New 12″ MacBook sans Thunderbolt

[Craig Seeman]

[Mitch Ives] “I think we will be awash in hubs in the next few months”

Yup, one more thing one needs to bring and may forget at some point.
The convenience of laptops offset by a boatload of attachments to make everything compatible.
So in addition to the Thunderbolt dock to connect Firewire, eSata, Ethernet one will also need USB-C dock to connect the same stuff to another laptop.

[Craig Seeman]

LaCie announces an upcoming USB-C drive.
So add one more adaptor I’d need to get that into non MacBooks although they will graciously include a USB-C to USB3 USB2 adaptor.

[Craig Seeman]

9to5 Mac has an interesting article speculating about both Thunderbolt and Lightning.

https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/10/usb-c-cable-gallery-compare-to-lightning-and-micro-usb-specs-and-apples-future/

[Walter Soyka]

Here’s an interview with an Apple engineer about the design of the new MacBook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZ8ek-6ccc

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

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[David Lawrence]

LOL! You beat me to it! 🙂

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[Brett Sherman]

The more interesting thing about this is the tea leaves of USB C for higher end laptops, iMacs and Mac Pros. Personally, I think USB C spells the death of thunderbolt and lightning connectors. I don’t think I’m sad to see either go. Thunderbolt has been a fail in a lot of ways. I find the lightning connections finicky, a cord will work on one phone but not another. And why have multiple styles of connections when you can use one?

Yes, thunderbolt is faster but I’d imagine the next generation of USB C would surpass it. Probably the next version of Mac Pros will have both USB C and thunderbolt. Then the generation after might drop thunderbolt completely.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Craig Seeman] “Yup, one more thing one needs to bring and may forget at some point.
The convenience of laptops offset by a boatload of attachments to make everything compatible.
So in addition to the Thunderbolt dock to connect Firewire, eSata, Ethernet one will also need USB-C dock to connect the same stuff to another laptop.”

Apple is certainly shifting gears, I mean the MacBook promo photos are literally pivoting around themselves like Tim Cook took the MacBook football and spun it on it’s tip in the end zone. They went from a fairly simple product line, to many different options within their own product lines, and it is admittedly confusing for customers, especially when that customer is me. I do think the MacBook vs MacBook Pro lines now make sense. The MacBook Air and MacBook lines don’t seem to be make much sense any more.

Hopefully, Thunderbolt isn’t going away very fast or very soon. I really like it and has been a massive productivity simplifier for us.

[Craig Seeman]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Hopefully, Thunderbolt isn’t going away very fast or very soon. I really like it and has been a massive productivity simplifier for us.”

By reaching for simplicity of the product they’ve now added to the complexity of adaptors.

Firewire, esata, USB, Ethernet all had methods to get into a Thunderbolt connector.
I fear that there will be no way to get Thunderbolt into USB-C
Firewire to Thunderbolt still works.
Thunderbotl to USB-C doesn’t (and may not ever) exist. Lots of legacy devices and no way to connect them.

[Jeremy Garchow] “The MacBook Air and MacBook lines don’t seem to be make much sense any more.”
But I can still connect almost anything to an Air. I can even carry a single Dock with a bunch of ins and outs to cover unanticipated combinations.

I doubt a Dock with TB to USB-C is possible.

The MacBook sort of sits in the strange place. Sort of a hybrid Tabled with USB-C and Keyboard running OS X.

The one thing able had more or less was that anything that could hook up to your highest end Mac could also hook up to your lowest end Mac. That’s no more.

In some sense this seems almost (i said almost) as radical as Apple’s move from Nubus to PCI.

[David Lawrence]

[Craig Seeman] “By reaching for simplicity of the product they’ve now added to the complexity of adaptors.”

Wasn’t this the main critique of the New Mac Pro? 😉 That said, I like the NMP, I like Thunderbolt, and at least they give you more than one port.

A one port MacBook is a pretty radical experiment, but I hope Jeremy’s right and it’s simply a sharpening of the dividing line between “Pro” and “consumer”.

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[Jeremy Garchow]

Well, this is a pretty good visual of the MacBook logic board.

Kind of amazing, really.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/new-macbook-smaller-than-raspberry-pi/