Apple’s MacBook has just one port for everything and that’s the future of notebooks

“We challenged ourselves to reinvent the notebook. And we did it!” said Apple CEO Tim Cook while introducing the new MacBook. Apple’s vision of notebooks of the future is that of ultraportability. During his presentation, Cook pointed out how they took everything they learnt from the iPhone and iPad and put that into designing the new MacBook.

Apple’s idea of the future of notebooks is one from which everything that can be stripped out should be. It has to be an extreme portable machine that can run for longer on a single charge. The new 12-inch MacBook is a culmination of that vision.

It is just 13.1mm thin at its thickest edge – 24 percent thinner than the MacBook Air! It has no fan inside and the space is crammed with battery. Apple has used a unique tier contoured battery that leaves little empty spaces. The keyboard, with its keys almost falling off the edges, actually defines the shape of the laptop. The Retina Display panel is just 0.88mm thick, the thinnest Apple has ever used in a MacBook. It too consumes 30 percent less power than the previous Retina Display panel.

The new MacBook is without any doubt an engineering marvel. But it comes at a big price. The MacBook has just one port that has to do everything. The USB-C port is where you will connect the power cable to charge the laptop. Want to connect a USB drive, this is the port. Want to connect an external display? Yup, this is the only port, if you are willing to ignore the 3.5 mm audio port on the other side. So you might not be able to charge the MacBook while it is connected to an external display, for instance.

Stripping off what seem to be the most basic features is nothing new for Apple. It was the first to discard floppy drives, followed by optical disk drives. Remember the outrage when Apple removed the ethernet port when it introduced the MacBook Air? Apple is now pushing for a truly wireless world. A world where you would connect to external displays wirelessly. You won’t have cables for connecting to most things. Even Internet, Apple expects either you will be in an area with wireless connectivity or you’d create a hotspot with your smartphone and use cellular data. There would be very few instances where you’d actually connect anything physically to your MacBook.

In this regard, the new 12-inch MacBook with Retina Display is without any doubt one of the most user unfriendly notebook you will be able to buy next month. You will struggle using it with just one port. You’d probably be forced to buy overpriced accessories (like this $79 USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter) that will let you connect multiple things to that solo port. And you will have to do that because in most regular scenarios, Apple’s vision of the future is too futuristic for you to live today.

IMPORT:-BGRindia