“Apple’s decisions to remove the headphone jack starting with iPhone 7/7 Plus and going all in on USB-C with the MacBook and MackBook Pro have caused a lot of commotion,” Michael Potuck reports for 9to5Mac. “But no matter how you see the changes, an interesting result has emerged, we’ve made Apple’s dongles the best-selling products at Best Buy.”
“A report today from Ceros details the trend that Apple’s top-selling products overall (not just accessories) at the major retailer are indeed dongles,” Potuck reports. “Specifically, over the past two years the 3.5mm to Lightning adapter and 3.3-foot USB-C to Lightning cable have been Best Buy’s most popular Apple branded items.”
Potuck reports, “While AirPods just took over as the most popular individual product as of Q2 2018, dongles still prevailed as the top revenue generator overall, with Apple’s headphones category coming in second place.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Make sense. As anyone with kids knows, 3.5mm to Lightning adapters are best purchased by the gross.
Hey, TGIF! Interns, preform your sacred duty. Cheers, everyone!
Such is the road to Trillion
And the minions cheered!
We did, you cynic, because we had wireless headphones and better water resistance. All you have is your resistance.
Enjoy your conformity!
The whole freeking world has had wireless headphones for decades, and Bluetooth for decades as well.
Let’s see…. do I want an expensive, inconvenient, and losable dongle, which still needs a hole in order to be able to plunge my phone in 60 ft of water versus 40 ft?
Get over yourself.
Wow! My first thoughts exactly. It’s called GREED …
Or, is it a type of blindness and customer obliviousness? The elite don’t often know what it’s like for those on the street.
As a creative person, I see it “simply” as bad design and having a bad design game plan. It’s not consistent with “it just works”, “less is more”, “making products that delight,” and many other Apple and design in principles.
I can’t imagine the designer looking at a historical portfolio of their products that would require a separate chapter outlining the various I/O changes/additions necessary for operation.
It would be an embarrassing conglomeration.
Yes, it is both. Hard to believe they are blind to the competition.
When I had to replace the cheaply constructed fraying Apple brand cables I headed to Walmart. You can buy three for the price of one Apple Tax cable and they are twice as strong …
GoeB = Greed, or eternal BS from GoeB?
Quite obviously endless fruggin’ BS from the GoeBster of Grubosity.
Tim Cook liked playing with dongles
Not mine!
“Tim Cook liked playing with dongles” Loves dickies too! That’s what’s wrong with Apple…Families been iPhone users since day 1…Moving on to Samsung…Their fridges, washers, dryers, TV & Gas range have been flawless…So long Gay Apple…I miss Steve!
And that’s why I have an iPhone SE and still use an 5 year old MacBook Pro. Fuck dongles.
Duck fongles. Where’s John Dongler, he of the giant Tim Cook-fondled dongle?
Mostly to me. I keep losing them and giving mine to clients.
Anyone want to create, “The Dongle Store!” Online?
Hell hath no fury like a consumer scorned. This is the tipping point. People will start looking outside Apple now. Steve Jobs would have never shipped a dongle. EVER.
When the iMac came out, I had to buy a new floppy drive, and dongles for my printer, scanner, hard drive, and two removable storage devices. Yes, Steve would do that.
but he would never accept the current catalogue needed across the product range. Clusker_f.
Established Mac owners did not have a single existing peripheral that would work with their new iMac. Pretty broad impact from my perspective.
To make a fair comparison we need specific years and models. Not a vague broad statement and excuses in defense of Apple. The post is correct in that dongle hell is the worst it has ever been now under Cook …
You asked for facts. I gave you facts. I can’t help it if you prefer your opinion to facts.
As I said for the third time, the answer to the trillion dollar question is the core here and still MIA …
The answer to the trillion-dollar question is that Tim Cook is the CEO of a trillion-dollar corporation. You aren’t. Steve Jobs wasn’t. Donald Trump isn’t. Making up a myth about more dongles being required now than in 1999 doesn’t change any of that.
I’m going to end this exchange with a complement: you have again proved yourself to be just as much of a stable genius as the President of the United States.
“The answer to the trillion-dollar question is“ … drum roll please,TxUSER CAN’T answer it. Then all he has left is multiple tedious deflections and insults, got it …
Perhaps, but that wasn’t its main point, which was that Steve Jobs would never release a Mac that needed so many dongles. He would, and did.
The first iMac dropped the floppy drive, SCSI, ADB, and several printer, audio, and video ports that were on earlier models. It replaced them all with USB-A. That eventually happened across the product range. Those of us with peripherals that used the legacy ports either had to scrap expensive gear or buy dongles. New USB peripherals took months (or more) to reach the market. That “dongle hell” situation was as bad or worse as the current transition to USB-C. Anybody who lived through it will agree.
Saying so isn’t a defense of Apple or an attack on Steve’s memory. It is recognizing facts without being blinded by one’s conviction that somebody who has made $750B or so for his employer is incompetent.
For a honest comparison, Apples to Apples, we would have to compare several models under both CEOs. Not a selective vague comparison.
Without doing that, my sense reading MDN comments from pros I respect for years — the overwhelming posts concur dongle hell under Cook. Offer less, charge more, no wonder they are the first trillion dollar company.
I never said Cook is incompetent and he is sincere. He simply stayed out of the way riding the Jobs/Ive iPhone coattails gravy train. He did nothing spectacular and your consistent defense of him is just that not pointing to specifics, except, hey look they made a trillion, big deal. Any CEO could have done the same. We need a creative visionary CEO with drive and focus, not a backseat caretaker …
I pointed to a single Apple model, the first iMac released by Steve Jobs on August 15, 1998, as compared to every Macintosh before it. Nobody can be any more specific and less vague than that. If you think that I am being both vague and overselective at the same time, you aren’t using one of those words correctly.
It puts me in mind of the common synonym for the United States Department of Justice: “rigged witch hunt.” I had always thought that was one where the witches are captured ahead of time and released where the hunters can bag them unfairly.
To repeat, I’m not defending Apple or Cook. I’m just pointing out that the transition of modern devices from legacy connectors to something new is always unpleasant. Having lived through both eras, I found the 1998 transition to USB-A as difficult as the current transition away from it. Your mileage may have differed.
That is a matter of opinion open to debate. What isn’t is whether Steve Jobs would EVER have forced Apple users to use dongles. He did, as one of his first moves after rejoining the company.
Like I said, you would have to compare several models under both CEOs for an Apples to Apples comparison.
The TOPIC and trillion dollar QUESTION is more dongles under Cook or Jobs? Not that Steve added a few with one select model. Like I said, based on the number of posts recently would guess we have more today.
Like I said, you are INDEED a defender of Apple, particularly Cook almost daily, fine. Your last post proves it for all to read so spare us the BS …
Obviously, you have been lying about being a long-term Apple user.
Otherwise, you would know that it wasn’t just “one select model” that dropped the SCSI, ADB, and DIN-8 ports. It was EVERY model. The iMac G3 was just the first, although AAUI for Ethernet had only recently been replaced by RJ-45. The PowerMac G3 (Blue and White) also dropped the DIN-8 modem and printer ports, could only use SCSI with an add-on card, and was the last Mac with an ADB port. The port revolution in 1998-99 was much faster than the recent move to USB-C connectors.
Anybody with older peripherals in 1998 was forced to shell out big bucks if they wanted to continue using them. How that affected individuals, as compared to the transition to USB-C, obviously differed, but it happened.
Steve Jobs regarded the move to modern industry-standard connectors as a feature, not as a problem. He didn’t give a damn about whining snowflakes who wanted to cling to the past, rather than embrace the future. You haven’t made a case that he would feel any differently now.
Your selective defense and deflection is noted in another long tedious post. As long as the core trillion dollar question is unanswered, I see no point in continuing pointless tit for tat …
You take things so seriously-it doesn’t matter to you if you’re right or wrong.
Well said. Hubris over humility and does not admit mistakes. Rest assured it will be followed immediately by lenghty distraction words that move off topic into other deflection areas. When you don’t buy it in the end, the insults fly … sad.
So, the trillion dollar question remains. Which CEO has the dongle record? We may never know …
TXUser, I agree that was also an abrupt transition. the first iMac replaced Apple’s proprietary connectors with a new industry standard, USB-A. It also had minijacks for audio in/out. Prior to that, Apple usually used SCSI for hard drives and a proprietary connection for other stuff. However Apple at least had peripherals ready from the start. Any USB device you plugged into the early iMacs just worked.
So the direction was to a faster better industry standard. Over time, Apple added Firewire next to USB so users had even more flexibility.
Today Apple’s lineup is an inconsistent mess. Remember the first device to get USB-C? It was a one port wunder that underperformed the Air but cost more. Then you needed to wait 1-2 years for 3rd party adapters and docks because Apple was too lazy to offer them.
Think about that. You could not plug any Apple device into the 2016 MacBook. That’s the stupidest product planning I can imagine. Would it have been to hard to add a USB-A port on the device alongside the new connection?????
Simply incorporating the new connections with a one year transition that maintains one old connection would delight users. Problem is, Apple thinks ripping off consumers with ridiculously priced dongles is good for business. It is not. It destroys the goodwill that Apple earned. Today there is no reason to be loyal to Apple. One can get better hardware for lower prices elsewhere with less fuss. Hackintosh is the answer.
Exactly the kind of accurate Apple to Apple comparison details I was looking for to make an intelligent decision, well done. As suspected from years of reading similar posts, not those from Apple defenders, clearly Cook is king of dongle disruption we saw with the Mac Pro in 2013 …
Ha! What a load of baloney.
I typed in Dongle Store to see if it was taken and Best Buy comes up. Swear.
Lol … i saw it too
Apple’s Got a Dangling Dongle for Every Device.
Please Consult with Dongle Specialist….Dingler, The Dongle Artist.
It’s actually quite a damn shame that that the case Apple should be embarrassed. They raise the price of this MacBook Pro keyboard by the way is horrible I hate it nothing but issues and then people have to go out and buy goggles pathetic
This is more of a commentary on Best Buy than anything else.
So no one is concerned that the only reason people buy Apple stuff from BB is as an add on for some other purchase. Come for the refrigerator, pick up a dongle because you are there.
Ahhhhh…..Courage. LOL. More like CASH COW. Moooooo…….
TxUser is absolutely correct. My first mac was a Performa 400. I’ve been through every interface change since then. I’ve got a drawer full of old cables and connectors. Time and technology march on and I’m glad. Thunderbolt 3 via usb-c is awesome.
Somewhere on my office shelf I have a small collection of SCSI cables. Big, heavy things those were!
Lets stick every Apple Dongle up Steve Cooks ass and see how he likes Dongles!!! I hate fucken Dongles