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Want to plug anything other than a power cable into your new Macbook? You'll need to shell out an extra £65.
The star of Apple's 9 March event was supposed to be the Apple Watch, but the new 12-inch Macbook arguably took the limelight instead. As we've discussed elsewhere, it's ridiculously thin, has a retina display and is completely fanless.
But one of the most controversial aspects of the machine is that it has almost no ports -- a 3.5mm headphone jack and a USB-C connector are the only holes visible in the aluminium chassis. That means charging, plugging in an external monitor or using USB devices can only be done with an additional dongle.
We now know that that dongle costs £65. It plugs directly into the USB-C slot and splits out to let you plug in power, a normal-sized USB port, and either a VGA or HDMI video cable (you'll need to choose at the time of purchase) at the same time.
If you want to plug in USB devices but you don't care about charging at the same time, there's a cheaper option. A USB-C to USB adaptor will cost you £15.
Interestingly, there's no adaptor for Thunderbolt. It seems Apple is opting to join the USB-C industry standard rather than using it's own proprietary connectors. That's a good thing, unless you've heavily invested in Thunderbolt devices, of course, in which case you've basically been thrown under a bus. There's no adaptor for SD cards or ethernet connectivity, either.
That just leaves power. If you want an extra power adaptor for your home or office, you'll need to buy both a £25 two-metre USB-C charge cable and a £39 power brick. Yes, they're sold separately. An extension cable? That'll be another £15 please.
You can bet that third parties will no doubt begin producing a more flexible set of accessories for the new USB-C standard pretty quickly, but if you want to stick with Apple-produced kit then these are your only options. Like them or lump them.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
