Dongles are Apple’s new business model
I am extremely disappointed with the new Apple Macbook Pro laptops. Sure the new Touch Bar is a cool gimmick, and that is exactly what it is, but killing all the ports that pros actually use is a huge mistake. I am not even sure Apple knows what people do with their laptops.
I use Apple products for work. I have Mac Pro computers at home that are powerful enough to handle running multiple VMWare Fusion virtual machines, while I am coding in Eclipse and may be editing photos in Lightroom or Photoshop. Sorry Apple but the Photos application does not replace Lightroom yet. All of this hooked up to several screens. I was upset when the new Mac Pros took away all the expandability and I needed to buy new high end monitors and external enclosures for my hard drives. I have since consolidated and moved to a NAS.
I use my Macbook Pro when I am traveling. I use the HDMI port to give presentations. I use the SD card slot to read the SD cards from my cameras so I can edit photos. I use the thunderbolt ports to connect to ethernet, with a dongle, because some places in the world do not have WIFI. And I love the MagSafe power charger because I would have bought at least 5 new Macbook Pros for accidents that magically were not accidents with the disconnecting power cord. I do have a dongle for old VGA displays.
When I want to upgrade I need to carry around lots of dongles. Third party products do make all in one devices, which I would probably prefer, but this is not what real power users want. I will never use my Macbook Pro to hookup to three monitors, several hard drives and my NAS. I am sure some people do this, but look at all the cables they would need coming out of the laptop. I am also not cool with the new keyboard. It is not a pro keyboard. I don’t care how many millimeters were saved with the new keyboard. That is not what people want. However, Apple had the courage to keep the headphone jack.
I hope Apple will make a retro Macbook Pro in the future that returns all the ports we need and love.
