All the other brands went along

This is my ~8 month old work laptop.

Is a Dell.

2 usb c not pictured.

You have options.

I dunno - I’m pretty sure I’d choose the modern MacBook Pro’s ports over any of these other options.

Fuck firewire. Glad it's dead. USB C is the best thing to happen to peripherals since the mouse.

I dont know why this is controversial. I'm way more happy with 4x USB-C, than 5 unique ports, that will likely never be used on a regular basis, even when they were relevant

As long as a computer has 4 usb-c ports, I think you’re covered for everything.

Yes we had more different ports back in the days, but most were never used.

Usb-c is way more practical. Still that implies that you have more than 2 Usb-c ports.

I'm no Apple fanboy (never owned a product of theirs and never will) but to be fair, those two USB-C ports can do everything the old, removed ports can do and more. The real crime here is not putting enough of them on the laptop.

Edit: The only port I'll lament the removal of is the headphone jack. USB-C headphones are rare, adapters get lost, and bluetooth headphones compress the audio and have input lag. Everything else can go, though, and won't be missed. (Okay fine ethernet can stay too.)

And there's the soldered RAM and storage, and glued-in or screwed-in battery...

Permanently Deleted

To make our laptops look clean and minimalistic, they made us buy a bunch of dongles and adapters.

Screw it, I'm buying a rugged laptop with the thickness of a desktop PC next

Is this rage bait? Those are different macbooks. I think the bottom ones are pros. My current Pro M2 has HDMI and magsafe. My M1 (Air?) is like the top one, but is not in fact a pro and therefore does not provide as many ports.

I’m glad I can plug in one port and have a dual display setup, all peripherals, speakers, ethernet, charging, etc connected at my desk in one go.

If I want to leave, unplug one thing and I’m good to go.

I'm on the other side wishing peripherals would catch up and all become USB-C already. I'm tired of USB-A.

They remove the extra ports because they take up space in the board.

That aside if you’re buying Mac you took it from yourself. No one made you buy it.

As someone who daily drives a laptop for work and does field work on server facilities, finding a modern replacement that has both a RJ45 port and square USB (USB-A?) ports available on both sides, has been a pain in the hassle.

And I'm not even crying over the loss of VGA any longer. That one I can live without.

The annoying thing is they're not even that much thinner. They've just reshaped the edge to make it look like there isn't room for real ports.

USB-C does a lot of heavy lifting. Also, MagSafe™ is still there. A little surprised there is also a SD card slot. And a HDMI port. Not complaining about their inclusion, and I do use them regularly, but why did the dongle company give these to us?

I miss having a thousand different cables to keep track of /s

really, all we need is the companies to start packing those laptops with thunderbolt3 or equivalent USB-C (USB 4). I love the old ports, but they were unnecessary. I'd rather the industry finally takes on the open thunderbolt standard and we're all good to go. With 10 thunderbolt ports you have 10 HDMI, or 10 USB, or 10 Ethernet, or 10 headphone jacks, or 10 RJ45 or whatever you need + PCIe tunneling.

I'm good with it to be honest. One port that can do it all. Not proprietary.

The longer we keep including legacy ports the longer they'll stick around on peripheral devices

Manufactures won't change until forced. The transition period might be a bit painful, but worth it.

That's what happens when designers boss engineers around. Form over function is pure cancer and it's becoming pervasive in our civilization due to the overwhelming ubiquity of propaganda(marketing). I have nothing but contempt for these trends.

USB-C is awesome though. I carry one charger amd dongle for HDMI and ethernet. It serves my many devices including Steam Deck, phone and laptop.

Problem: This is what happens when you pick Apple.

I actually prefer the standardization here. Sick of having 2 boxes of different cords.

I don't see the problem. Type-C ports can replace all those ports. If you want more ports, buy a dock.

<--->

Oh yes, the port that HTML passes through

My current phone lacks a headphone jack and I hate it. It would be okay if it was replaced with two usb c ports, but there's only one which means I either choose between headphones or charging, or I must use an adapter. Or wireless, but I don't want yet another fucking battery to charge.

Apple has always been an appearance over function company.

Where is the removable battery? Did ANY Apple laptops have that?

The desktop equivalent is "What happened to all my PCIe expansion slots?!"

(Note: processor PCIe lane count has gone up, used to be like 16 from CPU, 4 from chipset, since a GPU didn't need an x1x6 in terms of bandwidth - see SLI/crossfire. These days, it's just that many lanes go to M.2, with each using up to 4 lanes - vs having 6 SATA driven off the chooser)

This pic leaves out the latest generation of MacBook that brings back some of those ports.

I guess OP would rather generate outrage upvotes, rather than spread the truth.

Not Lenovo, my ThinkPad P1 has lots of nice ports

This post is actually so stupid, they didn't take shit from us, it's still right there.

Nobody uses a firewire cable anymore, USB-A/B is very outdated. On my work macbook with is a M1 Macbook Pro, I have a card reader, a usb-c and an hdmi port on one side, and a headphone jack, 2 usb-c ports and magsafe power ports.

Even if there wasn't, and it was just all usb-c, you can accomplish all of the same things ports. The old macbooks only had these ports on one side and the other had like one firewire or something.

USB-C can be used to deliver audio, video, ethernet connection, etc. You didn't lose any functionality. Worst case scenario you'd need a hub for the card readers or a usb to usb-c adapter, or ethernet to usb-c.

My work provided me with a usb hub that includes usb-a/b slots, hdmi, ethernet and power, which takes a single usb-c port. They're cheap and work just fine if you really need more than 4-5 ports.

Don't take it from me though!

2024 16" macbook pro: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/121554

• Charging and Expansion
• SDXC card slot
• HDMI port
• 3.5 mm headphone jack
• MagSafe 3 port
• Three Thunderbolt 5 (USB-C) ports with support for:
  • Charging
  • DisplayPort
  • Thunderbolt 5 (up to 120Gb/s)
  • Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gb/s)
  • USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s)

Oh no! They took out ports the vast majority of users would never use in their entire life, making production cheaper and also making room for new technology to develop and evolve, while enabling whoever needs a specific port to simply buy a fucking dongle and get the job done. Oh and this also made it possible for the entire machine to be lighter and thinner, more thermally efficient and have infinitely better battery life.

The horror 🙄

Yes, they should totally bring back the firewire port!

Laptops from the 2010s represented a peak in design and performance, but since then, it feels like we've seen consistent downsizing and downgrades. Take the latest Intel CPUs, for instance—it's as if the marketing pitch is, 'It may not be very powerful, but at least it’s energy-efficient.' It’s almost as though manufacturers are catering to a market they perceive as indifferent, and we, as consumers, continue to accept diminishing returns while paying increasingly higher prices. This trend reflects a broader issue in life today: settling for less while being charged more.

This picture captures the essence of that realization, and it is truly heart-wrenching.

All the people saying buy a dongle are forgetting to mention that dongles stop working all the fucking time. It's yet another potential point of failure that stops ALL work dead in its tracks if it happens.

To be fair, USB-C, especially with Thunderbolt, is much more universal. There are adapters for pretty much every "legacy" port out there so if you really need FireWire you can have it, but it's clear why FireWire isn't built into the laptop itself anymore.

The top MacBook Pro is also the 2016+ pre Apple Silicon chassis (that was also used with M chips, but sort of as a leftover), while the newer MacBook Pro chassis at least brought back HDMI and an SD card reader (and MagSafe as a dedicated charging port, although USB-C still works fine for that).

Considering modern "docking" solutions only need a single USB-C/Thunderbolt cable for everything, these additional ports only matter when on the go. HDMI comes in handy for presentations for example.

I'd love to see at least a single USB-A port on the MacBook Pro, but that's likely never coming back. USB-C to A adapters exist though, so it's not a huge deal. Ethernet can be handy as well, but most use cases for that are docked anyway.

I like the Framework concept the most, also "only" 4 ports (on the 13" at least, plus a built-in combo jack), but using adapter cards you can configure it to whatever you need at that point in time and the cards slide into the chassis instead of sticking out like dongles would. I usually go for one USB-C/Thunderbolt on either side (so charging works on either side), a single USB-A and video out in the form of DisplayPort or HDMI. Sometimes I swap the video out (that also works via USB-C obviously) for Ethernet, even though the Ethernet card sticks out. For a (retro) LAN party, I used 1 USB-C, USB-A (with a 4-port hub for wired peripherals), DisplayPort and Ethernet.

All the other brands went along

(My 2020 G14 has 3 A ports and ethernet, but still...)

Not all. If I dont get 2 USB-A ports, I ain't buying. Fortunately thinkpads still have them

I love it personally. At work I have two monitors, networking, mouse and keyboard all going through one port. So much easier in my opinion.

Well do you sell me a docking station with that laptop?

Or are you going to let me get buy some adapter dongles?

How about more USB c ports?

ThinkPad gang laughing in redundant tf ports

The pursuit of the "perfect body."

The new (not that new anymore) macbook PROs do have separate DC input, HDMI, SD card slot and HDMI. And to be honest, for an average computer user those ports are pretty useless, however if you do need them it comes at a rather steep premium.

Fades is either drinking Apple flavor Kool-Aid or has been fully brainwashed by apple into thinking everything is okay because a company said "you don't care, you're stuck here with us."

It's really sad how people will bootlick for any company once they bought enough products.

Look how they massacred my boy.

The 2nd from top has two lightning sparks. To charge the laptop, I have to connect them to the two holes in my outlet, right?

And everyone went ahead and purchased it anyway.

Companies always chase profit, if people would stop buying shittified products companies would stop enshittifying them.

Even Lenovo is doing it with Thinkpads, the t14 gen 6 has soldiered ram and only two USB A ports

we need 7 firewire ports and micro dvi ports with 1 mini usb

It’s your fault if you buy it

Just one port to rule them all

Useless old school holes? I am glad they did.

Do the bottom two have the same charging port? Impossible!

Also, my first time seeing the newer FireWire and whatever the video output is...

I believe that the topmost (M1?) MacBook still has a headphone Jack on the other (right-hand) side.

PS: by no means am I an apple fanboy, but I inherited an old Retina MacBook Pro that I installed Linux on and now use as my daily driver. It still holds up extremely well considering it's 11 years old. The only ports it's really missing is an RJ45 and (nowadays) USB-C.

If it doesn't have a VGA port, I don't use it.

Buy dongles and splitter dongles.

Asus G16 2023 has 2 USB-A, 2 USB-C (one of them supports Thunderbolt), Ethernet, HDMI, 3.5 mm jack, and a micro-SD slot.

I'm not very tech savy but for years I wondered if I could somehow cram a desktop computer in an aluminium suit case. The challenge is getting to the point I will just take it.

Back in the ‘90’s, they had every port you could imagine, and some STILL felt the need to use a docking station. You really can’t please everyone. I actually like the streamlined setup more these days. Because I’d rather have ports I actually use and that are fairly standardised, as opposed to a bunch of others that are of no use.

I never used most of the ports on my 90’s laptops. Never used a parallel port, PS2, never used the PCMCIA card slot, etc.

All I really need is a full sized HDMI, a few USB-C’s and one or two A’s for convenience.

to be fair, the bandwidth of all the ports on the bottom laptop probably fit in 1 (maaaaybe 2? Just spitballing here) Thunderbolt 5 ports depending how fast the ethernet port is. BTW, why would you want a port that isn't reversible like USB C lol...

Wow is that firewire? Haven't seen that in a while

I am happy that things have converged over time to a single, truly versatile multi-bus capable port (USB-C/Thunderbolt 3) ... however, the vendors IMHO should be legally bound to supply down-converters for all the peripherals that used the older buses for the next 10 years, transitively for 2 generations of buses.

If USB-C supports bus 'X', then there should be inexpensive and easy to purchase down-converters from USB-C to 'X'. If Bus 'X' replaced bus 'Y' in the last 10 years then there should be a down-converter available from bus 'X' to 'Y'.

One problematic example is Firewire.. Apple used to make Thunderbolt-2-to-Firewire800 dongles, but they stopped and now they're rare as hens' teeth and ungodly-expensive.

They still sell Thunderbolt-3-to-2 dongles, but how long will they keep selling those?

Oh, and while I'm wishing for ponies, the drivers/specifications for all such adapters should be open-source and royalty-free.

And look how much thinner. A large part of that is the need for physical ports which although they may loom small on the outside, also take up space inside for the boards that convert signals. Now those conversions happen in the dongles if needed.

The real problem is that USB didn't implement a hub standard so most hubs have had to use old hub standards and just have a single USB-C connector and the rest USB-A, hdmi, etc. There haven't been many purely USB-C to USB-C hubs to allow for connecting lots of USB-C devices to a single port and usually they end up losing features or splitting bandwidth instead of sharing the full bandwidth.

well… the new one has gained some ports back, also usb c is absolutely OP (if you have the money for the Accessories lel)

As long as the bare necessities is available e.g 14" with HDMI, 2 Type C with PD and DP Alt, MicroSD/SD card reader, smart card reader(?), 2 USB A 3.1, 1x 3.5mm jack, 1x ethernet port, kensington and easy maintenance, for me it's enough. VGA connectors (dang those older projectors) can be handled with VGA to HDMI adapter.

My daily device is T14 G1 AMD with dualbooting separate SSD (M.2 WWAN slot used as SSD).

My brand new ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 has HDMI, two USB-A 5Gbps ports, a headset jack, a half-height Ethernet port, as well as two thunderbolt 4 ports and an optional smartcard reader.

I agree that Apple kinda inadvertently ruined the port selection on many laptops for a while but it's gotten better over the years; even Apple brought back HDMI and SD-Card readers.

Meh... Did they really? Or do you just choose the worst?

Where's the magsafe ?

Yeah, but at least they permit you to use the right mouse button.

Toslink, or what's that?

All you need is a couple of USB-C ports and maybe a HDMI port on most modern laptops. More is good but not a requirement.

WTF is this boomer facebook post shit?

Honestly for some specific use cases where the computer being very light is needed, this is great, but the fact every mac has this now is a little crazy.

I have a ton of the bottom three laptops, wanna trade for the shitty one up top?

My thinkpad is also light in the connectivity area and I absolutely adore the $30 dock I got for it. Click the laptop in place and LAN, displays, audio, power, keyboard, mouse, external storage are connected instantly; if I had to connect each one separately, multiple times per day, I'd go insane.

Why not complain about them not having a floppy drive anymore while you’re at it? That’s as obsolete as the non USB-C ports.

this is another reason why I hate apple. other tech companies would rather follow apple than forge their own design path.

I also hate the tech reviewers who reinforce the belief of apple design superiority that pushes this false belief that encourages those bad design changes.

I never use the ports on my laptop. It never bothered me that they removed them all. Granted I know that’s just my use case I can t speak for everyone.

Back pain?

The sb part of the acronym means Serial Buss which is what all external peripherals used to connect to the system. The u part means Universal as in one size fits all. Every iteration of the spec has led up to this point. We had A,B,Micro, and now C. Everything could also be wireless today if there were enough spectrum available

Most things are wireless these days. I only actively use two ports: one for monitor + charging, and another for the second monitor. Mouse, keyboard and headphones are via Bluetooth.

For me the top one works fine for my day to day use. And it takes up less space in my backpack.

This aged like milk, the newest MacBooks have magsafe

That's what I mean when I say that Apple is the worst even ever happened to technology.

Dude if you need that many ports just buy a P50 workstation

I'm okay with USB-C and a headphone jack on my laptop. The other shit is for the birds.

It looks like you're just a dumb follower.

Nobody took anything FROM you. You're just a blind consumer, fool.