Apple has a history of “addition by
subtraction” when it comes to ports and drives. It has over the years
ditched FireWire, Ethernet, and optical drives. Now, with the MacBook, it says goodbye to all but a lone pioneering port. This probably was inevitable. So just how big of an adjustment are you in for?
Bigger than you might realize. At least for now.
How we push data to and from our machines constantly evolves thanks
to the steady progress of new standards, faster wireless connectivity,
streaming services, and the cloud. Apple tends to anticipate these
changes—and in some cases force the issue, often being among the first
to banish old-guard tech from its devices. It’s been a successful
strategy; just ask any phone with a physical keyboard.
But the new ultraportable MacBook doesn’t just nip an optical drive
here and a FireWire port there. It cleans house. And while we’re
accustomed to hermetically sealed, port-barren devices in our pockets
and on our coffee tables, a laptop with plenty of connectivity options
is part of what makes minimalism possible elsewhere. With the new
MacBook, your “plug and play” options are a 3.5mm headphone port and a
USB-C port—a standard that isn’t exactly swimming in compatible
components just yet.
The good news is that USB-C is versatile. It’s a standard that,
unlike the stalled Thunderbolt interface, will be embraced by many
devices and peripherals that don’t originate in Cupertino. It’s capable,
too; the port on the new MacBook can shuttle data at 5Gbps, it can
charge and be charged by whatever it’s hooked up to, it supports video
out, and it’s tiny. The only bad news about the shift to USB-C ports is
the MacBook has one of them.
Dangling Dongles
Of course, there are ways to compensate, though not as many as you
might think. The cheapest, most direct way to get your
usb cable devices to
play nice with a USB-C port is a $19 USB-to-USB-C adapter from Apple (or this $13 model from Google, whose Chromebook Pixel
features two USB-C ports). That’s a good start, but it still limits
your choices to hooking up a single device or charging your laptop.
For those who need more I/O in their lives, Apple now sells its own USB-C adapters that let you turn that single port into a three-headed hydra supporting HDMI-out, full-size USB 3.1, and a passthrough for power. Another version swaps the HDMI-out port for VGA-out. They cost $79. Each. That’s more than an Apple TV.
And even those pricey dongles don’t come close to replicating the
ports on a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. The 13-inch Air has a dedicated
power connector, a Thunderbolt 2 port, an SDXC card slot, two USB 3.0
ports, and a headphone jack. The 13-inch MacBook Pro has all of that,
plus an additional Thunderbolt 2 port and HDMI-out.
Apple’s message is clear: You don’t need all those cables. It’s
better to carry something that feels almost weightless, something
elegant and slim and gold than have some pört-gåsbord weighing you down.
“Besides,” Apple seems to insist, “you can address all of your needs
via Web services, or streaming, or iCloud, or one of the wonderful new
features we’ve added to Yosemite. Would you like more ports? Well, we
have inelegant dongles and more-expensive computers for that.”
At some point, getting data and electricity to and from your MacBook
with just one port may be seamless and natural. Today, though, we’re at
least a few dongles away. Here’s how the MacBook plays out in practice.
Photos and Video
If you use an iPhone for most photos and directly upload your shots
to your iCloud photo library (or the cloud service of your choice),
you’re set. But if you use one of those old-school “standalone” cameras
and one of those dinosaur “SD” or “CompactFlash” cards, you’ll need to
wait until somebody makes a card-to-USB-C adapter to get much use out of
the MacBook. In the meantime, you could plug a USB card reader into a
$13 or $19 or $79 adapter.
Potentially easing the frustration is the fact that most modern
cameras have built-in Wi-Fi features, so you can hypothetically leave
your card in your camera, beam photos to your phone or a cloud service,
and use it as a passthrough to your computer’s hard drive. That sort of
set-up would be basically unworkable for pro photographers shuttling RAW
files, though, and probably more trouble than it’s worth even when
dealing with JPEG files in any quantity.
The same solutions and limitations apply to video editors. Videos
taken with an iPhone can be magically ported to the machine via iCloud,
Dropbox, or most other cloud services of your choice, so that’s easy
enough. USB-C can handle video files zipping back and forth (through an
adapter or new cable, for now). Other wireless transfer options aren’t
very practical for files of the sizes you’ll be dealing with. The most
likely setup for a wired-in connection will be a USB 3.0 or 3.1 cable
running from a video-capture device through a dongle.
Storage
Your USB-C external hard drive options are non-existent right now,
but help is on the way. This summer, SanDisk will offer a 32GB
thumbdrive with USB-C and full-size USB connectors. A LaCie external
drive will offer up to 2TB of portable USB-C-connected storage when it’s
out later this year. End of list so far. But now that there’s a demand,
the USB-C drive market will grow. You’ll have plenty of options if you
hold out a few months.
Meanwhile, the new MacBook will come with up to 512GB onboard, and
cloud-storage services abound these days. That could be enough for most
people, but anyone who’s been stashing years of valuable files and
photos and music on an external drive would be inconvenienced by a
MacBook today. To get the important stuff from there to your new
machine, for the time being you’ll need an adapter.
Ethernet
While Apple already phased out Ethernet ports across its laptop
lineup, there are a few cases in which having one generally comes in
handy. If you’re dealing with crappy Wi-Fi service or that odd hotel
that only offers jacked-in connectivity, yes, you’ll need a adapter for
that. Belkin already has announced a USB-C-to-Gigabit-Ethernet adapter, but the pricing and release date are still a mystery.
External Monitors and Video Output
Anyone who uses a laptop as a mobile machine and the docked guts of
their home/office scenario will absolutely need to fork over for a
dongle or avoid the new MacBook altogether. For now, at least.
Multi-port docks for the MacBook are likely on the way, but without
that $79 add-on you won’t be able to simultaneously charge your laptop
and work on a bigger screen or use a dual-monitor display. Or use a
non-Bluetooth keyboard or mouse when your single port is occupied.
What may be the strangest USB-C fallout? If you want to mirror your
laptop screen on your television, your cheapest and best option at this
point is to buy an Apple TV. It costs $69 and supports AirPlay
mirroring, while Apple’s HDMI-out multi-dongle will cost you $10 more.
iOS Devices
Curiously—and this is bound to change soon—there doesn’t seem to be a
way to charge your iPhone or Pad with the new MacBook without using an
adapter. Apple hasn’t yet officially announced a Lightning-to-USB-C
cable. For all we know, one may come in the MacBook box. Otherwise, for a
wired connection, you’d have to use a dongle, plug the fat end of your
Lightning cable into that, and charge or sync an iOS device with a
cumbersome setup.
There’s a reason, though, that Apple has put concerted effort in
making Yosemite interact with iOS devices in wireless ways: Continuity,
Handoff, and AirDrop are all geared toward seamless interoperability
between its mobile and desktop OS, no literal strings attached. And
here’s the big thing on the horizon: Future iOS devices will likely use
USB-C as their one and only port, which will be an instant fix. Until
then, you’ll need an adapter or an as-yet-unannounced cable to charge
your iDevice from a MacBook.
Here’s a fun resulting fact. As of right now, it will be easier to
charge an Android device with an Apple computer than to charge an iPhone
or iPad with one—just as long as you have this upcoming $20 Belkin cable. Again, USB-C is a standard, and it’s one that will show up on many other devices, too, so don’t expect this to be an issue for long.
In many ways, this new MacBook is an exciting harbinger of a bright
future, one teeming with interoperability and free of proprietary
connectors. We’re not quite there yet, though. And until we are, it’s
going to be a long, dongle-paved road.
