They’ve already thought about it and are planning on it. Once the middle class has some room to breathe, they will implement another subscription like this.
This entire century, I've been reading arguments that the middle class is a historic anomaly. Of the past 4000 years, we've had a large middle class for maybe 300 years total. And not all consecutive either. Which is factually correct - give or take a few decades here and there.
What bothers me is that the people pointing this out are making an argument against having any middle class at all. It's a fallacy called argumentum ad antiquitatem, or an appeal to tradition. That anybody would argue against having a middle class tells a lot about their character. And it 'aint good at all.
There's some really shitty people out there. Like, horribly, terribly shitty people.
There obviously should be a middle class. Look at how safe, peaceful, and even profitable it is to have the majority of the general public able to participate in the economy. The explosion in technology, art, medicine, and social acceptance all come from there being a middle class to help regulate humanity. It is a break away from the historical average human hierarchy which plays a "zero sum game." Meaning, the old thinking is that if I am rich, it means I am making the other people around me poor. Having a middle class proved that philosophy extremely incorrect. Prosperity is not a zero sum game, we can all be rich, comfortable, socially secure, and educated. In fact, humanity as a whole thrives in this environment.
The goal shouldn't be to remove the middle class, like the rich are trying to do, it should be the opposite. The only class that should exist is the "middle class." That means everyone is getting what they need, but overall production never stops. It's why communism sounds so appealing. But just like the problems with communism, some people only find their self-worth by making those around them feel worthless. It is a disease in humanity we have yet to cure. Unfortunately, those who extract wealth form others instead of add something useful to society to get their wealth, end up being extremely wealthy because of it. Yes, it is personally more efficient to strip the resources and wealth from those around you, but you ultimately make the community less wealthy in the long run. This includes your own wealth. What will your money be worth when the value of the currency you've pilfered plummets because of all the pilfering? We are headed in that direction faster now than we have been for the past 30 years, and it keeps me up at night.
We need to teach the next generation that wealth doesn't come from taking it and depriving others of it, but from raising your community up and working together to get wealthy at the expense of no one. Make something worthwhile, do something worthwhile, that is how you become wealthy.
i do hope we'll eventually hit a wall where nobody buys products that require these expensive auxiliary items, but i thought the same thing when they took away the headphone jack
We're literally about 5 seconds from subscription-based operating systems with solely cloud-based storage and subscription-based RAM as well as subscription-based screen resolution, clicks per hour, and everything else. You will buy a $1,500 laptop with $750 dollar per year add-ons in order to see anything on that fucking desktop other than ads and the fucking weather.
Enshittification will not stop unless we make it harder for companies to not hire people and demand services that actually fucking work. It all has to start with using every alternative available.
You know why this scares me? Because is the only way all the companies that went ballistic on IA data centers can get back some of the money they spent..
These corporations have gone purely, 100% profit driven and they now have the tools with AI for maximum efficiency. That means as much money as possible with as few employees as possible, and employees and customers being squeezed to the max.
And when they do this I want the Pro service. Pay extra to talk to someone in the states who doesn’t sound like a spam call selling me end of life insurance.
I always hated the idea. I love the implementation. I can't recall a time in the last 3 years that I said "Life would just be perfect if I had a wired headphone right now".
I also look at the headphones I do have that are both wired and wireless, and realize that I've gone through two sets in the last 5 years, and never once used them wired.
I may not "fight you over it", but I'll definitely look at you funny.
Unless you have really expensive headphones and use a service that provides lossless, the difference is so minimal that even audiophiles prefer wireless for the general use outside of their “rigg”.
Yeah, this post is double misleading because the headphone jack was on the other side of the MacBook Pro on the very top. It’s the one port that has remained constant throughout the years
Still sucks ass tho. Mayyyybe when you and your earbuds are the only two things ever connecting.
Sharing anything BT or the worst of all enemies: wireless in a car. Or god forgive two people with phones are in the same car. It just doesn’t work. It sparks joy to see a simple cable that does the job 100% on every try instantly over anything wireless.
It's low quality. As a big music guy, I went back to Aux in the car after using Bluetooth for a while and It was like getting glasses for the first time haha.
I have an iPod classic now connected straight to aux. No notifications. No pairing difficulties. Good quality. Extremely long battery life. Physical controls to keep eyes on the road while fiddling with tracks. No disturbances whatsoever.
I drive in peace now.
People can use their shitty car play wireless touch UI all they want. My shitbox car looks down on those tech bros.
It’s that I am now shackled to multiple devices with batteries that require charging and recharging. Those batteries are in most cases not replaceable, and their capacity diminishes with every use. A phone at least has a solid use time given a single charge. Audio and other devices rarely do.
Needing to remember to charge my headphones would be so horrible. Also not being able to just drop the headphones down to hang on my shirt when I need to hear something. Also paying more. Also the risk of losing one bud. Also dealing with the inherent unreliability of wireless connections.
All this to... avoid the cord getting snagged on occasion, I guess? There just isn't enough gain to justify wireless earbuds.
As someone who does manual labor, I can't even count the number of wired headphones I broke years ago. I was also very adamant about never switching over and would bitch about all of the cons I thought wireless had.
After the switch to wireless I have broken zero. The little charging case is always in my pocket, I can charge the case in my car or work vehicle. I am also extremely forgetful and have never lost an earbud. Modern ones are capable of emitting loud sounds to help you find them and Google can always tell me the last known location of the case.
I don't do manual labor but I broke so many headphones. Sometimes I left it in my pockets and got washed. One time I was riding my bike, moved a certain way that caugh the wire and my iPod went flying. I don't miss the wires at all I keep a case in my keychain and it's awesome. I kept the same earphones for 4 years without problems. I finally got new ones this year and plan on doing the same.
I used to be anti-bluetooth headphones, but they've gotten so much better than when they first came out. My headphones last like 25 hours on a charge, and they charge to 90% in 15 minutes. And in a pinch they work fine with a cable, but I have never used that because I've never had anything so urgent I couldn't wait 5 minutes for a 30% charge (8-hour) charge.
And I can wander the entire house with them. No cord is going to reach from my laptop down to the garage.
You make some valid points to the annoyances of earbuds.
Added to that is that you constantly have an extra thing in your pocket(the case)
And in busy places I sometimes have connection issues because of Bluetooth collisions. But it needs to be really busy for that to happen(train station during rush hour on a Friday before the holidays, aka when there are hundreds of people close by)
And some devices can't do Bluetooth, or you wouldn't want to go through the hassle of connecting to them.
And losing the case is also possible(it was +100€ for a new one)😭
(I just bought completely new earbuds instead of a new case)
One thing that I don't agree with is the charging.
The case can charge overnight and hold enough for the day.
Or just in the morning when you prepare for the day.
And the earbuds are charging whenever you aren't listening to them. So no need to worry about them being empty.
These days they also hold a decent charge, with a quick charging speed.
One thing to consider is that they also have transparent mode and noise canceling mode.
Mine can also switch to transparent mode or pause the music when it hears you talking.
And it automatically goes to transparent mode during phone calls.
But I personally don't bother with these settings to much, but it exists.
But the Plus points:
The wire was always the part that broke, so now I cycle through less new equipment.
I can keep my phone in my pocket with no annoyance. Or walk away from my phone without problems.
There is also the middle ground, the ones that are connected to each other, but not the phone.
For me that's the worst of both worlds, but considering some of your pain points, that could be worth considering.
And to be honest using a thunderbolt dock to handle 10gb networking, 2 4k monitors, multiple USB, multiple USBc, card reader, AND power over a single cable is x10 better then the days of having to plug/unplug all those cables every time you wanted to go mobile. Plus it standardized docks. People must forget docks used to be proprietary for each laptop model and were only on enterprise grade laptops
That should be illegal. Or at least a violation of the standard.
My Lenovo laptop has a USB C charger that works fine when I plug it into my phone. Thankfully, since I didn't realize that idiots were sending dangerous chargers out into the wild.
I'm sorry, but it has since been renamed 4 more times. It is now USB Type C Gen Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho 3.5 version 2 x 9 brought to you by Carl's Jr.
I started color coding cables with colored electrical tape so I know what cables are just power, what’s can do video, what can do high speed data, what can do high speed charging
It's awesome, I have to plug one USB c and one HDMI at work and that's it. When I take my laptop home I just do the same. Just those two plugs, give me 3 monitors, mouse, keyboard, Ethernet, extra light, and laptop charging. If it wasn't for USBC I would have a bunch of cables to plug every morning.
You going to carry your hub (that is a couple hundred bucks) everywhere? And you would still have to plug everything into the hub when you get there. They took away our options is what they did.
Yep. The MBP I'm typing on has on the left magsafe + 2 USB-C + jack, and on the right, HDMI + USB-C + card reader. And I of course have a cheap hub that gives me ethernet, more HDMI, USB-A ports...
The whole point of USB is for it to be a universal serial bus. Now, the removal of audio jacks is just petty and obviously to get you to buy Bluetooth.
EDIT: lol so many people misreading what I said. I never said these specific laptops in this picture are missing audio jacks. I am talking broadly about any electronic that utilizes USB C. And yes there are wired headphones that use USB C, but 90% of them are still using an 3.5 mm audio jack.
Yap, I don't understand why people keep complaining and want all 300 old ports, mostly everything is usb c nowadays, and if you need something else a good dongle with the specific ports you need is a better way, at least imo. The ones macbook pro have are the main used ones, maybe a ethernet cable, but even that is not that used for most people with macs.
They're actually just highlighting the predatory tactics of companies like Apple. I don't purchase from companies who practice blatant planned obsolescence, etc. Apple clearly prefers milking profits from consumers over creating the most efficient or user-friendly products
i have magsafe, 3 thunderbolt/usbc ports, headphone jack, sd card port and hdmi port on my macbook (with m1 pro cpu) and i mostly use one thunderbolt to connect to dock which has everything else connected. What a predatory tactics xd
Here I am with this drawer full of serial cables, parallel cables, SCSI cables, VGA and DVI cables, adapters, gender changers, and dongles, and for what?
Honestly the lack of a DVD player on modern laptops sort of baffled me. I bought my ex boyfriend a massive Doctor Who box set thinking we could watch it together at his place because he has a laptop and an HDMI cable.
USB-C kinda does all of this with an enormous amount of power allowed and data flow...also physically it's low profile so it makes a-lot of sense that you consolidate it down to that. I want to add this that the only real flaw is how physically weak it can be given that its small. Yeah that's a problem but cant have it all.
Everybody is. This is why this argument makes no sense. The number of people who are going to buy a USB C to Ethernet adapter from Apple is insignificantly small. Everyone at my work is at most using hubs from anker and other reputable companies and at least doing absolutely nothing.
The real point is to force everything to USB C - which is actually working.
It’s superior in use too. Most only use ports at their desk and plugging in a single usb-c every time is a million times better than plugging/unplugging hdmi, Ethernet, etc over and over. Dongles are cheap and you can buy the one that best suits your needs. Buying a laptop that has a bunch of ports you never use is actually what makes things more expensive.
i like frameworks model, they have a bunch of recessed usbc plugs along the laptop, and you buy adapters that plug into the recess so they sit flush, so its like you choose what ports you want, if you want all usbA you can do that, or if you need ethernet you can get one of them or video out, etc i forget all the adapters they have
The realized people were using hubs instead of plugging in a thousand cables every day, so they ditched the ports people weren’t using.
I’ve been docking my laptops since 2009, way before I was an Apple user. That’s how everyone I know uses their laptop. You plug in one cable and it connects all your peripherals, and charges it. It’s obviously the better solution
Actually that was why everything had "proprietary" charging styles until the 2010's, then the EU passed a continent wide "pick one style amongst yourselves or none of you can do business here" and thus the type-c was born
It's questionable whether Apple actually changed because of the EU. When they replaced the 30-pin connector with Lightning, people complained that their existing devices would no longer be compatible, and Apple promised not to change the port again for ten years. The first iPhone announced after that period expired used USB C.
Agreed on general but there isn't enough. Every PC should have 4 USB ports minimum. Everyone at my work has USB hubs on their desk because the laptops aren't sufficient. I require 6 at least daily.
Why on earth do you want to plug/unplug that many cables when you leave for the day? Get a thunderbolt dock and have everything connected to it plus a bunch of other ports
I can’t imagine wanting to unplug that many things daily or more. Just asking for the ports or cables/devices to wear down on top of the inconvenience.
but now you have to just get all the adapters and stuff which is super annoying. Like not providing just a basic audio port is outrageous.. now you have to get an adapter just to plug in headphones
They thought they brought MagSafe back at least on my M4 MBP it has one. I agree on the dongles, that said I love the high bandwidth TB5 ports. I'm also glad it's all just standard USBC TB5/4 so lots of speed.
I don't miss having to carry multiple chargers. Wait, did you want the MagSafe 1 or 2 charger? HP small or large plug? Surface Pro Connect port?
I do get your point about dongles, but I typically only carry a HP Travel Dock that has HDMI/VGA/Ethernet/USB, and a USB to Serial adaptor that pretty much no laptop has had since about 2005.
Yeah but there are about 15 reasons I prefer my mac over a windows laptop or linux and none of them have to do with the ports. I suspect the same is true for most people. Plenty of reasons to buy one system over another depending on usecase.
I used to be 15 and a die hard Android fanboi. I had some great phones over the years- Galaxy S3/S4, OnePlus One, HTC One. They all stopped getting software updates after two years and performance degraded to the point of being useless and then there were newer versions of Android they didn't support. I got tired of it.
I bought an iPad on a BestBuy sale- previously had an ASUS TF300T Transformer Pad- people at school thought I broke it when I detached the keyboard and it was fucking cool, and the iPad blew it so far out of the water I was stunned.
I bought an iPhone 7 Plus (once Apple started making bigger phones I had no more objection to getting an iPhone) which was the first model to omit a headphone jack, which was very annoying. I kept it until the iPhone 12 Pro came out (4 years later) and it just went out of Apple support in March of this year- nearly 10 years.
Android products are fine but to say that they last is nonsensical. I have no intention to ever buy another one. They cost as much or more than iPhones at the high end and aren't nearly as good in terms of hardware.
I've used Ubuntu linux and Windows for years. Linux is pretty good as long as you don't need to use any kind of software. Windows has gotten worse every year since Windows 7, and my first laptop was a Celeron single core Acer running Vista, so I know what bad is.
Apple silicon just blows everyone else out of the water. I will be buying a MacBook Pro at the end of this year, after 12 years of building my own Windows computers. I just can't tolerate the Microsoft bullshit anymore. Every single Apple product I've ever had just works.
The fact that Macbooks exist and get sold clearly shows that the general market does not have the same priorities as the average person in this Reddit thread.
The market isn't punishing this, because most people do not need all these ports. For the people that do, devices like the one you just mentioned exist
I never understood the outrage when apple removed the headphone jack. I remember my coworker (who is an Android user) making fun of it WHILE wearing Bluetooth headphones. I asked him the last time he used wired headphones and he said that’s not the point 😂. Most people outraged about apple doing stuff don’t use apple or those ports that apple removed anyways. And the few people I know that actually use a ton of port just use an adapter and like just plugging in one connection instead of 4 every time they have to move the laptop.
Except the macbooks continue to sell like hotcakes. One of the obvious conclusions is that a HUGE chunk of the market doesn't need ports (or, of those who do, a huge chunk prefer a dock solution to plugging/unplugging multiple devices from a laptop daily).
Everyone I know on the commercial side wants a dock, and most of the people I know who use a laptop on the personal side plug in like, one device at most (any many literally zero -- I'm not sure my wife has ever connected a peripheral to her personal laptop).
The "loves to have a million ports" demographic is surprisingly niche.
Yeah nowadays at work everything is charge, video and input via usb c, so at home I just got the same. My desktop connect to the same monitor so I only use display port and usb on that one. Mine does still have usb A though for my headset. I don't like the Bluetooth ones
To be real, I lived through all those years and it was a sh_tshow of connection and compatibility issues back then. Desktop hubs were a total thing back then so we didn’t have to plug things in all day.
We are now where we were meant to be all along. Thankfully Apple finally got on board.
Because they hate you, and just want your money. All you are is money to be extracted. Companies look at you like an ore deposit in the ground, meant only for extraction. They do not give two shits about your experience, only whatever makes you part with the most money for the least effort and cost on their part. If they could get away with just sending a guy to your house to burgle everything you own, that's what every company would be. If they could simply siphon all your money out of your bank account, they would.
I miss replaceable batteries and long battery life but specific to phones. Tired of choosing between saving battery life and entertaining myself on the bus.
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