Apple: Special Adapters Required

A USB C adapter (required for New MacBook Pro's)

The new MacBook pro's ships without a normal USB port. That means your existing lightning cables used to connect your iPhone to iTunes will not work for you anymore, not without a special adapter. Own an iPhone 7 and want to plug in head phones you already own, you need a special adapter! Want to plug in your SD card to your new MacBook, get a special adapter! 

New MacBook Pro without normal USB Ports :(

Apple should sub-brand their company with "Special Adapters Required" : I just about puked when I found out what was required to change the battery in my iPad 2. I felt similarly off when I found out that Apple omitted the long cherished 3.5mm headphone jack from the iPhone 7. Now they launch the latest MacBook Pro's without a normal USB port or SD card slot WTF! What are they smoking down there in Cupertino? 

Thinner is cool for laptop computers, tablets and phones, duh! Anyone who has been awake for the last few years knows that portable computer designs are oriented towards thinner and lighter! 

There is no reason that Apple had to omit a standard USB port from their new MacBook lineup in order to make it thinner. The standard USB port give a computer the ability to connect to thousands of third party devices that share the USB standard. Yes USB-C is a type of USB port, but the new port defeated the utility of having a common standard port design! Imagine if the electrical wall outlets were all different, how absolutely annoying that would be! 

SD cards are used by all decent cameras from every camera vendor, and to omit this from their new MacBooks represents braindead engineering on a level that is incomprehensible! The SD card standard is the only thing that makes good photography in the digital age practical! I hope Apple burns (looses market share) for omitting the SD card slot in their new MacBook Pro's. 

Insane Vanity

Form over function again! Apple does not build a single computer able to properly accelerate a Oculus Rift experience yet. Their latest 5K iMac's might be the most beautiful computer, they also have 4 normal USB3 ports, a headphone jack, 2 lighting ports, a ethernet port and an SD card slot! Those ports make the iMac useful! 

Reinforcing Apple Haters 

Some of my friends are vehemently opposed to Apple products for at least 3 major reasons. 

1. Overprice for the performance. 

2. Platform incompatibility with third party software. 

3. Vain designs that prioritize the appearance of a computer over  functional utility and performance. 

I sorta like Apple

I like that Apple builds really high quality circuit boards! I really like the way that Apple builds well engineered machine aluminum housings for their computers. I appreciate the energy efficient focus of their electrical designs and their commitment to phasing out toxic material and components from their products in ways that go beyond RoHS! I appreciate that Apple has committed to manufacturing more of their products in America and I appreciate that Apple invests in renewable energy developments! 

Over the years I purchase a lot of Apple products! 

~$8000 worth over 10 years or $800/ year 

2nd Gen iPod Nano (given away) 
2nd Gen iPod Touch (still works/ batt weak) 
3rd Gen iPod Shuffle (works/ missing volume control adapter) 
Late 08 unibody MacBook (my primary laptop) 
4th Gen iPod Touch (use it sporadically) 
6th Gen iPod Nano + Lunatik watch strap (wearing it now) 
2nd Gen iPad (special use case) 
Late 13 iMac for Meg (primary computer) 
iPhone 5SE for Meg (primary phone) 
Late 15 iMac 5k (my primary desktop) 

Left Behind

Apple has left me with a conundrum. I can't update my iPod Touch 4 anymore, or iPad 2. My 08 MacBook cannot take the new macOS Sierra. The road to technological obsolescence is already half traveled and I will not buy any new Apple hardware unless they stop making illogical choices; like Nixing the headphone jack in the iPhone 7, omitting normal USB ports in the new MacBook Pro's, sealing the batteries in their devices to make them hard to change and not supporting their old products with software updates! I feel like Apple has gone down hill since Steve Job's died! 

Mac Pro Update?

What about the cylindrical Mac Pro that has not received a hardware update in over 1000 days! While the new form factor is beautiful it is hard to upgrade anything within that case, which is counter intuitive for a desktop. Desktops are supposed to be modular in nature for easy hardware upgrades, repairs and modifications!  

iMac 5K logic

Half the reason I got the iMac 5K boiled down to easily upgradable ram via a door, the 2TB fusion drive that combines an SSD with an HDD and a socketed CPU that can also be easily upgraded ^^ Other World Computing will has the things to make this machine beefier. That will be important for video editing in the future. The 8GB of ram barely serves my iMovie + dual browser action right now! 

Light Computing Work 

Writing these blog postings makes for light duty computing work that I have done on my phone, old iPad, old iPod Touch, old MacBook; not much computing power is needed to write on blogger thankfully :) Thanks Google!