How many USB-C ports will the first USB-C equipped MacBook Pro have?

▼ Earlier this year I already talked about the switch to USB-C. But I have more to say about the subject, especially regarding the MacBook Pro. This was also posted on the Ars Technica forums.

Apple currently sells almost 20 million Macs each year, four times as many as a decade ago. So they must be doing something right. So I'm going to assume they'll want to build a new MacBook Pro that is a lot like the current ones, except that they want to start the transition to USB-C as that's the connector for Thunderbolt 3 and it nicely consolidates a whole lot of different stuff AND IT'S SMALLER!!!.

I'm going to assume the HDMI and SD card slots aren't going anywhere. They were added fairly recently and their usefulness has not declined since. (I haven't needed my mDP-to-VGA adapter yet this year as HDMI has finally pervaded meeting rooms, hallelujah!) I hear there are still a few people that use the 3.5 mm audio port, too. (Did you know that it also provides optical TOSlink digital audio out?)

So that leaves one MagSafe, two Thunderbolt/miniDisplayPort and two USB type A ports that may be replaced by USB-C ports.

MagSafe

As the owner of a now defunct PowerBook that I still have to figure out how to recycle properly, I can tell you that MagSafe is a very useful feature. I tripped over the PowerBook power cord, it went flying through the room, landed on a corner and I had to bend the corner back so DVDs would go into the drive again.

So going from MS to USB-C for power has a big, big downside. On the other hand, one power port to ~~rule~~ power them all (iPhones, iPads, MacBooks) is extremely attractive, as would be the ability to plug in power on either side of the laptop.

An interesting option would be to keep the MagSafe charger, but provide a MS-to-USB-C adapter. This allows the user to plug power into any USB-C port but still enjoy the safety of mag. (On the MacBook [nothing] this adapter could also have a 3.5 mm audio jack so that wouldn't have to be in the computer and then you could have two USB-C ports.)

However, the problem with this approach is that you use up a valuable USB-C port for the mundane task of delivering power.

Verdict: keep MagSafe for now, but if possible, also allow charging through the USB-C ports so a new 5k display could be connected using a single cable. Also, users who feel strongly about charging the computer using a port on the other side get what they want and Apple gets to see how well USB-C charging works without having to take the blame if it leads to cable tripping issues.

Thunderbolt

As soon as Intel has Thunderbolt 3 chipsets, this is a no-brainer, as USB-C is the official connector for TB3. The question is: how hard is it to have more than two TB ports? The Mac Pro has six powered by three TB buses. So perhaps the MBP could have four TB ports powered by two buses. Or maybe that would require too much extra logic. Also, routing these insanely high bandwidth signals to the other side of the device could be problematic.

This could mean that the MBP remains limited to two TB ports. So then the old TB ports are gone. Not too big of a problem, as most Thunderbolt and DisplayPort devices use a separate cable which could be replaced without too much trouble. Notable exceptions are Apple's TB Gigabit Ethernet adapter, but that one can be replaced with a USB 3 one, and the Thunderbolt Display. I guess if Apple cares about backward compatibility (and they obviously don't as the TBD doesn't have any other inputs than TB so you can't connect anything to it other than a TB-equipped Mac) they can sell an adapter.

USB

Oh right, there's also this quaint little protocol called USB that runs over the USB-C connector. If routing TB to more than two USB-C ports is not a problem, then a new MacBook Pro could be fitted with four USB-C ports, so you can still hook up a combination of two displays or TB devices as well as two USB devices.

But if there can only be two TB-equipped ports, then having four (or more?) USB-C ports would mean that there's two types of USB-C ports: the ones that can also power TB devices and displays, and the ones that can only do USB. That's not The Apple Way™: all ports must be fully functional. So this seems unlikely.

Verdict: we keep the existing USB type A USB 3 ports. Not only does that sidestep the same port / different capabilities issue, it also makes the transition easier because all your existing USB crap can be plugged into these ports and Apple doesn't have to start selling USB-C-to-lightning cables.

So we end up with a machine that has all the same ports as today, except that the Thunderbolt 2 / miniDisplayPort ports are replaced with USB-C ports, which will take power, run TB 3, DisplayPort and USB. Extra credit: migrate these ports to the other side of the computer by swapping them with the SD card slot so that it becomes possible to power the computer from either side. Or if routing the signals isn't an issue, have one USB-C port on each side of the computer.

Also note that now all the ports are (somewhat) smaller than USB-A so it should be possible to give the MBP a wedge shape without too much difficulty.

Permalink - posted 2015-12-06

How well does vibration reduction on Nikon lenses work?

▼ I couldn't help myself and bought yet another lens a couple of weeks ago. It's the Nikon 55-200 mm VR II. It's a small and cheap tele lens for Nikon DX digital SLRs, and I'll be talking about it some more soon. What I want to do today is look at how good the vibration reduction works.

Modern camera systems use vibration reduction (VR), optical stabilization, vibration control or image stabilization to let you take sharp photos even if you can't hold the camera completely still. Each camera/lens company has its own name for it, but it's all the same thing. If the camera moves while the shutter is open, your photo will be blurry. Unless either an element in the lens or the sensor moves to compensate.

With Nikon SLRs, VR is built into the lens (if the lens supports VR). As a result, the image in the viewfinder is also stabilized when the system is active, which is quite noticeable with tele lenses. The rule of thumb is that you need a shutter speed of one divided by the focal length (or faster) to make sure you don't get any camera shake. That would be 1/200 on the 55-200 zoomed to 200 mm. Of course a lot also depends on your technique.

I tested the vibration reduction on the 55 - 200 mm lens at 200 mm by shooting ten test shots at shutter speeds starting at 1/500, turning off autofocus before each set so the focus would be the same for all ten shots. Without VR, 1/500 and 1/250 resulted in 10/10 perfect shots as far as camera shake is concerned. Without VR, at 1/125 about half the shots were perfect and half pretty good, but not quite perfect. At 1/60, 60% were pretty good and 40% worse, but still somewhat usable. At 1/30 and 1/15 I got one or two shots out of ten that were still usable, all the others were useless.

So bottom line for no VR at 200 mm: use 1/250 or faster to make sure camera shake is not an issue, 1/125 is still workable and 1/60 will do in a pinch.

With VR enabled, the results were pretty much identical for 1/500, 1/250 and 1/125. The 1/500 and 1/250 shots were all perfect, at 1/125 it was about 50/50. At 1/60, 1/30 and 1/30, the best shots weren't quite perfect, but pretty close. Interestingly, at 1/60 I got 80% very good shots, at 1/30 60% (with the remaining ones merely "good") and at 1/15 all ten shots were very good. At 1/15 nine were merely "good" and one still usable. At 1/4 there were no good shots, but they were all still usable in a pinch. At 1/2 I again got 40% good shots, 40% usable and 20% unusable. At one second, only one was usable and the other nine were unusable.

Bottom line for VR on the 55 - 200 lens at 200 mm: for perfect sharpness you don't want to depend on VR, so stick to 1/250 or faster. VR doesn't seem to help at 1/125, but it produces very good results at 1/60 to 1/15 and you can still get usable shots at shutter speeds as long as 1/2.

So the four stop improvement claim holds up. But the limitations are that VR doesn't give you perfect results and it also doesn't seem to be helpful at 1/125.

These are some of the test shots at 1:1 zoom. This is 1/250, which is nice and sharp but also too dark because it's underexposed and grainy because the sensitivity was very high at ISO 3200.