A tweet posted shortly after Apple’s recent Macbook launch event shows that the outfit now sells 17 different types of dongle.
Some of this is because if its daft war with connectivity ports, Apple’s latest computers do away with the SD card port, a full-size USB port, and the HDMI port. This forces users to convert what Jobs’ Mob calls legacy connectors to the USB-C port.
The implication is that the dongles are needed because everyone is actually transiting to Apple’s glorious USB-C future.
"We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition,” the company said in a statement. In other words it is you corporate dinosaurs who are so unhip it is a wonder your bums don’t fall off and this is killing your own joy.
However Apple failed to mention that its latest super cool, hyper advanced, iPhone is one of these legacy devices that needs a dongle to work with the rest of its gear. Apparently Apple copied its old iPhone so closely it forgot that it was supposed to handle USB-C.
To make matters worse, Apple’s dongles were expensive and this was causing it to attract some heat from fanboys. Now it seems that Apple is going to provide a decent discount on the price of the dongles, at least until the end of this year.
The most popular one is likely to be the USB to USB-C adapter - which will be $9, down from $19. For connecting iPhones (both new and old), you’ll need a $19 Lightning to USB dongle - although you could use an old Lightning to USB cable if you bought the USB to USB-C adapter. Keeping up?
But Dongles are a pain in the arse. They get lost, forgotten and broken and make for a security mess. In addition, if they get accidentally being pulled out when uploading some data everything is more corrupt than a US politician in election year.
All this means that the Macbook will be a spaghetti junction of dongles and complaints that people have been nicking dongles. Then if something does not work, you have to work out if it is the device or the dongle which is broken. Then if you complain the Apple Fanboy manager you work for will insist that the whole thing “just works” like they usually do (even as the smoke is pouring out of your terminal).