On Sat, 11 Oct 2014, Philipp Überbacher wrote:
I see my fair share of laptops and ethernet is somewhat declining. There are only few laptops without an interface, macbook air and some versions of macbook pro come to mind. I guess apple has two reasons for that: 1) increased use of wifi over ethernet 2) selling overpriced adapters to people who want to use ethernet. What I see increasingly
:) Apple likes to sell overpriced *.
more often are 'flat' ethernet ports. With those things you can't just plug the cable in, you have to expand it first. This allows manufacturers to build slightly slimmer laptops but I think those ports will likely break much sooner than conventional ports. I guess this is a tradeoff manufacturers are willing to make since wifi is so prevalent
Purposely making it worthwhile to replace the whole unit more often so they can make more profits.
nowadays. It is also an indication that ethernet is less important nowadays and may vanish from laptops in the next couple of years.
I do not think it will quite vanish. However, the reality has been for a while that for audio use, an apropriate machine should be chosen in the first place. Audio can be made to work on just about anything out there, but can work much better if the right choice is made. Apple makes AV machines that are supposed to be designed to handle this stuff well, but the user pays for it. The computer is more, the SW is more, the external boxes are more... everything is meant to be closed. To get open stuff, the PC is used, but the PC is not based on AV designs and so the user has to know what to look for to get a good computer for audio use. I bought a new computer MB a few months ago for my studio. I purposely chose a MB with PCI slots so I could use a known good AI, I purposely chose an i5 rather than i7 for no hyperthreading, etc. In the same way, a user with an ethernet based AI had better choose a computer (desktop/laptop/notepad) with a built in ethernet port and may wish to be picky about what chipset the ethernet port uses.
A working musician will not buy a toy midi keyboard for the stage, or use the amp from a home stereo for an amp (at least not very long). In the same way, someone doing audio work with their computer, no matter what OS they use, needs to be willing to spend some time and money making sure they have an appropriate computer. I am "cheap" as they come, but getting the job done means buying the right stuff to begin with. There is a sense that with Linux a person can do pro audio work on any computer... basically free. I don't think that is true, I do think it can be less expensive, but time input to learning must be higher to compensate. I also think there are things that can be done with Linux that are just not available anywhere else.
-- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net
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