to try out new manufacturing technologies and probing the market. I suspect this Macbook could turn out the same, even though it's probably much more usable than the first Air.
And there are other models to choose from, even if you're an Apple diehard. Yes, Apple is incapable of making the perfect machine for your needs at this precise point in time, but it's pretty good for some group of people. I'm in the group of people that will get the MacBook Pro version of this with a stunning array of two USB-C ports.
Well, you just store all your data on the NSA cloud from your NSA terminal.
To your point about he MacBook one port. They do offer a rather smart "splitter" dongle at $60-$90 that allows you to charge while I/Oing other data when that uncommon scenario uncommonly arises.
I just don't get the whole Google approach. They think far higher of their "OS" than is warranted. They should have been selling this thing as a loss leader at around =<$800. I don't know too many people ... as in none ... who want to spend $1k on a Google "OS" machine.
If it had 256GB and Ubunutu it would be the Linux Macbook we need. A large portion of buyers will almost certainly be trying to run GNU/Linux on it anyway.
It's really not though. There's crouton which makes it trivial to setup a chroot - https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton which is good enough for most users.
If you'd rather blow away ChromeOS and install Ubuntu, it's just a few commands on the command line to boot from USB and install Ubuntu.
My biggest worry is the ease with which one can accidentally wipe out everything and reset it to factory settings every time you boot up. I might be super careful, but all I need is for my four or seven year old to turn it on wrong, and suddenly I fear I'd have a several hour fix-it session.
If it came with a setting that would let me make changes more permanent (e.g., a BIOS setting), I'd want one in a heartbeat.
My wife accidentally wiped my fully configured Crouton Ubuntu install off the drive when I was first playing with my Gen 1 Pixel. I chatted with a few Google Chrome OS devs right after this happened and managed to convince one that some sort of a setting, even if it's super obscure, would be a good idea, but apparently nothing ever came of it.
Crouton has come along way since then and you can back your chroot off to an SD card now, but it's still a pain point for sure.
ChromeOS is Linux and chrome, with a drastically simplified desktop environment. The hardware is well supported (AFAIK). But it's easier to run crouton atop than reinstall. So most people who want more do that.
I think that this device as a 256GB Ubunutu box would be very popular on the Google campus as well so there would seem to be some internal pressure for this configuration. (At least in 2013 when I was there, the Pixels were popular laptops as were small Goobuntu laptops.)
The problem is that the Pixel as a Chromebook fits in really well with Google's larger business model.
What's wrong with the Dell XPS 15 as a linux macbook? I've seen the two side by side and they're practically identical. The only problem is battery life, and I suspect that's mainly a software problem at this point, not hardware.
We have one contender from California, but their ideology has them offer just a single USB-C port. Now we get the competitor from Mountain View, who have rightly recognized the need for more than one fucking port when that's how you charge the damn thing, and what do they decide?
Oh yeah, we'll top out storage at 64GiB.