From PC Mag: Once upon a time, Apple laptops had MagSafe power adapters, which magnetically clung to the side of its MacBooks instead of attaching to a plug. This mid-2000's innovation was a godsend for people who used their laptops in coffee shops, airports, and other settings where someone might trip over a cord and yank the laptop off a lap or table if its cord didn't disconnect.
Fast forward a decade. MacBooks and other similarly premium ultraportables, like HP's Spectre x360, have greatly improved batteries that don't need to be plugged in as frequently in public areas, so magnetic plugs have largely fallen by the wayside. But the newest Spectre x360, available now starting at $1,149, shows that there's still a lot of innovation to be had when it comes to plugging cords into your laptop.
Actually, the idea of putting a USB-C port and a power button in the corners of the 2018 Spectre x360 was partially an afterthought. This unique port arrangement owes its existence to a design flourish: HP wanted its new 2-in-1 convertible to look more like a faceted-edge precious jewel. Based on the few minutes HP let me spend playing around with the Spectre x360, I'm not sure about this. It mostly just looks like a regular laptop with tiny bits cut out of the top left and right corners.
But the missing bits result in a very clever bit of port and button maneuvering. One of the main problems of plugging a peripheral into a sleek convertible laptop is that the cord will almost always stick out of the left or right edges where the ports reside, cluttering up your desk at best and impeding external mouse movements at worst. Ports typically can't be relegated to the back edge, because the hinge needs that space to enable the 360-degree rotation that converts the machine into a tablet.
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