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I advised a friend of mine who wanted to look cool to buy a mac mini. He did. He was happy with it. He bought a used Apple monitor. Unfortunately, the particular Apple monitor was not immediately compatible with the mac mini, and he had to buy a very expensive adapter to get the monitor to work. He was one of the “help me fix my mac” people. And he didn’t consult with me first before buying the monitor.

So, yes, Apples limited connectivity options end up costing their customers a lot of extra money. Way back when, when apple was apparently using a bunch of proprietary connectors, it certainly was a step in the right direction for them to use usb.

So, yes, Apples limited connectivity options end up costing their customers a lot of extra money.

Let's say I buy a new HP PC with DVI video out and a used HP monitor with VGA. I'm the dumb one, not HP.

The Mac Mini includes the latest in computer display connectivity, DisplayPort (prior to this latest model, it was DVI). As a nod to people likely using them as media PCs, Apple even includes an HDMI port instead of requiring people to buy a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.

Apple even includes a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter with the Mac Mini. Given that all Apple displays for years have used either DVI or DisplayPort, either he got a really old display, or something's wrong with the story.

Way back when, when apple was apparently using a bunch of proprietary connectors, it certainly was a step in the right direction for them to use usb.

Here were the connectors/protocols:

Apple Data Bus: There was no equivalent on the PC, on Apple since the 80s. It allowed daisy-chaining of serial devices with no configuration. USB was the first mass-market device to do this AFAIK.

AppleTalk was Apple's zero-configuration networking introduced in 1984. Literally, plugging several Macs into each other created a functioning network. There was no PC equivalent, and still really isn't. Apple has tried to replace this with Ethernet plus Bonjour networking utilities.

SCSI: Industry standard for high-speed devices.

So you see, there was a reason for holding onto these proprietary connectors for so long. What would you have proposed for Apple instead of ADB? Good old RS-232 serial with all its problems and manual configuration? That was the PC equivalent. At the time Apple used AppleTalk, would you have preferred Token Ring or the Novell fun? What a PITA.