10 reasons to love the USB-C ports on the new MacBook Pro

Hopefully, USB just won the interconnect wars

While so much of the chat concerning Apple's MacBook Pro has focused on the need to apply dongles to connect to its 4 USB-C ports, in that location are numerous advantages to the transition:

Charge annihilation

The charging "brick" you need for your Mac is a generic USB-C charger. This means you tin can use it to charge your Mac, iPhone, iPad.

Accuse faster

When you use this to charge other Apple devices, your devices will charge faster. For example, iPhones will charge twice as fast (their maximum) as they exercise when they use their supplied 5-watt adaptor. Though yous'll need a dongle… and a Lightning cable.

Dongles dominion!

What's important is to annotation that the dongles you end up needing are USB-C class devices that volition work with whatever USB-C class device, not but Macs. Yous can utilize the SanDisk Farthermost Pro SD UHS-2 Bill of fare USB-C Reader dongle for your Mac as a card reading interface for any USB-C device, including some Android phones.

Dongles are cheap

Dongles are relatively cheap, take a look at the many generic ones sold by Amazon. You can carry almost every dongle you always might need in your coat pocket and they won't cost you too much — just do brand sure any dongles or accessories you exercise purchase are compliant with standard specifications issued by the USB Implementers Forum — and exercise read Ars Technica's fantabulous USB-C heir-apparent's guide. Or purchase them from Apple at a big discount until the end of December.

Portable charging

It is so annoying when your Mac runs out of ability. Even so, at present your Mac runs USB-C you can merely plug it into one of those portable power bricks, a USB car charger, or just pick upwards a generic USB-C charger from a nearby shop if your charger is lost or forgotten.

Control your phone with a mouse

You tin plug your USB-C keyboard or mouse into any other device on any platform that supports USB-C and a keyboard/mouse.

Digging the daisy concatenation

If yous accept a USB-C display you can plug it to your Mac with one cable. When you lot do you tin plug all your other devices into your display and run them all using your Mac. This means when you are on the move you can unplug your Mac and just carry the peripherals you need to use on your journey with yous. Caveat emptor: Not all cables are created equal.

Your Mac is at present a battery

Equally this Medium post points out, yous can utilize USB-C on your Mac to charge the battery on another computer that supports USB-C. Yous can also power and utilize an external hard drive without plugging that external bulldoze into ability. The Touch on Bar-equipped MacBook Pros tin power ii devices that use up to 15 watts, and 2 more devices that utilize up to 7.5 watts.

It's Thunderbolt

Every Thunderbolt three port will work as a USB-C port and every Thunderbolt three cable works as a USB-C cable.

Information technology's fast

The USB-C MacBook Pro ports are fast. Using USB-C cables with Thunderbolt three back up built in with peripherals that also support Thunderbolt ways you'll get data transfers at upwardly to 40Gbps (on cables up to 0.5m), or 10Gbps for USB-C peripherals. (NB: Thunderbolt supports both active and passive modes for longer cables with speeds of 40Gbps and 20Gbps respectively).

Cables aren't just cables

One thing is worth thinking well-nigh: These cables (particularly dongles) are very smart. The Thunderbolt to HDMI adaptor has its own processor, GPU, and RAM inside. This increased composure means you lot can do more, faster, merely you also want to make sure the cables you lot use are kept secure.

Ane more matter

If yous relied on Apple's MagSafe to aid prevent yous dissentious your Mac when you tripped on the ability lead, then you should have a look at the Griffin BreakSafe USB-C cablevision solution, which also helps y'all avoid damaging your Mac. Information technology's biggest limitation is its 60-watt power delivery, which is short of the 87-watts the 15-inch MacBook Pro prefers, but fine for the 13-inch model, which ships with a 61-watt USB-C charger. The only real deviation being information technology takes longer to recharge the xv-inch model with a lower powered charging device.

You see, in that location are some advantages to Apple tree'due south move to USB-C, which ways a MacBook Pro is now highly compatible with lots of technologies with which information technology was perhaps less friendly in the past.

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Jonny is a freelance writer who has been writing (mainly about Apple and technology) since 1999.

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