If you want to use a mouse, plug in a different keyboard, or connect your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air to a USB-C monitor, you’ll need to get yourself a USB-C hub. Best MacBook in 2022: Which Apple laptop is best?.Progress, it seems, will have to come in increments, not definitive strides. Well, that and the new MacBook Pro starts at $1,299 $1,499 and still doesn’t have a processor that’s based on the latest chip architecture. Really, the cost of all these extra dongles might be the most offensive thing about the new products. I will absolutely feel differently when I’m traveling and want to get photos off of my SD card and don’t have the right dongle, but in a stable environment, I haven’t been debilitated by the lack of ports. (I still haven’t upgraded from the iPhone 6S, for what it’s worth, using an iPhone 7 loaner for testing instead.) But a set of dongles that you leave in the same spot on your desk, where you set your laptop up almost every day? Not as much of a hassle as I’d thought it would be. I’ve already made one trip to the Apple Store for more. The little dongle that comes with iPhone 7 so you can use your old wired headphones? Way too easy to lose. You have to live with them for awhile in order to see how well they work, how well they fit into your tech life, and how often you’re going to lose them.

They’re right to dig their heels in and hold off on upgrading.īut here’s the thing: I’ve determined that dongles actually aren’t something to make a snap judgement on. And people are right to be unhappy about this. Needless to say, people aren’t happy about the idea of buying and carrying around more stuff at a time in our consumer tech history when the promise of “simplicity” has reached hyperbolic levels. You have to live with dongles to get a sense of how annoying they actually are The most recent changes all but guarantee you’ll need more than one adapter at some point. And when it killed the 30-pin, only one adapter was required. But when Apple removed the DVD drive, it didn’t recommend people carry around a portable DVD player.

In many cases, the reasoning is the same: removing the standard means the company can make stuff that’s smaller, lighter, and consumes less power.

Apple product launches are always A Big Deal, but the releases of the new iPhone 7 and long-awaited MacBook Pro this fall were the subjects of even more attention than usual, not because of what they offered, but because of what they did not.Īpple at this point is well-known for eliminating widely used standards in favor of lesser-known but more advanced ones, sometimes to the chagrin of its customers. First Apple killed the headphone jack, followed by the USB and SD card ports.

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