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Comment by saurik | Hacker News Reader

They actually don't even bother to sell first party display port adapters for HDMI: you have to get a third party adapter.

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I wonder if this is due to the licensing costs for putting an HDMI connector on something. IIRC it's $0.15 per port.

in some ways, that's a good thing - third party accessories are usually a bit more reasonably priced.

That doesn't make any sense, because the existence of Apple selling an adapter doesn't mean you have to buy theirs: them not selling a first party adapter can thereby only be a bad thing (and in fact it is a pretty horrible thing as all the third party adapters are crap :/ the Apple adapters tend to last forever, while the third party HDMI ones I am forced to buy tend to literally crack into pieces after a rather short period of usage). But like: the point is that Apple doesn't always go "yay, an opportunity to make money on an adapter", as one of the most common adapters I see in the wild (to plug all but the largest MacBook into most modern projectors) is one Apple doesn't even bother selling.

I was about to call you on this but checking the store it seems you're right, they're reselling another adapter, not an apple branded.

However, I do disagree on the quality of third party adapters; there are many fine ones out there, and the cheap mini-dispay to HDMI I bought last time I was in the US works picture perfect. I think it was PNY but not at home so don't remember.

Not to say all are good, but there are quite a few good adapters.

Yeah, try finding a decent one on Amazon that will actually work with a Mac Mini or Macbook Pro. Had to buy 3-4 of them to find one and the build quality was absolute garbage on all of them.

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