{"id":6675,"date":"2015-06-09T21:17:15","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T04:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=6675"},"modified":"2015-06-09T21:18:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T04:18:53","slug":"apple-showcase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/apple-showcase\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun With Dongles or…The Apple “Showcase”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"apple_dvi_adapter\"<\/a>The new 12″ MacBook has been mocked by many for it’s paltry connectivity options, or should I say option. No MagSafe connector, no Thunderbolt, no HDMI, no SD card slot, heck it doesn’t even have a standard USB port. It only has a single USB-C port and a headphone jack. The good news is that USB-C is a standard connector, nothing proprietary about it. In theory we’ll have access to a plethora of peripherals using the new standard, and we can buy dongles for whatever we want.<\/p>\n

It’s not like we haven’t had to buy dongles in the past. I have Mini-Display Port adapters for HDMI, DVI, and VGA, and 30pin adapters for my old iOS devices too. I keep them in a nice bundle that I bring whenever I have to go present. Imagine my delight when I spoke at the SBAMUG, a local Mac User Group when they had Wifi and a lovely AppleTV so I didn’t need any dongles.
\n
\nBut next week for Macstock in Chicago, there’s no AppleTV, only a VGA projector. I don’t have a USB-C to VGA adapter and the idea of buying backwards in time to such an old connector makes me cringe. Apple does<\/em> sell one, but the darn thing is $79! Sure you get a passthrough USB-C port so you can still charge your MacBook if you need to (but you never need to) and a “regular” USB-A port but still, $79 for that?<\/p>\n

\"monoprice_adapter<\/a>Luckily Mike Potter, the awesome organizer of Macstock, let me know that he’s got a VGA to HDMI adapter, so maybe I could go with HDMI so I’m not buying 1972 technology. In the Apple “Store” (and I’m using quotes around the word store) they sell a digital video adapter that turns USB-C into HDMI, USB-A and passthrough USB-C. That sounds much better, even though it’s still $79. Macstock is coming up quick so I decided I’d just pop over to the Apple Store and buy it.<\/p>\n

What a quaint idea. I feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy keeps pulling the football away from him. I keep thinking that the Apple store is actually a store. So far I couldn’t buy a watch, I couldn’t buy a watch band, couldn’t buy a Mac mini, couldn’t buy a Macbook\u2026and now I can’t buy a dongle in the store. Seriously. In 8 days I could have it delivere<\/em> to the store but actually buy something in the store? Nope. It’s the Apple Showcase. I will not call it a store any longer. I even sent a worded a very<\/em> stern tweet to Angela Ahrendts, Senior VP of Retail at Apple. <\/p>\n

My next idea was to buy a USB-C to Mini Displayport adapter, then I could plug in one of my old adapters to go Mini Displayport to VGA. Yeah, that would be cool if it existed, but as far and wide as I looked I couldn’t find one.. <\/p>\n

I finally gave up and bought a $35 USB-C to HDMI adapter from Monoprice<\/a>, and it got to me in two days. Living on the bleeding edge as I do, I understand that it will be harder to find peripherals but it frosts my shorts that Apple, who sold me the device, can’t even get me adapters in a reasonable length of time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new 12″ MacBook has been mocked by many for it’s paltry connectivity options, or should I say option. No MagSafe connector, no Thunderbolt, no HDMI, no SD card slot, heck it doesn’t even have a standard USB port. It only has a single USB-C port and a headphone jack. The good news is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6675"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6679,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675\/revisions\/6679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}