I’ve been a Mac user for several years now. I have a MacBook Pro (2015) and a MacBook Air. I love them both. They are amazing machines. From battery live to performance and every aspect in between, Mac laptops are awesome. What makes the MacBook Pro so great for me is how well it’s positioned as a development machine. Lots of ram, high-quality graphics, fast, Linux compatible backend (BSD), and ports for everything I need. When I visit a client who wants to see what I’ve been working on, I connect a HDMI cable to my MacBook Pro and walk through the progress. If a customer asks me to add new photos to their website, I insert their SD card into my computer and grab the images. When I want to connect with a peripheral – such as a barcode scanner or a mouse – I use my USB. If I am working with Arduino, MicroBit, or a PyBoard, I connect a standard MicroUSB cable to my machine.
Time To Upgrade!
Now, after years on my current MacBook Pro, it’s time to upgrade. I need more hard drive space for all my projects, and I’d like more memory for using virtual machines. Of course, I want another MacBook Pro. Unfortunately the new machines seem far less developer friendly. Why? Because they ONLY have USB-C ports. No HDMI, no headphone jack, no Thunderbolt, no USB-A, no SD Card reader. If I want any of the above, I need to by a converter to connect to my USB-C port. So, when I go onsite, I will now need a laptop and a bag of spare cables to connect to what I need to use. What a horrible user experience! As a laptop user, my objective is to carry around as little as possible. Apple, why did you do this? Why did you destroy a machine that was excellent for development by removing all the ports that made it so useful?
What to Do?
I’ve been pondering for the last few weeks what to do. Do I buy the MacBook Pro along with all necessary accessories to achieve what I need, or do I buy a Windows laptop (for half the cost) that already contains all the things I want? Unfortunately, I like MacOS (specifically the command prompt and dev tools) too much to go back to Windows. So, I’m stuck paying top dollar for a machine that is severely lacking in its ability to perform many of the very things I buy a laptop to do.