Re dongles. A colleague suggested:

i’m using a caldigit thunderbolt2 box & that gives me

audio stereo in/out     1x
usb     3x
e-sata  2x
cat5 / rj45 / lan 1x
hdmi    1x

that means 1box & power pack you have to lug around…..

But still - $1920 for an internal 2TB drive upgrade is ridiculous. I bought an 
external one for $200 last year. I'll investigate more before I buy...


On 30/10/2016 10:18 pm, Brian Risbey wrote:
Hello Ronni, Susan and Rob,
I will be getting one of these MacBookPro 15”. As I mentioned, $6k is expensive but that has been the same price of the top specced models for the last 20 years when I purchased my last 3 Apple laptops, starting with a PowerBook 5300, a MacBookPro 15”, then my current 17”. I see that as becoming ‘cheaper’, factoring in inflation. I get 6 to 8 years out of the machines, which are used daily at work or at home. I will wait until the new year, when demand settles and I start back to work. I think maxing out a machine speed is good idea and it appears that ,in some initial reports, they may be upgradeable in the SSD storage area but not RAM, after purchase. A few choice dongles to connect to VGA overhead projectors and off I go. (Hope they exist!)

Brian


On 30 Oct 2016, at 21:39, Ronda Brown <ro...@mac.com <mailto:ro...@mac.com>> wrote:

Hi Rob, Susan and Brian,

The new MacBook Pros with two Thunderbolt 3 ports on each side, all four of which can be used for charging and expansion. (And no, it won’t charge faster if you plug in two chargers; it just picks one.)

Thunderbolt 3, which provides throughput up to 40 Gbps, uses the same connector as USB-C and supports DisplayPort (and thus HDMI and VGA, plus Thunderbolt 2, via adapters) and USB 3.1 Gen 2, which runs at 10 Gbps and is backward compatible with older USB devices.
These new machines can drive two 5K displays or four 4K displays.
That’s impressive.

Cheers,
Ronni
Sent from Ronni's iPad4


On 30 Oct. 2016, at 6:04 pm, Rob Phillips <r.phill...@iinet.net.au <mailto:r.phill...@iinet.net.au>> wrote:

He doesn't hold back, does he?  :-\

Rob

On 30/10/2016 7:30 am, Susan Hastings wrote:
Hi Rob, you might like to read Mike Johnson's comments on the new MacBook Pros. It's the second article down on his blog page. That is, if you are interested in someone who shares your dismay at Apple's choices...

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

Sent from my iPad

On 28 Oct. 2016, at 9:18 pm, Brian RISBEY <risb...@bigpond.com <mailto:risb...@bigpond.com>> wrote:

Hi Rob
I did exactly the same sums this morning, $6k+ but then I considered external SSD hard drives and speed of connection ports and maybe just 1Tb internal drive might do.
My PowerBook 5300 cost $5k in the early 90s :-)
Over the years all my maxed out MacBooks 15" & 17" have been close to $6k. So, they are in fact becoming cheaper, relatively speaking. The last, a 17", now 8 years old, is still humming along. I don't know how upgradable this new one will be. Has ifixit torn one down yet? Maxing a special build maybe your only option if you don't want an external drive.
My 2c worth, (& the other $6499.98)
Brian Risbey
🌊🏊


On 28 Oct. 2016, at 18:57, Rob Phillips <r.phill...@iinet.net.au <mailto:r.phill...@iinet.net.au>> wrote:

Hi everyone

I've just been looking at the new Macbook Pro. It looks pretty cool, but what about the price?

The top of range machine costs A$4,249.00 for 512Gb storage. I've got 400Gb of photos!

And then they want  A$1,920.00 to upgrade to a 2TB SSD drive...

This is up to the price level that the first Mac IIs were in the late 1980s...

And then there's nothing in the box to connect my existing devices to. I've got to buy all sorts of adaptors (from $30 to $110) to keep working...

Are Apple going to price themselves out of the market?

Do I have to carry around al sorts of cables and 3rd party devices to use my computer as I move around?

Any ideas about how to resolve the issue?

Rob

--
Dr Rob Phillips
Sessional tutor
School of Education, Curtin University
rob.phill...@curtin.edu.au <mailto:rob.phill...@curtin.edu.au>
Life member, Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education Fellow, Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia>
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