The new Macbook with just one port for power and connectivity has stirred up a lot of controversy. Most people believe that keeping just one port in a device is stupid. I do agree with some of the arguments that most people have but i don’t think that it is a completely crazy move
Right now every one of our laptops have a number of different ports like usb, hdmi thunderbolt and many others. And some ports like hdmi are meant for specific kinds of peripherals. Also our exiting usb ports can only supply a limited amount of power to the peripherals that are connected to it. USB type C is something that can solve all these issues. It is a single port that can be used in place of any of the ports mentioned above. So now all the peripherals can be connected to a single port without any issues. In addition to all the usb type C port is much smaller than previous usb ports which makes it possible to design thinner devices and it can be used for powering up any device which consumes a power of less than 100W. So if all the peripherals start coming out with a usb-c port then we don’t have to worry about whether we will be able to connect a peripheral to our laptop. But that is the main issue right now. We don’t have many peripherals that have a usb-c port in them. Also not even the usb 2.0 or 3.0 devices can be connected to the new usb-c port. That really is a problem because now we have to carry around all these adapters with us to make sure that we don’t run into any problems when we try to connect something to our laptop.
But the thing is we have to start somewhere so that the usb type c becomes a widespread standard. Only then the dream of using a single port that can be used for everything can come true. Manufacturers will start producing peripherals with usb c ports only if the consumers need them and for that the consumers need to switch to devices with usb-c ports. That is exactly what Apple is trying to achieve here. There are trying to make usb-c the standard so that in future we can live in that dream world where everything can be done using a single port. And this is a classic Apple move. They are one of the few companies that are willing to make such a drastic move just because they believe that usb-c is going to be standard of the future. So what apple did with the Macbook is going to speed up the adoption rate of the usb-c standard.
But at the same time i believe that apple should have been a little bit more thoughtful about keeping just 1 port in the device. I would have been satisfied if they had at-least 2 ports in the device (even if both of them are usb type c). Now if the device is being charged then i cant use the port for anything else. I do agree that the device has an awesome battery life of 10 hours and hence we don’t have to charge it really often. But still it has to be charged at some point of the day. And removing the charging cable and connecting a device and then swapping them again after the data transfer is done is really a hassle. Also if i need to transfer data from one flash drive to another i have to first copy it from the source flash drive to my macbook and then to the destination drive and this is going to be more difficult if you don’t have enough space in your macbook hard drive (especially for that 128 gig ssd variant). Another issue is when i want to connect a projector to display something that is stored in a usb drive. Also since usb type c is not such a widespread standard now, most users will have to carry around an adapter along with them where ever they go and this is really bad for a device which is supposed to be ultra-portable.
So having a single usb-c port is really an issue for many users but i think we can forgive Apple when we consider that this is a decision that is going to push us towards a future where all devices can be connected to the same port. Also people who absolutely need more ports on their device can opt for a MacBook Air.
Everything Tech 