On one hand, it sucks that MacBooks only have 2 ports on 13" models and 3 on 15" models (4 for M1)
On the other, all of the ports do charging, they’re all 40gbps USB4/Thunderbolt3, they all do Displayport and HDMI. All the ports do everything. On most other laptops that just isn’t the case.
Honestly 3 ports is enough. And you have the separate MagSafe port too, which means all 3 are typically free. I can’t think of a good reason to have 3 devices regularly hooked up to a Mac laptop. Mouse, keyboard, external hard drive? And mouse/keyboard can be wired to each other and/or wireless?
I generally prefer wired because I get really tired of dealing with batteries on wireless peripherals, wireless interference, and sometimes latency.
I don’t want to leave my controllers on the charger every time I’m not playing since that’ll drain their battery faster, but that also means my batteries will be at some unknown battery level when I’m starting a game up so it’ll last an unknown amount of time of use before dying, assuming it still had any power at all. Usually these days these types of devices have a way to warn you when they’re low on charge, but I generally play on PC and I don’t know for certain if the wireless controller I’d use could alert me. Then there’s the question of if I notice the alert in the middle of a game, or if I remember to charge it when I’m next able to, or if that alert interfered with something I needed to see/hear at a critical point in a game. Then if the battery dies in a game that could be funny, will probably be frustrating, but also could ruin something I was working a long time towards doing. If the battery is completely dead as in like I haven’t touched it in months, then it may also take up to a few minutes before it’ll have enough charge that I can actually use it since many wireless controllers cannot communicate using the charging cable. And of course the longer I use it the more that battery is going to wear out and eventually need to be replaced entirely. Obviously other mechanical parts also will wear and need to be replaced like the joysticks and of all of them the battery should be the most accessible to replace, but it’s still an additional failure point that can cause more catastrophic failure than many others.
Next is the less likely one these days since I feel that wireless integrity has gotten much better in the last few decades, but I distinctly remember constant frustrations during my first real forray into having a wireless mouse with it operating on a very similar wavelength to my Wi-Fi card and somewhat often just simply not working. It would be operating fine for 50 minutes then be completely unresponsive for 10-60 seconds. I also remember specifically that this mouse had some awful drivers that would crash or forget its configurations about once every 1-3 days, so coupled with that and the battery problem it was difficult to pin point the cause of any particular failure with that mouse. I’d eventually see if the drivers failed via an alert from Windows, the mouse would continue to fail if the batteries were low, and it would do things I don’t want if the drivers forgot their config, but for every failure that didn’t do any of those things it was difficult to know for certain what caused that and how to fix it.
Lastly was the latency which is probably 99% of the time not an issue, but adding in the translation layera between actions to wireless comm to driver to action input can be a frustration. The majority of the times I’ve noticed this are with a mouse that’s waking up from sleep mode, so not super relevant but I do know for particularly high octane games it could have an impact.
The alternative to all of these issues is dealing with a cable. I’d rather deal with the cable, the vast majority of the time.
Controller because it’s a much more convenient way of playing, mouse to line up area strike precisely to this one specific pixel that covers all enemies, and keyboard because I only have an hour of play. I’m not spending it on typing character names like Lafayette Liebhart with a stick.
In most first person game I’ll use the controller for movement and general aiming. If there’s a situation where I need precise aiming, such as a sniper rifle or multiple fast shots, I’ll have my controller in my left hand and mouse in my right.
Some Trackmania players switch between keyboards, controllers or steering wheels based on the current track for example. Also, navigating some menues is better with mouse or keyboard, but laptop inbuilt controls should be enough for that.
That port joke sure is a dead horse …
It’s a two way sword.
On one hand, it sucks that MacBooks only have 2 ports on 13" models and 3 on 15" models (4 for M1)
On the other, all of the ports do charging, they’re all 40gbps USB4/Thunderbolt3, they all do Displayport and HDMI. All the ports do everything. On most other laptops that just isn’t the case.
Honestly 3 ports is enough. And you have the separate MagSafe port too, which means all 3 are typically free. I can’t think of a good reason to have 3 devices regularly hooked up to a Mac laptop. Mouse, keyboard, external hard drive? And mouse/keyboard can be wired to each other and/or wireless?
Are we gaming during our commute now or something though? If you’re at home you’ll have some sort of port hub.
buy another one
I couldn’t eat that much lasagna.
why would anybody need a mouse + keyboard and a controller at the same time
Controllers suck at menus.
I have done it. Use controller when in a vehicle and mouse + keyboard outside of it.
But what kind of computer does not have a keyboard connected to it? And wireless mouse/controllers are not much more expensive then wired ones.
Usb hubs aint expensive either. Actually both my keyboard and my monitor come with extra usb hubs build in.
I generally prefer wired because I get really tired of dealing with batteries on wireless peripherals, wireless interference, and sometimes latency.
I don’t want to leave my controllers on the charger every time I’m not playing since that’ll drain their battery faster, but that also means my batteries will be at some unknown battery level when I’m starting a game up so it’ll last an unknown amount of time of use before dying, assuming it still had any power at all. Usually these days these types of devices have a way to warn you when they’re low on charge, but I generally play on PC and I don’t know for certain if the wireless controller I’d use could alert me. Then there’s the question of if I notice the alert in the middle of a game, or if I remember to charge it when I’m next able to, or if that alert interfered with something I needed to see/hear at a critical point in a game. Then if the battery dies in a game that could be funny, will probably be frustrating, but also could ruin something I was working a long time towards doing. If the battery is completely dead as in like I haven’t touched it in months, then it may also take up to a few minutes before it’ll have enough charge that I can actually use it since many wireless controllers cannot communicate using the charging cable. And of course the longer I use it the more that battery is going to wear out and eventually need to be replaced entirely. Obviously other mechanical parts also will wear and need to be replaced like the joysticks and of all of them the battery should be the most accessible to replace, but it’s still an additional failure point that can cause more catastrophic failure than many others.
Next is the less likely one these days since I feel that wireless integrity has gotten much better in the last few decades, but I distinctly remember constant frustrations during my first real forray into having a wireless mouse with it operating on a very similar wavelength to my Wi-Fi card and somewhat often just simply not working. It would be operating fine for 50 minutes then be completely unresponsive for 10-60 seconds. I also remember specifically that this mouse had some awful drivers that would crash or forget its configurations about once every 1-3 days, so coupled with that and the battery problem it was difficult to pin point the cause of any particular failure with that mouse. I’d eventually see if the drivers failed via an alert from Windows, the mouse would continue to fail if the batteries were low, and it would do things I don’t want if the drivers forgot their config, but for every failure that didn’t do any of those things it was difficult to know for certain what caused that and how to fix it.
Lastly was the latency which is probably 99% of the time not an issue, but adding in the translation layera between actions to wireless comm to driver to action input can be a frustration. The majority of the times I’ve noticed this are with a mouse that’s waking up from sleep mode, so not super relevant but I do know for particularly high octane games it could have an impact.
The alternative to all of these issues is dealing with a cable. I’d rather deal with the cable, the vast majority of the time.
Controller because it’s a much more convenient way of playing, mouse to line up area strike precisely to this one specific pixel that covers all enemies, and keyboard because I only have an hour of play. I’m not spending it on typing character names like Lafayette Liebhart with a stick.
Obviously.
In most first person game I’ll use the controller for movement and general aiming. If there’s a situation where I need precise aiming, such as a sniper rifle or multiple fast shots, I’ll have my controller in my left hand and mouse in my right.
Some Trackmania players switch between keyboards, controllers or steering wheels based on the current track for example. Also, navigating some menues is better with mouse or keyboard, but laptop inbuilt controls should be enough for that.