I’m proud to be incompatible with Apple
What’s rather ironic is my Linux FOSS setup is more compatible than ever because it can open my students .notes and .pages files, while MS Word couldn’t.
And naturally, I’m proud of using FOSS so I guess I’m proud to be compatible with everything.
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I’ve been using OnlyOffice, although I bet LibreOffice can open them too. That doesn’t convert files unless I save, but it doesn’t seem to me up the formatting either. I used to have to bulk convert using a Google drive plugin, which could help for bulk conversation but isn’t a FOSS solution.
My Mac studio m2 was the only computer I ever had that had compatibility issues with some USB cables
People talk about Apple hardware like it’s incredible, but honestly, no pc manufacturer would make that mistake
compatibility issues with some USB cables
I’d like to hear more about this. I have a theory that as great as USB-C is for consistency, the fact that it shares a connector with Thunderbolt (to say nothing about the different versions of Thunderbolt) introduces a level of uncertainly when looking at a USB-C connector.
- it can be a “charge-only” cable (USB 2.0)
- it can charge slowly, or quickly
- it can be a USB-C cable
- it can be Thunderbolt 3 / USB 4.0
- it can be active, or passive
- it can be Thunderbolt 4
- it can be Thunderbolt 5
I’m certainly not trying to discount your experience. I’m sure you ran into significant problems. But in general I continue to believe that the general public may not have the right “flavor” of USB-C cable to do what they are trying to do in a given situation.
It’s nothing to do with the standard I believe
The same cables and adapters all worked when I used them on my nuc for the same devices, and they wouldn’t even work with my mouse on the Mac studio.
My suspicion is that the shell of the case is a bit thick (as the port is recessed behind it), so some cables just failed to touch fully. As, some cables felt more snug and clicked into the port better
For the cost of the computer, it damned sure shouldn’t have that issue
Even worse, for the price of the computer, the power button should be on front, not buried on the back. That’s overcomplicating things for the sake of doing so
Reminds me of the original iPhone and the 3.5mm audio jack that was too “deep” for normal headphones.
Butterfly keyboards. so saying apple is the pinnacle of hardware is stupid. They make dumb decisions just like everyone else.
Apple does honestly make good hardware. Their transition to ARM had a near zero chance of being successful but Apple managed to pull it off anyway. It’s truly impressive.
But when they fuck up, boy do they go big. The butterfly keyboards were absolutely insane. And don’t get me started on the last years software releases. I can’t practically multitask on my iPad anymore, screen space is wasted on the MacBook in Tahoe and the finder is worse than it’s ever been. Competition is supposed to save us but Microsoft is so smitten with AI they still can’t even get their start menu to work reliably. Meanwhile linux is gaining faster than anyone thought possible. Valve is doing to gaming on Linux what Ubuntu did to teaching neurotypicals how to use Linux.
Western tech gave up.
Windows was mostly the same with ARM too for most people honestly.
In our industry, lots of people got ARM surface laptops (and didn’t even know it was an ARM CPU, except that the software we used had an old version of OpenVPN, which caused a specific issue unless they manually installed as it was a kernel module). The reason the ARM changeover might have seemed seamless, is that developers were likely given priority access to hardware (as what happened with PPC -> Intel)… On Windows there was special hardware for it, and I suspect there was a Arm development kit on MacOS too probably.
People also seem to compare Apple hardware against PC hardware which costs 1/2 the price too. I owned a Power MAC, Mac Pro and Mac Studio. The Mac Pro ram alone cost more than a FASTER PC as the first gen used Fully Buffered ECC RAM.
Developers can optimise for Apple based on whats available though . The other big advantage Apple has is that they mostly control the service process, and, you can’t bite the hand that feeds if you are one, which controls bad press too.
And when they use another architecture, nobody seems to cross compare gaming performance as much, etc, as the biggest MAC sites also tend to be apple “exclusive” sites, and I’m willing to bet the people that operate them are shareholders… Apple have always been behind in graphics performance (and, still are. The M1’s and M2’s didn’t even have hardware raytracing as an example, whilst even the Intel Iris chips did).
However, by the way people talk about Apple, you’d think the M series CPU’s were absolutely smashing PC performance and they were even expecting the M5 chips to compete with the GTX 4080’s a few months ago.
It’s rather Apple who is incompatible with the rest of the world. Any other bluetooth device can transfer files with other bluetooth devices.
Why?
apple is still better than google tbh
i use grapheneOS but its just the truth
I dunno, isn’t it kinda pointless to compare a stroke with brain cancer? Sure, you can have preferences, but they’re both horrible.
yes, very true, and well put
Nah. Ad blocking is shit. There’s no revanced or morphe or whatnot. Many things are better, but too many things are worse.
that isn’t true, i used to use iphone and it had uYou+extras which is basically a modified youtube app with sponsorblock and adblock, and there are other things which are similar, and adguard is also pretty solid
wHaTaBoUt
what kind of phone do you have
Xiaomi 😎
how do you like it?
Has more bloatware than samsung and more spyware than facebook. Not the person you talked with first, but I also have a xiaomi and it’s borderline unusable if you don’t use adb to uninstall some of the ad shit. They throw ads on gallery, video player, music player, wallpaper, calculator, file browse.
sounds pretty bad, is it compatible with android apps?
Did you get one of the really cheap ones? I have heard they are cheap for a reason (e.g. they get the money from elsewhere, AKA selling you).
Octo core, 8GB ram (+8GB “virtual” whatever that means), 1TB storage, Leica optics and a mind blowing 120watt charger (that I rarely use, but when I do… Hold your hat!).
It’s just a very good phone IMO, no bling, but also no specific downside. Maybe the one thing is a not vert good file manager, but I use FX so I don’t really relate.
the other xiaomi user pointed out that its basically just android, with google play services and all, so you’re just any other android user pretty much, right?
pure copium
why would it be copium when i dont even use apple bruh
Google automatically screens and blocks spam calls. That alone is enough for me to put it above Apple.
“yes all of my personal data is being used by an evil wizard plotting world domination but he has some convenient spells that the bog witch simply does not offer”
iOS does this too
If I’m in a situation where it’s Apple or failure, I will gladly fail.
They have a lot of nerve using a USB standard that’s only 12 years old
USB-A is the common standard. Most devices are made with USB-A compatibility. Most portable media are USB-A.
I’m not even going after the vast majority of my hard stops when I pick technology, like the fact that there’s no proper (S)VGA and no full-size DisplayPort (and I mean proper DisplayPort, not an “HDMI” plug into a DisplayPort interface), or the lack of a hardware switch to fully disable power to all onboard radio and modem devices.
So mad that my modern laptop doesn’t have a DIMM port, how am I supposed to use my 1992 era keyboard?
You mean DIN, not DIMM. DIMM is RAM. DIN is PS/2 and others. As far as how I use my old boards and trackballs, PS/2 to USB-A 1.0.
Hey remember that tried and true universal plug-in that literally works on everything and everybody loves? Lets not have that anymore.
I know Apple is terrible with usability, but I also think USB-C is now the one that works everywhere. All my last USB stick purchases had USB-A and C, just so that I don’t have to run away in tears. I can even use them with smartphones and those never had USB-A.
It’s the new standard, but there should always be at least one USB-A. It’s still incredibly common.
USB-C is over 11 years old.
And? Is there something newer that’s a standard? If not, it’s the new one.
Also, it’s only recently become the de facto standard. Yes, it’s older than that, but it didn’t become the standard until maybe five years ago. So much was still being made for USB-A, and some things still are. Anything older than ~5 years ago has good odds of being A.
Anything older than 5 years ago has the odds of being A, B, Mini A, Mini B, Micro A, Micro B, etc.
C is the standard. If you need legacy support, there’s hubs and adapters. No need to perpetuate legacy ports. I’d love a serial and a parallel connector - there’s plenty of modern industrial gear still using them. But we do that with C -> Serial adapters.
A device has a limited number of ports. Would one rather two USB-C, or one A and one C?
That A port will have diminishing value if one intends to use the device for 5 to 10 years and increases the probability someone discards the device early given the limited number of modern, high value ports.
I don’t have a single peripheral that uses USB-C. I have a lot of USB-A and some micro-USB.
My phone is USB-C and that’s about it. Given that my 2 year old PC case has 8 USB-A connectors and 1 USB-C connector, I’d also wager keyboards and mice won’t stop being USB-A anytime soon. There’s just no reason for them to be anything else.
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Furthermore I shouldn’t have to get rid of an old A device that still works just because they remove the ports. I don’t care how old it is let me use my external CD drive with the USB-A to Mini-USB (yes mini lmao.) Wish I still had an attached optical disk drive tbh.
For progress to happen you have to move on eventually. Hubs are a decent compromise.
People do not replace accessories and specialized external hardware nearly as often as companies think they do.
How dare you not run out and buy a brand new, well, EVERYTHING every single year! Do you want the communists to win?
Considering I called myself a Communist in the 90s…
Granted I have become more conservative with age and lean more Socialist/Democratic Socialist these days.
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my home computer has no USB-C and I can’t afford to upgrade because gestures broadly.
You can buy a dongle or hub very cheaply.
First day of the COVID confinement I plugged in a cheap usb c/a dongle into my work laptop to use my mouse and instantly fried the mobo.
Just saying eh 😁
I have a USB-C hub with USB-A ports that plugs into my work PC. I had a hard time trying to find the opposite, though I haven’t looked in ages; it honestly has come up exactly once in the last few years when I needed to borrow my wife’s sd card reader (or dig my old laptop out of the closet and play the updates game).
Both USB-C and USB-A have their pros and cons.
-
USB-C has a lot more bandwidth and power draw.
-
USB-A is sturdier and cheaper.
For things like a mouse or keyboard, having more bandwidth or power draw are useless, but being cheaper and sturdier are not.
One can not replace the other entirely. Apple just wants to milk everyone by forcing them to buy all their peripherals again.
-
I now want a smartphone with 3 USB-A ports.
Horizontal.
I think the only holdouts are Raspberry Pi. For some reason they still don’t have a USB-C option for the nano
And I have about 20 USB-A flash drives, up to 128GB, that I should just toss in the trash because…why exactly? Because they are “old”?
“all my recent flash drives have had both ports so I can use them with usb a or usb c!”
“WHAT SO I SHOULD JUST TOSS ALL MY OLD HARDWARE?”
no one said that. youre just saying shit. you can still use your usb-a flash drives.
“SO YOU HATE WAFFLES?”
“That’s a whole new sentence. Wtf is you talkin about?”
Bro, just get an A-C Adapter. They are like 20cents und always useful, especially if you have old hardware
So now we need to buy dongles for something that should be standard on a computer?
Next thing we’ll need a dongle for the power button, because Apple decided that shouting “POWER ON APPLE” is the better way to turn on a laptop.
No - but you can get a A to C adapter if you expect that you’ll bring it to someone who might only have USB C.
And from my perspective: if I expect other to being me data id expect from myself to bring such an adapter. That way I’d both parties try to remember chances are one of them have. :)
It’s not normal to expect someone to not have USB-A on a computer though.
Is it not normal to expect someone to not have serial on their computer?
Standards change.
USB-A is still widely used, even more than USB-C, serial is not.
Apple is forcing standards when there is no need, … again
For mobile devices I don’t share that experience. I do not expect others to have USB A anymore. MacBooks alone are so widespread that they were enough to get sna adapter.
It’s the same for displays: if I have to give a presentation I’m making sure I can do next to everything down to and including VGA.
Yes it’s the venues job to take care of that but I’ve been in one place that literally went like “can’t you just connect?” to their apple bullshit.
That Apple is rotten to the core in many topics is nothing I feel needs discussing - this includes specifically their hostile stand and compatibility.
I honestly don’t even see an issue with the adapters though: it’s 5gram, 2(ish) Euro and sometimes I can even be the compability savior and people are forced to listen to me bitching about Apple!
And serial ports were widely used when usb was introduced.
I don’t like it either, but in 2026 on laptops at least it is normal.
No? Just get an adapter?
USB-A to USB-C adapter. They’re inexpensive, and you don’t have to get one for each of the 30 flash drives you have.
If it’s just for documents I may still have single digit GB memory sticks somewhere that are more than enough space.
Where did we go wrong? We might never know … but it for sure isn’t because of cult-like loyalty to a single company notorious for doing this. It’s a mystery
plug-in?
Remember folks, apple onyl has usb c because they were forced to
They were forced to have one, they were not forced to remove everything else.
That is solely on them.
Malicious compliance
fuck apple but you’re kinda mistaken here, if you’re talking about just iphone, maybe you’re right - but they had usb c (actually thunderbolt) on macbook and ipad before any legal rulings, macbooks before there was even any hint of legislation iirc.
usb c (actually thunderbolt)
aren’t these different tech stacks and connectors?
used to be, not anymore though, thunderbolt uses the same ports as USB C and is compatible with USB C, you can think of thunderbolt as enhanced USB C
is it thunderbolt emulated through software on the USB pin stack? or is it really thunderbolt pins offering a USB connector, emulating USB protocols on the thunderbolt stack?
i’m sorry, i don’t know the details of how it’s implemented exactly
Its capable of some pretty high bandwidths, there’s some extra hardware required to make the ports work for thunderbolt. But I think it just runs through the normal USB-C pins.
Its more like an internal switch, rather than emulation. At least the Wikipedia page mentions different pin configurations per usage mode…
I asked a slop machine and it said that Thunderbolt is implemented in the PCIe/Displayport hardware mode of the USB. I then checked the wikipedia and it more or less aligned with that interpretation
No. Some pins in USB can be used for non-USB protocols. If your monitor takes USB-C, likely the video signal is transmitted using DisplayPort on those pins.
Ditto thunderbolt.
Macbooks have had Thunderbolt 3 (the protocol) over USB-C (the physical form factor) since about 2015. The Thunderbolt 3 protocol became incorporated into the USB 4 standard in 2019 (and is implemented on the physical USB-C port).
Earlier versions of Thunderbolt were proprietary standards jointly controlled by Apple and Intel, but implemented over Mini-DisplayPort connectors. They were phased out in new devices starting in around 2015.
They may be talking about micro usb 3.0 that was basically usb-c before the physical plug was developed. It was a micro usb with a really stupid additional plug bonded to it to make it high power and I think gave extra data lanes. Lighting plug was probably apples counter to that ungodly sin upto the tech universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Connector_USB_3_IMGP6033_wp.jpg
yeah i have an external ssd that uses that weird clamshell connector, you can actually just plug in a regular micro B and it works with usb 2.0 speeds
lightning was basically a better version of the micro-b connector, it debuted with the iPhone 5 in 2012, it had a few advantages over micro-B including a reversible connector. back when it came out apple users complained because all the accessories used the old 30-pin connector so they weren’t compatible, so apple pledged to not change the iPhone connector again for a long time, iirc 10 years? i think that’s why iPhones were still using lightning until 2023 despite having usb C on the macbook since 2016
Yeah, the hate on lightning kinda reminds me of the hate on FireWire. It’s like, the only alternative at the time was USB 1.0, which was 8mbs. Even in the
lateearly 00s, that could have meant hours to sync yourphoneiPod.
iPhones only have USB-C because they were forced to, but MacBooks were some of the very early adopters of the connector, and iPads also picked it up well before the requirement.
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They only have USB-C on iPhones because they were forced to.
They went to USB-C only on their computers on their own.
In apple’s defense, they wanted a reversible high speed connector, but the USB committee in their infinite wisdom was like “what if we added a tumor to the micro USB instead?”
Fake. Huawei users aren’t real
wrong, apple ones arent the real ones
Apple doesn’t have users, it has cultists.
I guess we forgot how to email…
20 MB limit. But let’s be honest, pretty much every company uses some form of cloud-storage. Physical media is rarely used any more.
20 MB limit where? Not on my email inbox.
At work. I don’t make PowerPoint presentations for fun in private.
how long is your power point?
Many PPTs have videos in them. Even a short looping video will blow up the size of the file.
Americucks and their Apple.
Can’t be an American story because Huawei is banned in the USA 🥹
Android and Microsoft are in majority use globally, but truth be told they’re all faceless tech companies run by billionaires who want to feed their never ending greed.
Tell me about it, I worked there once. What a cult! They are essentially the Nike of computers.
Damn look at you being every bit as ignorant and arrogant as the American average. I’m impressed.
Could you be more of a racist cuck shit stain. Go fuck off with that attitude.
🙄
The Huawei phone likely has usb c as well. Just use a cable…
connect phone to girls laptop
girl finds my 500GB AI deepfake collection
get beat to death
i’m not seeing a problem here
And rightly so
lol what happened to emailing the presentation or sharing it on a cloud drive like Google
Man, you are the superior one, because you are still using a real Computer
If somebody requests that I drop air, I will push a fart. Hope your bougie toy can read that.
A macbook is a real computer.
Arguably, if it has a true linux distro on it, because MacOS is restricting a lot of its capabilities. I know it at least for iOS.
What does macos restrict?
Can’t even make a folder in your home drive.
not real linux, so no native docker development.
Also the UI of the OS is turbo liquid ass.
I’m being forced into it by my employer.
I agree with you on the UI, it used to be really good, but they fucked it up with liquid glass. I actually like liquid glass, but it’s far better on mobile than desktop. Tahoe as a whole is disappointing. The docker thing doesn’t really seem like a fault or restriction of macos itself.
They make A to C adapters.
They make A AND C flash drives:
I have one on my keyring.
I have another that also takes SD cards, so it makes it super simple to file transfer between all my things
Because after, what, …40? years of internet, the most convenient way to move a large file between two computers on the same network is, usually, to put it on a physical drive and move it. That, or upload it to cloud storage, then have the other person download it.
It’s unfathomable to me that we still don’t have a universally accepted and implemented protocol/utility for “send this file over wifi to this other machine on the same network”. I’m aware that there are plenty of ways to do this, but the fact that it’s typically easier to upload a 10 GB file to cloud storage for the person next to you to download it (or move it via a flash drive) is easier than just sending it directly. It boggles my mind that sending files over the local network isn’t some extremely simple cross-platform feature that any machine can access through a utility as accessible as connecting to the wifi-network.
Just to reiterate: I’m very aware that this is easily possible for anyone with a little tech-backround. My point is that it isn’t the go-to method for most people, and I just can’t understand why…
There are security concerns with bending a device over and spreading it wide open to wireless signal.
The wired ethernet methods do exist but are locked down to trigger vendor lock in and make bank for hp/lexmark/etc in support contracts
There are security concerns with bending a device over and spreading it wide open to wireless signal.
I think my confusion / bafflement is built a bit on the fact that we’re able to do this with the internet. I’m constantly receiving massive amounts of data over wireless signal from all around the globe, and it’s generally regarded as safe to do so. How hard could it be to set up pretty much the exact same thing with a standardised interface / protocol over local wifi?
I think the main reason is priorities.
USB is standardised. File structures are also standardized (if you ignore different storage formats like ntfs, FAT32, etc). Everything that USB drives have to deal with is solved and standardized.
Meanwhile, network specs are continually changing due to security concerns. If you have 2 devices connected, you need to have a secure way for those 2 devices to verify that they’re the correct devices. That’s not as big of a concern for USB drives, because if a bad actor has physical access to a computer you generally have bigger problems to deal with.
Plus, hardware vendors like murkying the waters by pushing for their internal implementations when possible, preventing standardization across the entire industry
I absolutely see the security side of it, but I would assume that could be solved quite easily by having some kind of “on/off” switch combined with only allowing manually verified connections.
I mean, we basically have this for bluetooth, where I can connect to pretty much any bluetooth device, and just confirm or deny the connection request. It surprises me that some similar protocol hasn’t been invented for wifi, where I could see other machines on the network (like you can see nearby bluetooth devices), and send a connection request that the owner of that device can accept or deny. Any machine connected to the internet is already “wide open” in the sense that it’s constantly receiving loads of wireless data from all across the globe. We’ve been able to standardise that in a “safe enough” way, I don’t see how doing the same thing over a local network could be any more difficult.
Yeah, they come in very handy.
You can even transfer files from a desktop to a phone with these.
And if one port breaks, the other still functions.
And every Mac user I know carries one without a hint of irony.
Moral of the story: get a USB adapter
Just get a usbC flash drive. USB C is actually pretty good and you can easily get one that has both a and c.
I just dislike how easy to bend and break it looks.
Don’t buy cheap USB-C stuff?
Its studier then a I find weirdly enough.
I just have USB-C to USB-A adapter, for this kind of problems, and the reverse adapter as well.
You can also just get flash drives that are usb c. Even though I’m not a Mac guy, I thinks it’s been over 10 years since I’ve owned a computer (Inc phone) that doesn’t have usb c
It’s good for phones as well
Look at Mr. Two Dongles over here.
This is why I have a Framework laptop with modular ports.
I can change which ports my laptop has, and on which side it has them, at will. No struggle
