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Comment by KMnO4 | Hacker News Reader

Surprisingly, the dealbreaker for me on this current generation is 2x TB3 ports on one side. I really like being able to charge from either side.

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On a tangential note, there were reports about the Intel based MacBook Pro from earlier this year having CPU usage spikes and heating issues when charging from the left side port. For users with this problem, it was effectively “charge using the right side port”.

As a MacBook Pro owner this is nonsense.

It throttles badly and overheats no matter which side you charge on.

Actually surprised it didn't get more attention. If you're downloading and charging at the same time then your computer is unusable.

Hmm, I'll check this out today. Ironically I was downloading XCode last night and the fans sped up for an hour.

I definitely get more heat and throttling powering on the left side than the right, on my 2019 16”. There are quite a lot of people who have reported the same, for all models which have USB-c ports on both sides. If you’re not seeing a difference, it’s pretty likely your workload or some background process is still pushing the thermal limits of your machine.

Hmm, I wouldn't say this is nonsense. I can consistently reproduce the issue by charging on the left side (making the computer completely unusable), and then switching to the right side and having it run perfectly fine. Since I started charging on the right side I've had zero issues with it.

Yes, the original thread for this I believe is here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find...

What a bizarre limitation. You'd think once they had them on both sides, they'd keep them that way for exactly the kind of flexibility you mention.

You would also think they would keep the MagSafe connector, which was truly revolutionary (and has definitely saved me at least a dozen times), but yet here we are.

I've already tripped or stumbled on my usb-c cable dozens of times working from home. The damn thing is already pulling out at the ends. Why can't apple make good cables? They make their environmental statement making you buy the charger for your phone rather than shipping one in the box, just to sell you junk cables that don't last. I had old multipin cables and earbuds from the original ipod that still hold up. All of their textured grippy feeling cables have been crap.

(This isn't a new design, FWIW.)

You can charge from either side though. You just don’t get all the bandwidth that USB4/TB4 normally provides.

You can’t charge from either side if there are only ports on one side, which, if I understand the design and Gp’s comment correctly, is the case for the ARM macs. Which would be those GP meant as “this generation”.

I assumed they had 4 ports like the current non-base model 13's, my bad.

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