Quote from: Daniel Ridenhour on May 07, 2020, 02:41:35
I like the magsafe connector... but it just doesn't work for me... I use a lot of different hardware and its never going to be all surface... so I end up having to double up on docks and do a lot of cable shuffling depending on what dock I can use with the equipment i have with me. No Thanks. Give me a TB3 and eGpu dock any day... magsafe would be great... but it isn't worth the compromise.
It's not ideal that it's proprietary but traditional docks were proprietary as well. And they were not cheap either. So it's nothing new to me. If I was designing a docking solution using a cable, I would probably arrive at something like this. Sure, I would try to support TB3. But there might be a good reason why they didn't at the time (not enough PCIe lanes; not being able to meet electrical requirements of TB3 - it has 80 Gb/s total bandwidth; Intel not being in the mood; whatever). And since it's proprietary, I do appreciate the backward compatibility. So that you don't have to buy a new dock with every new generation.
Sure, if you need TB3, this is a problem. Many people don't. There is plenty of choice if you simply want TB3. I imagine this is going to be a temporary problem. USB4 is essentially TB3. Although, it might take a while for USB4 to become relevant. And I'm not sure it guarantees eGPU support. But I would like to see something along the lines of this connector. It's just better than USB-C. I know there are magnetic cables but why isn't there a standardized magnetic USB connector in the first place? It would make sense for docking and charging cables.