Apple Forced Obsolescence

Yeah, stinky...

My Dell laptop only has two USB2 ports and a headphone jack. I'm glad my builder didn't include an outhouse and manual well pump when the house the built.

Wolfepack88 said:

Gotta vent, the wife's Macbook is 10 years old and runs flawless but Apple of course pulled the plug on supporting it anymore (mine is next year) which I get to a degree. So I get her a new Macbook Air and now in lieu of 7 ports you get two USBC ports and a headphone jack. So to connect the ethernet I needed a new ethernet to usbc adapter and now none of the external mice will work as the dongles are now USBC so that's another purchase. I can afford it but man the folks that have tighter budgets its being cheap. At least keep a USB port for legacy connections like external disc drive, mice, camera's etc. Anything that isn't USBC you are SOL and need a new adapter. I know someone will say well that's what you get with going Apple. Now in defense never a virus or a day the laptop didn't work where we needed to reboot it or worried about malware or other Crud so that is appreciated. I just think forcing folks to have to buy all new accessories is messed up.

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This isn't forced obsolescence. It's just that technology has moved on from what you think it should be. Computers don't need ethernet as wifi is now easily capable of multi-gigabit speeds. You don't need a disc drive, those have been dead for decades and everything is cloud-based now. People don't use mice; they use the trackpad built in. If you need a desktop setup, most modern monitors have capability to interface all the USB things you need and can even deliver data and power via one single USB cable to your laptop.

You're well into the get-off-my-lawn-you-Dang-kids phase in life. It's ok - it's just that technology has moved on and you didn't quite notice.

Wolfepack88 said:

Gotta vent, the wife's Macbook is 10 years old and runs flawless but Apple of course pulled the plug on supporting it anymore (mine is next year) which I get to a degree. So I get her a new Macbook Air and now in lieu of 7 ports you get two USBC ports and a headphone jack. So to connect the ethernet I needed a new ethernet to usbc adapter and now none of the external mice will work as the dongles are now USBC so that's another purchase. I can afford it but man the folks that have tighter budgets its being cheap. At least keep a USB port for legacy connections like external disc drive, mice, camera's etc. Anything that isn't USBC you are SOL and need a new adapter. I know someone will say well that's what you get with going Apple. Now in defense never a virus or a day the laptop didn't work where we needed to reboot it or worried about malware or other Crud so that is appreciated. I just think forcing folks to have to buy all new accessories is messed up.

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Macbook air actually uses a thunderbolt/usb4 port. You can very inexpensively purchase a thunderbolt or usbc dock which will give you all the ports your heart desires while allowing your air to be small and light with fewer external openings that theoretically will extend its life. With the dock all of your legacy devices should still work fine. I use a caldigit ts4 which is on the higher end of doing stations but allows for multi HD monitors and a ton of connectivity.

Wolfepack88 said:

Yeah I purchased a dock but no way I believe wifi really delivers gigabit.

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If you're using an old router stuffed in a corner across the house, then yeah, it might be slow. But a properly setup system Wifi 6/6E/7 systems are all delivering multi-gigabit speeds now. You ought to look into Unifi, TP Link Armada, etc.

Apple giving the 2015 "MacBook" (a bizarre model in general) a single USB-C port was absurd back then. Especially since that coincided with removal of MagSafe. Actually, getting rid of MagSafe at all was absurd. That whole machine was hot garbage.

Today, my daily driver, general use machine is a 13" M2 MacBook Air and it replaced a maxed out mid-2015 15" MacBook Pro. The Air has two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, a MagSafe, and a headphone port. My old MBP had 2 USB-A ports, 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports, an HDMI port, a full size SD card slot, and MagSafe. When I first got the Air, I was very worried about the massive drop in I/O. A year and a half later, it's largely been irrelevant to me. For devices like my Arduinos, I just bought a USB Type B to USB-C cable and moved on with my day. For everything else where I absolutely need another port like HDMI or full-size USB-A, I use the Anker 341 hub. USB-C is getting far more common now and I see mouse dongles, thumbdrives, etc all with USB-C now. That was not the case 10 years ago.

My "HEDT" Windows desktop has all of the ports, of course. But even on that one the only USB-A ports that get used are for my KB and mouse, an RTL-SDR dongle, and the external BD drive I use for making backups of Blurays and DVDs. The times are a-changing, I suppose.

The only truly ridiculous dongle setup I need is when I'm connecting very old FireWire 400 devices to the machine, for example a MiniDV camera. Granted, that's a 20 year old camera and the fact it works at all (let alone flawlessly with modern Final Cut Pro) is shocking. In that situation I need a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 dongle, A Thunderbolt 2 to FireWire 800 dongle, and then a Firewire 800 to FireWire 400 cable all plugged into each other. Now that I've archived all the old MiniDV tapes I had it doesn't really matter anymore.

As for the network.. Wifi speeds are not dependent on your Xfinity connection speed - it's entirely dependent on your APs/switch/wifi router speed. Wifi 6 (802.11ax) is getting older now and even it will push past a gig all day long. This will, of course, depend on building construction, distance from the AP, interference, etc.

dfwnoob said:

Apple giving the 2015 "MacBook" (a bizarre model in general) a single USB-C port was absurd back then. Especially since that coincided with removal of MagSafe. Actually, getting rid of MagSafe at all was absurd. That whole machine was hot garbage.

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One of my favorite computers ever; retina screen and so light I could carry it without knowing it was there...
If it had just been 10% faster, it would be remembered a lot more fondly.

For what it's worth, I just used that Testmy site, and it clocked my gig service at only 553 Mbps using the Dallas TX server. 367 Mbps using Miami. It sounds like testmy.net just isn't very good.

Speedtest.net got 940 Mbps, which is around the absolute max for wired gig Ethernet.

If you're showing 915 Mbps over the orbi using Speedtest.net, it sounds like everything is working properly. You can also download the Speedtest.net app to your iPhone and retest which will remove all of the overhead of using a web browser.

Ha, I started reading this thread, then had to double-check the original date (huh, just a few days ago). You mentioned that your laptop was ~10 years old. I chuckled, because most of your observations/complaints about the latest MacBooks are about that old, too! Where ya been!?

I have the latest, greatest WiFi, but I think my Ethernet is still faster. I'm with ya there. But I rarely need to move a lot of data, so when I do, I use a $13 dongle (which lives on the end of the Ethernet cable, it's a simple, inexpensive work-around). Otherwise, the WiFi is more than adequate. You probably need to upgrade your WiFi to a mesh network. You really will see a huge improvement in performance.

MagSafe is back. That's all I really missed, when it was gone for a few models. I'll use the headphone jack once in a while. My MacBook Pro has HDMI, and some slots for cards, but I never use those. They got rid of that awful Touch Bar, so the MacBook I have now is without a doubt the best I've ever owned. I don't know what other jacks you think you need, but you probably don't, if you can give an honest effort into rethinking your computing style. If you're not willing to upgrade your style, then there's no reason to upgrade your computer. (Just because your old Mac can't upgrade to the latest OS, doesn't mean it'll stop working. You could probably use if for another 10 years!)

Mac's are crazy fast now. I've never heard a fan. It's stays so cool, I honestly don't know how it runs. The only time it gets a little warm is when it's charging. But it charges so fast, and lasts so long on a charge, I rarely have to. And mine isn't even the latest: the newest ones are even faster, with even better battery life. And I'm not even addressing what the OS can do now. Really, really amazing stuff, coordinated with iPhone and iPad. Have you even tried out any of the new software features?

Point being, yah, some of the old goodies are gone, which you could learn to leave behind with a little effort (like by practicing more with a track pad and ditching the mouse, etc), but your "review" is not particularly fair (IMO). The hardware and software tech in the latest batch is really incredible, and you're kind'a overlooking all that, instead of enjoying and appreciating it, because you're still using your Mac like you did 10 years ago, and you're soured on the fact that you have to buy a cheap dongle because you still want to use the last mouse in existence.

Give the new software features a real tryout, which are only possible because of the new hardware. Apple can't keep supporting 10-year-old computers for the three people that still want to use them, they're on to bigger and better things, much bigger and much better, and you can be, too!

I replaced my Orbi early this year with an Eero 6E Pro and love it. You cannot beat the price of those when they are on sale. The eero is much easier to use, and much more stable than the Orbi was. Mind you the Orbi was an older WiFi 5 model. Anyway 90% of my devices still connect over 2.4ghz (the eero has really strong radios for this). I already had the Ethernet cables there so the eero backhaul over wired which gives me some sort of false piece of mind.

I did just by the new iPad Pro and its the only device that connects on the 6ghz channel. Just did a Speedtest and it was returning 950Mb on a 1.4gig connection. Not that I ever need that speed but I wanted the faster upload speeds and that was the only way to get that from Xfinity. Still only getting 40mbs on that.

Wolfepack88 said:

Ok, I have an Orbi RBR750 and I pay for gigabit service and I'm about 6 feet unobstructed line of sight from it with a Iphone 14 Max Pro and I don't get that fast. I think the Orbi maxes out just shy of 1 gig but using testmy.net just now it came up 223.8mbps using a NYC server and I'm in NJ. Xfinity is my carrier. When I use the orbi's own speed test which uses speedtest it comes up 915mbps so curious why the big discrepancy. Which one is really accurate?

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Check your channel widths and radio power. 5ghz should have widest widths possible with most power, 2.4ghz to lower powers and narrower widths.

Don’t confused external speed tests and internal speed tests. Your orbi is testing your outside connection. What you want to fine tune is your internal connections on WiFi LAN.

reggiehammond said:

Don’t confused external speed tests and internal speed tests. Your orbi is testing your outside connection. What you want to fine tune is your internal connections on WiFi LAN.

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Understood. And how do you test just the LAN?

I’m still using my Early Spring 2008 MBP. I purchased it used on eBay and placed a SSD in it. It’s still a hot rod of sorts. Boots in less than 30 seconds.

dereksanders said:

I’m still using my Early Spring 2008 MBP. I purchased it used on eBay and placed a SSD in it. It’s still a hot rod of sorts. Boots in less than 30 seconds.

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Exactly! They last a very decent long time. I usually get about 10 years out of my MacBooks. The only one I replaced early (like after a year) was the one with the Touch Bar. That's how much I hated that thing!* I gave that one to my daughter, with the stipulation that it was her birthday and Christmas presents for the next 10 years. So technically, I got 10 years out of that one, too!

I have software on all my Macs that create and execute keyboard shortcuts. I have literally hundreds of them. A lot of those are triggered by F-keys. The F-keys play a huge part in my computer use, and the Touch Bar ruined that workflow. So, yes, I did practice what I preached above, forcing myself to relearn my computing style to adapt to evolving tech, but that tech was a failure (it happens), which even Apple finally conceded. So when they dumped it, so did I.

Dirk said:

Understood. And how do you test just the LAN?

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Simple way is to run a channel scan, find a clear channel. Set widths and then look at client to see what it’s reporting for Tx/Rx (Send/Receive). On MacOS I think you click the WiFi menu bar icon while holding option or command… can’t remember, but it’ll then show you current connection stats.

dfwnoob said:

The only truly ridiculous dongle setup I need is when I'm connecting very old FireWire 400 devices to the machine, for example a MiniDV camera. Granted, that's a 20 year old camera and the fact it works at all (let alone flawlessly with modern Final Cut Pro) is shocking. In that situation I need a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 dongle, A Thunderbolt 2 to FireWire 800 dongle, and then a Firewire 800 to FireWire 400 cable all plugged into each other. Now that I've archived all the old MiniDV tapes I had it doesn't really matter anymore.

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While not as ridiculous, I have a USB C to a stereo phono plug adaptor I still occasionally use. I have a light switch that is programmable via an app, but that uses the phono plug as an interface.

It's been on the "I have to replace that with a smart device" list for a number of years now.