Originally Posted By: Dignan
The 30-pin lasted that long, but honestly, should it have?

Yes. Long living standards help minimize confusion, product waste, allow more products to be created in the ecosystem, and many other benefits. That's why it's worth putting in the time and investment into something that can last that long.

Seeing USB fumble around with connectors/plugs for years is not helping the U(niversal) part of the name. It's not even as simple as going from normal to micro, to mini. Mini had some odd variants, USB Go complicated plugs, and micro ended up needing to be reworked with USB 3. None of these designs showed much forward thinking beyond what was done for USB 1.0.

HDMI in my mind has done a little better here. And it's improved home theater setups as a result, since Firewire never really took off in this area as intended.


Originally Posted By: Dignan
And yes, Apple is pretty great at changing their minds. From the iPod with video to the iPad Pro stylus, they change their minds all the time.

Ugh, the stylus thing (and this is directed at both sides as I've seen Apple fans trash the Samsung Note over this). This isn't a case of Apple changing their minds. Jobs take was that styluses should not be the mandatory way to operate a touch screen. The iPad Pro, and Samsung Note stylus are optional additional input methods. Much as a physical keyboard is an optional accessory to the iPad. The products still work fine with finger input. The products that came before like the Newton, Palm Pilot, and Pocket PC devices had mandatory styluses for touchscreen input.


Originally Posted By: Dignan
The question is whether the moves are good for the consumer. No matter which way you slice it, it's extremely odd to commit so much with USB C on the MacBook and then not put it in a single product released since. How great would it have been to put USB C in the new iMac, and charge your MacBook with a single cable to the back of your desktop?

I agree that use case would be nice. And in time it will come. Though I'm not surprised USB C hasn't spread into the rest of the product line yet. The Macbook is a forward thinking computer they put on sale now. Just the same way the Macbook Air was rolled out. Apple essentially does these one off products to help figure out how to standardize the tech at a lower cost in the rest of the line. This is a common strategy with vehicles. The MacBook Air in particular was important for Apple due to the unibody construction method now standard across the line.

Originally Posted By: Dignan
Personally, I'd love to see USB C on every device from every company. Thunderbolt isn't going to be that standard, so lets abandon it ASAP.

I agree with wanting to see USB C spread far and wide. I don't agree that Thunderbolt should go away though. Again, Thunderbolt 3 uses USB C connectors. Any computer with TB3 will have USB C plugs with USB 3.1 compatibility. Along with adding faster speeds for further PCIe growth, and faster DisplayPort for powering higher resolution monitors. Audio producers in particular don't want to lose the latency advantage PCIe still offers over USB 3. Apple is waiting on Intel at this point to release TB3 in chipsets they use in their products.