A few days ago, tech giant Apple introduced the 2016 MacBook Pro.
Headline No. 1 is that instead of that function-key row above the keyboard, it has a thin, touch-sensitive screen, which displays useful buttons that change as you switch from program to program.
Headline No. 2 is more troublesome. Apart from a headphone jack, the laptop has no jacks you’d recognize. No USB jacks. No video-output jack (DVI, VGA, or HDMI). No SD card slot. Not even the magnetic MagSafe power jack that Apple itself invented!
The new laptop has only USB-C jacks. Two or four of them. (Apple calls them Thunderbolt-3, but for most people’s purposes, they're USB Type C.)
In the short term, this means that users will need a lot of adapters. No existing flash drive, camera, monitor, inkjet printer, Apple power cord, or USB hard drive will connect without an adapter.
Incredibly, even the iPhone's own Lightning cable won’t connect without an adapter! (Which costs US$ 25.)
If Apple had to use only one jack on its new laptops, at least it picked a winner. USB-C is fantastic.
In the big picture, USB-C is technology that will save time, money, and frustration. It’s a breakthrough that will even keep tons of e-waste out of the landfills.
This single, tiny connector can carry power, video, audio, and data—simultaneously. It can, in other words, replace a laptop’s power cord, USB jacks, video output jack, and headphone jack. (On the new MacBook Pros, for example, users can plug the power cord into any of the four USB-C jacks.)
And a USB-C cable is identical top and bottom, so users can't insert it the wrong way.
USB-C can charge gadgets faster and transfer data faster than what came come before.
Headline No. 1 is that instead of that function-key row above the keyboard, it has a thin, touch-sensitive screen, which displays useful buttons that change as you switch from program to program.
Headline No. 2 is more troublesome. Apart from a headphone jack, the laptop has no jacks you’d recognize. No USB jacks. No video-output jack (DVI, VGA, or HDMI). No SD card slot. Not even the magnetic MagSafe power jack that Apple itself invented!
The new laptop has only USB-C jacks. Two or four of them. (Apple calls them Thunderbolt-3, but for most people’s purposes, they're USB Type C.)
In the short term, this means that users will need a lot of adapters. No existing flash drive, camera, monitor, inkjet printer, Apple power cord, or USB hard drive will connect without an adapter.
Incredibly, even the iPhone's own Lightning cable won’t connect without an adapter! (Which costs US$ 25.)
If Apple had to use only one jack on its new laptops, at least it picked a winner. USB-C is fantastic.
In the big picture, USB-C is technology that will save time, money, and frustration. It’s a breakthrough that will even keep tons of e-waste out of the landfills.
This single, tiny connector can carry power, video, audio, and data—simultaneously. It can, in other words, replace a laptop’s power cord, USB jacks, video output jack, and headphone jack. (On the new MacBook Pros, for example, users can plug the power cord into any of the four USB-C jacks.)
And a USB-C cable is identical top and bottom, so users can't insert it the wrong way.
USB-C can charge gadgets faster and transfer data faster than what came come before.
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