Why can't the circuit be smart enough to detect the orientation of how the plug is inserted without the need to double the number of pins? Manufacturers are looking to cut costs wherever they can and given the choice between whether to make these things easier to handle for consumer or making them buy a new cable that wears out faster, I'm sadly going with them leaning towards the latter.
I came from a 3 year old Thinkpad T400 to borrowing a new 15" MacBook Pro with matte screen and SSD for iPad app dev. After feeling the improvements with the new E420 thinkpads keyboards I think I'm going to wait for the new T430 Lenovos to arrive for my next upgrade.
For me, as a developer, nothing is more important than having a good keyboard. The macbook has really cheap thin keys that don't have the feedback I'd like. The wrist rest edge is sharp which leaves marks on my wrists. The indentation where you cram in a finger to open the screen has knife sharp points on both sides that just makes you wonder what were they thinking. It gets rather hot underneath as well.
So ergonomically, it hasn't been that great of a transition for me even though I wanted it to be. Maybe the macbook air or the 13" pro may be better. Plus I'm too used to using the thinkpad's Trackpoint to mouse around. If you're a vim user, it's awesome with mouse support enabled while keeping fingers near the home row.
No one's saying that. All that is said is it's not entirely Apple's doing. In this case it was Synaptics.