What You've Just Bought!

[kmanmx]

Well, one very major one is lack of non C usb ports.
Second, for 99% of what I do, that touch screen bar will do nothing, and may even be a hindrance (booting into Linux, the F keys select tty's)
Gotta buy adapters to charge iPhones and iPads.
Gotta buy adapters to plug an external monitor into it
Gotta buy another cable to charge my phone.
Gotta buy an adapter to plug my camera into it.
Gotta buy adapters to use 99.9% of USB sticks
Gotta buy adapters to plug an SD card into it.

Plus, I actually like the fact that the Surface Book is a souped up convertible. The keyboards what's been stopping me from buying a Surface Pro 4

So... 2014 MacBooK Pro for sale! With 3 year Apple Care warranty!

I am split on the USB thing and people being pissy about it. I mean yes, ofcourse, I can totally see why it's a real PITA needing adapters for everything and that is going to completely write it off for a lot of people. Totally get it. But I can also understand why Apple did it. USB-C is undoubtedly the future, it's just better in every respect. The quickest way to force that change is release hardware with USB-C only. If they included two USB-C and two USB-A, everyone would just continue to use 'A', manufacturers would continue to make USB-A devices, and so on. By forcing USB-C on everyone, it forces people to buy those accessories because they know damn well that adapters are a pain in the *** and no one likes them, and that means manufacturers start releasing swathes of USB-C products to satisfy the millions of people that can now only buy USB-C accessories, and then the whole industry transitions over quicker than it would have and everybody wins.

I mean, imagine if every manufacturer on earth came together and said "We will never have a device leave our factories with a USB port other than type C from January 1st 2017 onwards". You **** over millions of people and force them to buy a loan of new accessories, but we'd have transitioned to a new far superior input in just a few months, and from then on, everyone profits!

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Why would it matter though if everyone took a little longer to transition from A to C? Floppy's stayed available after optical drives came out, then died a natural death as people transitioned away on their own accord. Nobody had to force consumers to only use optical media. In this case, Apple just decided meh you don't get choice in the matter (classic Apple )
At the very least, if you're going to release a laptop with ports on it that hardly anything has adopted just yet, include a few damn adapters especially if you're gonna market them for friggin 30-50 bucks each -_-

 

[iFargle]

It wouldn't bother me nearly as much if the iPhone 7 (and new iPad, whenever that comes out) was USB C and not Lightning. At least then they would have shown at least a little bit of cohesiveness throughout their product lines.

That right there is just... irksome.

 

[kmanmx]

Why would it matter though if everyone took a little longer to transition from A to C? Floppy's stayed available after optical drives came out, then died a natural death as people transitioned away on their own accord. Nobody had to force consumers to only use optical media. In this case, Apple just decided meh you don't get choice in the matter (classic Apple )
At the very least, if you're going to release a laptop with ports on it that hardly anything has adopted just yet, include a few damn adapters especially if you're gonna market them for friggin 30-50 bucks each -_-

It matters because it's a huge problem in the industry in general. Things are held back a lot just because input/outputs are so often lagging behind.

Lets say a new input comes out every decade. If we went balls to the wall instant changeover, we could probably reduce that to every 7 years, maybe even every five years. So in 30 years by the time I am in my 50's, we're now lagging behind on input technology by a decade at least, probably more like 15 years. That's like rewinding back to 2001 right now. Do you want to rewind back to 2001 ?

As for outputs.. right now, even if Oculus and HTC wanted to, they couldn't really release a higher spec headset. They're pretty much saturating DP 1.2. So, alas, we have to wait 5 years for DP 1.3 to become standard even though it was an approved standard over two years ago before we can make a good jump in resolution. Yey, outputs holding back a fledgling double digit billion dollar industry.

Back to USBC. Funny fact, it was actually largely invented by Apple anyway. So don't be so surprised at the fact they're filling Macs with them. As for why it's not on iPhone 7, i'd say dropping the headphone port was a hard enough pill to swallow for most. Dropping that and the lightning cable (which many iPhone users have a lot of accessories for) would be a kick in the balls. And secondly and also primarily.. business logic! if you want your 10th anniversary iPhone the next year to be as huge as possible, you add USBC to that instead

The whole thing is vicious circle of consumers not buying new input tech because their PC still has the old inputs, manufacturers not pushing the new input tech because consumers are still having to buy the hold input, and PC manufacturers conntinuing to use the old input because there arn't really many new input accessories in circulation because nobodies buying them. It's just a self enforcing piece of **** circle that holds the whole world back.

 

[PP Mguire]

It matters because it's a huge problem in the industry in general. Things are held back a lot just because input/outputs are so often lagging behind.

Lets say a new input comes out every decade. If we went balls to the wall instant changeover, we could probably reduce that to every 7 years, maybe even every five years. So in 30 years by the time I am in my 50's, we're now lagging behind on input technology by a decade at least, probably more like 15 years. That's like rewinding back to 2001 right now. Do you want to rewind back to 2001 ?

As for outputs.. right now, even if Oculus and HTC wanted to, they couldn't really release a higher spec headset. They're pretty much saturating DP 1.2. So, alas, we have to wait 5 years for DP 1.3 to become standard even though it was an approved standard over two years ago before we can make a good jump in resolution. Yey, outputs holding back a fledgling double digit billion dollar industry.

Back to USBC. Funny fact, it was actually largely invented by Apple anyway. So don't be so surprised at the fact they're filling Macs with them. As for why it's not on iPhone 7, i'd say dropping the headphone port was a hard enough pill to swallow for most. Dropping that and the lightning cable (which many iPhone users have a lot of accessories for) would be a kick in the balls. And secondly and also primarily.. business logic! if you want your 10th anniversary iPhone the next year to be as huge as possible, you add USBC to that instead

The whole thing is vicious circle of consumers not buying new input tech because their PC still has the old inputs, manufacturers not pushing the new input tech because consumers are still having to buy the hold input, and PC manufacturers conntinuing to use the old input because there arn't really many new input accessories in circulation because nobodies buying them. It's just a self enforcing piece of **** circle that holds the whole world back.

DP 1.4 is out and already being used.

 

[kmanmx]

True, but the amount of people with DP1.4 cards is too low to release a product that requires it. My card isn't exactly old and I have dp1.2 -.- It's like Nvidia/AMD suddenly realised "oh this VR thing is happening we should probably release up to date outputs". Even DP1.4 is not really sufficient. 8K @ 60Hz does not meet Oculus's target of 2x (4k x 4k) displays @ 90hz within 5 years. So I hope Dp1.5 is out soon :\

As a whole though IO is still years behind where it should be.

 

[PP Mguire]

True, but the amount of people with DP1.4 cards is too low to release a product that requires it. My card isn't exactly old and I have dp1.2 -.- It's like Nvidia/AMD suddenly realised "oh this VR thing is happening we should probably release up to date outputs". Even DP1.4 is not really sufficient. 8K @ 60Hz does not meet Oculus's target of 2x (4k x 4k) displays @ 90hz within 5 years. So I hope Dp1.5 is out soon :\

As a whole though IO is still years behind where it should be.

DP was just released and the cards have them, but 1.3 was released in 2014 and our 2015 cards still only have 1.2. 1.3 can handle 4k 120hz but there's no point in integrating the new standard when we didn't have displays remotely available to consumers that could require the bandwidth or even have the power to push said displays. The only reason we have 1.4 is because of timing on the ratification and because 4k 120hz panels are finally starting to show up while HDR is becoming a "thing". In reality, we still can't really push it. So it's not so much a case of I/O is years behind, we simply don't have the hardware capable of pushing such standards. It's been 2 years and 2 cards still struggle to push 4k beyond 60fps, let alone 90-120 without sacrificing visual fidelity. I mean, USB 3 took forever to finally be properly adopted and we're at 3.1 Gen 2 which can push 10Gb/s but how many consumers have devices that even cap Gen 1's 5Gb? I would say I'm an "enthusiast" when it comes to extremes having an external drive that's a 512GB SSD and it's capped at 525MB/s sequentials because of a standard that was introduced in 2008. Translate that R&D costs, hardware capabilities, and the extent of the average consumer's wallet and the reality starts to set in. I mean, we've had Thunderbolt 3 since last year, no real displays that need it still.

I guess the tl;dr version of that is, it's not that we're lacking behind in I/O, we're lacking behind hardware to push what you want or even the devices that require said hardware. There needs to be that demand for advancement, otherwise companies won't waste the money to develop for something that's vapor. Good example, we didn't see a major push in graphics until Crysis came out in 2007.

 

[kmanmx]

Probably right. I'm just salty because tech is the only thing that interests me in life that I can really afford, so I just want it all, now

Totally different topic, am I crazy to just not really trust anyone ? never in my life has someone totally screwed me over big time. But at the same time, every single day I see and witness things that just make me realize they are not trustworthy people. I don't really know anyone who I can completely trust :\ when it comes down to it, it seems the vast majority of people will put themselves ahead of others.

 

[PP Mguire]

Probably right. I'm just salty because tech is the only thing that interests me in life that I can really afford, so I just want it all, now

Totally different topic, am I crazy to just not really trust anyone ? never in my life has someone totally screwed me over big time. But at the same time, every single day I see and witness things that just make me realize they are not trustworthy people. I don't really know anyone who I can completely trust :\ when it comes down to it, it seems the vast majority of people will put themselves ahead of others.

You and me both man. I want our antiquated storage devices to be gone, to be on like 5th gen or better VR/AR (or a holodeck whatever), auto driving cars, auto flying and parking personal aircraft, avg internet connection being 1Gb or better, whatever.

 

[kmanmx]

You and me both man. I want our antiquated storage devices to be gone, to be on like 5th gen or better VR/AR (or a holodeck whatever), auto driving cars, auto flying and parking personal aircraft, avg internet connection being 1Gb or better, whatever.

From everything I see and follow on a ridiculous level (i've reached a low of reading patents and looking through the profiles are tech company employees on linkedin) it would seem like the next 10 years will be a golden age for tech, probably the best there has ever been, so that will be cool. Still not fast enough though.