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That's... great. So, when are you gonna make the switch instead of trying to speak for the masses? You don't want thin, you want a myriad of ports, you want this that blah blah blah. Key word, you. Sure, others too, but not "we" without clearly stating whom. To be honest you're probably over the age of 30, not that there's anything wrong with that, but Apple is marketed not to you, nor does it market to the Pro market. It's marketed towards 20-somethings whom are less tech-savvy judging by recent decisions including app permissions changed in MacOS, as well as its general direction with thinness, device aesthetics, emojis, watch bands, new colors, etc etc.

For some annoying reason, though, the misconception of the "Pro" moniker never dies down. Pro does not mean professional. It means a more computationally powerful version of the device WITHOUT the pro moniker. The Macbook. Just like how nobody would argue Surface Pro is for professionals. It's merely a more powerful Surface. Get that in your heads and stop the cognitive dissonance. Frankly, Apple hasn't even tried to market the MBP to traditional professionals, rather the average prosumer who doesn't need a plethora of ports or connectivity. Macbook Pro is simply a more powerful Macbook, not a workstation device marketed towards Professionals. You have the Dell Precision Mobile Workstation as well as the Lenovo Thinkpad line for your intensive needs. The average "Traditional Professional" around Macrumors is sounding a lot like a lost dog that Apple itself doesn't want, but it keeps barking and sitting at Apple's doorstep. Go move to Dell or Lenovo.

Why tell us the truth... Don't you know this is mac-"rumors" and this website is just for those wanting to Vent and complain? ;)

Diffinately correct...their target market is 20-something and not tech savvy which is now most of the generation. Those in marketing know that. They spend like there is no tomorrow. Why not add that they do not want to think and have their devices do everything in life for them. Isn't that now Apple's mission statement? Little effort to do anything, have someone else do everything for them? Yes, you are correct...
 
the port-less MacBook pro... Last Question: do you need to charge your laptop?
I imagine the MBP will consolidate ports and focus on USB-C but they are still Pro computers so will always be differentiated from the MB's in that regard. So where MB only has one USB-C, MBP will always certainly have at least 2. So yes you will always be able to charge and plug something else in, #imho
 
As a photographer, I too use the SD card slot on my MBP regularly. SD card slot is vital to my workflow. I especially use the SD card slot on wedding day when I am transferring files from my camera to my MBP to back up images and to create a sneak peek slideshow.

Not to be a cynic, but my gut tells me that Apple would be solely making this move for profit and not for the users. However they will present their motivations as "a need to continue to innovate or improve the product."

When transferring photos from an SD card to my MBP, the ideal scenario for me is simply removing the card from my camera and inserting it into my MBP without having to search for a dongle, a memory card reader, then attaching both to the system, then uploading. That's an unnecessarily long winded process compared to inserting an SD card directly into the MBP. Done.

For all of us who need the SD card slot, lets petition Apple to keep it.
This reminds me of the Lightning to SD card reader I bought for my iPad Pro, which gets me mad each time I use it. It is so restricted in what it allows me to import. File name has to be a certain way and in a certain folder, and I couldn't import any of my videos into it. I still don't know exactly what voodoo I performed on the picture files those few times that I was able to get it to import.

If Apple removed it from the MBP, they surely will have a $29 adapter to sell to you, and may impose the same restrictions on what kind of files you can import o_O

That is a scary question. Do Tim Cook and Co. actually believe the iPad Pro can handle the same workload as a MBP? Or are sales for the iPad Pro really that weak?
Absolutely positively not. See importing photos into the iPad above.
 
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It makes perfect sense they are looking at this. Having n different kinds of special purpose ports is an historical artifact. It is much more desirable to standardize on one kind of port that does everything. USB-C might be it. Rather than having a separate audio port, digital port(s), power port, it makes sense for each device to have multiples of one single port that can be used as the customer sees fit. Different devices would just have different numbers of this standard port. A Pro laptop might have 4-6 of this standard port, a consumer mini-laptop might have two, a pocket device might have one. Combine this with wireless, and you have a much better solution than today's mess of too many special ports taking up too much space.

Other than the minor and solvable issues around device discovery, the only real difference between a USB and analog-input headphone is due to where the D/A convertor lives. Right now, having a centralized high quality D/A convertor in the computing device, rather than a different one in each output device, saves some cost for the consumer. We are currently at a point where there is a small but crucial (to audiophiles and professionals) quality difference between cheap and better D/A convertors, but again that difference can be diminished by moving the market faster toward all-digital interfaces, which Apple can help push.

Apple is right to be thinking about this, and to be analyzing the current market as part of that. Hence this survey. This is where the world needs to go. It will take a bit of time to get there, but it's the right direction.
 
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bitslap47 said:
No, they wouldn't. Pro Engineers aren't using the 3.5mm jack or SD slot in a critical capacity, and could care less about buying a cheap adapter if they do.

Oh ok so all those music people and film people (did you forget about all those photographers and videographers out there?), NEVER use the SD car reader OR the optical connectors which are inside the headphone jack.....

Yes did you forget about fibre optic connections too?
 
I literally use all the ports on my MBPr daily. Displayport + HDMI for my two screens, 3.5mm for headphones/speakers and USB for keyboard, mouse and printer. And w/o the magnetic MacSafe-thingy, there is no way my Macbook would have survived for two years.

So, yeah, no new iPhone for me and definitely no new MBP if any of this will turn out to be actually missing.
 
No, they will add the headphone jack, ...

1) It becomes a charging method using the same cable the iPhone uses, leaving the USB-C port free for peripherals. ...

3) It serves an optional USB 3.0 port leaving the USB-C port free for something else to be used at the same time without a hub. This is especially important for the Retina MacBook, which will lose its headphone jack.

I'm not sure what you are saying. The iPhone uses a Lightning port, not analog audio (i.e., the headphone jack), for charging and data.


If SJ was still here he wouldn't need to ask anyone. He would just demand they leave old tech in the dustbin of the past.

Keep it moving forward. Companies that stay in the past die in the future. Xerox, Smith Corona, Blackberry, the list is endless. If you ask people they will tell you to never get rid of the typewriter or the horseshoe. We saw how the comically ignorant contemporary tech bloggers responded to the 3.5 jack, the floppy, the spinning disks.

Don't listen to people stuck in the past, they're almost dead anyway. Release products for the future of the company and consumers, not people so stuck in rut they can't see.

You can also move too fast into the future and die--look at the Newton, the precursor to the iPad.

You are aware that Lightening is a multi use port?

You are aware only Apple uses it? We need proprietary ports like a submarine needs screen doors.

I can't wait for the MacBook "Pro" that has no analog output, no card reader, no magsafe, & iOS on it.
/s
 
Never used the SD-card slot. Al my camera's use Compact Flash or QXD, so carrying a card reader anyway. No big loss.
 
Oh ok so all those music people and film people (did you forget about all those photographers and fillers out there?), NEVER use the SD car reader OR the optical connectors which are inside the headphone jack.....

Yes did you forget about fibre optic connections too?

No, I didn't forget about fiber optic at all. The on-board optical is typically not used in a studio environment. Again, I have not seen those ports used, and if they are used it is not in a critical capacity.

The Pro Engineers aren't going to abandon Macs over removal of these ports.

Feel free to prove me wrong if they do and there is verifiable detriment to Apple's market share.

I'll expect to never hear from you on the subject though ;)
 
It is a question that I was already asking myself... I listen to music at work using my 3.5mm audio jack and my iPhone's EarPods with my MacBook Pro. As soon as I get an iPhone 7 or higher, what am I gonna do? Will there by a Lightning-to-Audio-Jack-Adapter? Will new MacBooks have a Lightning port just for audio? Same question, if I want to connect my Lightning EarPods to my iPar Air 2...

Will I eventually buy AirPods for the sake of not carrying around adapters?
 
Two things.

1. If you're asked this question, please do everyone a favour and say you use the headphone jack. I don't care if you haven't worn a pair of headphones in 6 years. For the greater good, answer yes. : )

Why would I lie? Who's greater good? I have never once used my headphone jack. Why is your good greater than mine? I never understood this logic.
 
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The reason they're asking this "survey" is to give the perception they listen to the public, listen to their opinion.

Apple will ignore the results, and remove the headphone jack.
Saying majority of the survey said they don't mind the removal.
Do you have access to the results? Prove them wrong.

Statistics 101: Apple surveys 1000 people and asks if they use the headphone jack. 996 people say, "Yes." Apple cherry picks the results and reports, "4 out of 5 people don't use the headphone jack." Technically, it's not a lie.
 
Ports, we don't need no stinking ports. The future is wireless, so do away with all ports. It is what you want anyway and you always do what you want.
 
Um, you do understand that TB3 uses the SAME connector as USB-C... is vastly faster than the still craptacular USB-anything, does all the great things TB1/2 does, but even faster than both... right?

I was talking to about the current thunderbolt 1/2 that have no other port compatibility, would love to see TB3 with mutliple connector compatibility.

Why not use Thunderbolt 3.0? Thunderbolt 3.0 uses the SAME connector as USB-C, and it is 100% compatible with USB 3.1, and with an adapter, it is backwards compatible with TB1 and TB2.

Sounds good to me!
 
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Reminds me of this:

ZbfmhgD.png


Rockstar predicting the future.
 
I can work around the headphone jack. But I trip over my mac twice a day. Without a MagSafe port I'm screwed. I'll have to buy a third party converter.
 
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It's disappointing that they removed the industry standard that isn't going away any time soon. I get phasing out the floppy, or the CD, or the HDD, but headphone jack? Almost everyone uses them still, and there's no reason to get rid of it...

So they'll get rid of the headphone jack on the Macbook, and then what? The single USB port on the smaller models will have to be taken up by your headphones/speakers? iPhone has the lightning port adapter, Macbook would have the USB adapter. Talk about a mess of fragmentation.
 
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This is where to removal of the 3.5mm jack on the iPhone falls down for me as short-sighted, and why they should have gone with USB-C. What port are they going to put on the MacBook Pro to replace the 3.5mm? Lightning, or stick with USB-C? So you have a different pair of wired headphones for your computer as you do for your phone. Or, perhaps you get a USB-C to lightning adapter?

Of course you can use wireless but, as people have already pointed out, this isn't great for things like video editing. For those of you who like to say, well a professional video editor wouldn't use the headphone port because they would hook it up to other outboard kit, they're probably working in a editing suite, and therefore unlikely to be using a MacBook Pro. Sometimes you're out on the road and everything that's built into the MacBook Pro is more than adequate to do the job. It's right there, built in... No need for anything else. (Apart from, maybe, the aforementioned headphones!)

This is also a aledgedly a "pro" machine. The whole point is that they have these more "niche", specialised ports.

I'm all for removing ports from the consumer line. If there's one connector for everything, then everything becomes ridiculously simple. But, by staying with lightning for the iPhone, then they've missed the opportunity to have the same connector across whole consumer range of phones, computers and tablets.
 
Profit margins?!? Really? It's like a 5 cent component. The last thing in the world it's about is profit.

Nope. Two dollars licensing fee per accessories.

Multiply even $0.05 times a million devices. That's a good bit of change that is not overlooked when considering ROI and stock values.

I'm already done;

Put up my MacBook Pro and Mac Pro for sale. I'm sticking to my Hackintosh. Only remaining apple product will be Airport router... and even that I'm going to replace with an Asus AC router.

All of these boneheaded moves are an insult to consumers.

I own an Asus router, but research it before you buy. Netgear has the better AC router currently and the Asus routers have a design flaw(?) which causes the power button (which is not a mechanical switch) to fail shortly after the warranty expires (planned obsolescence). There are fixes, but this defect occurs without fail. Check the small net builder forums.

My iPhone 7 is back ordered to October. And if we are to believe sales of the 7, people don't give a **** about 3.5 headphone jack.

What are we to believe about sales of the iPhone 7 without the release of sales numbers? What if the sales numbers are lower than in the past thus creating the perception of high sales because of supply constraints due to manufacturing difficulties?
 
To all the people saying "pros don't use the headphone jack or SD card slot," I guess that means I'm somehow not a pro, even though I make a living with my MacBook Pro. Of course, based on Apple's apparent definition of "pro" these days, I'm definitely not a pro. I'm something more than that.
 
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I literally use all the ports on my MBPr daily. Displayport + HDMI for my two screens, 3.5mm for headphones/speakers and USB for keyboard, mouse and printer. And w/o the magnetic MacSafe-thingy, there is no way my Macbook would have survived for two years.
There is a very simple solution for the desktop setup of laptops: docking stations.

Apple never seemed to cherish the concept very much, though offering that kind of convenience once with the Thunderbolt Display. Maybe we'll see a sleek, magnetically attachable dock on the day they present a MBP with only two USB-C ports left.
 
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