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Bloomberg: Next MacBook Pro to Feature SD Card Reader

In theory... an all USB-C setup makes sense. Instead of having different "holes" for each task... you could have one type of hole that could do everything. Simple!

Older Macbooks had one hole for power... two holes for USB-A... two holes for Thunderbolt... one hole for HDMI... and one hole for SD cards.

At least the USB and Thunderbolt ports could be used for multiple things... but the holes for power, HDMI and SD cards were only for those single tasks and nothing else.

I can see what Apple was thinking by going to USB-C... but all it did was anger people and create the term "dongle-life"

Now that I think about it... I wonder which port got used more by the masses... SD card slot or HDMI port?

Only serious photographers and photo-enthusiasts use digital cameras these days. The average consumer just uses their phone to take pictures.

But everyone can enjoy the benefits of hooking up an external monitor.

So maybe the HDMI port should come back instead of the SD card slot. Provocative!

:p
 
entropys said:
What about an SD express slot then, a direct to PCIe 4 bus, 128Tb storage and up to 3938Mbps? And backwards compatible to legacy SD cards. Phil could say that is a pro version of an SD card slot.

have to be cheaper than expanding internal storage at Apple prices.
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With cards that still have a form factor with reliability problems.
Michael Scrip said:
So maybe the HDMI port should come back instead of the SD card slot. Provocative!

:p
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Yup - vastly more commonly used...it'd make a lot more sense than a legacy niche slot. But not at the expense of taking up one of the four USB-C ports I currently have in use :)
 
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I remember back when the iPhone first came out someone on this forum complaining that it didn't have a blinking LED to notify you when you had an email :D. Plus ca change.
 
Will anyone that actually thinks apple will offer once again SD, USBa and Magsafe on their flagship laptop please send me some of what they are smoking?
 
SuprUsrStan said:
SD is not dead by a long shot. You're probably thinking of old SD UHS-I or UHS-II cards.

UHS-III and SD-Express cards have speeds that rival CFExpress A cards and have theoretical maximums of 4GB/s transfer rates. There's no cards that can come close to that but the standard is there.
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Glancing at Nikon's website, seems most of their cameras use CFExpress, and only a few lower-end ones use SD. Admittedly, this is the first time I've ever heard of CFExpress. I'm not a pro photographer.
 
DHagan4755 said:
Skip the USB-A; add HDMI & card slot.

Also Gurman said in a previous report that the new MacBook Pro models would launch around the middle of the year. A little closer than the third quarter range. Here's hoping WWDC brings the goods.
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HDMI is most important. But the lack of USB-C hubs is a big hurdle to USB-C adoption: https://superuser.com/a/1414046

Means that all peripherals should stick with USB-A for now, which they currently kinda do. Otherwise, once you run out of USB-C ports on your computer, that's it, you can't connect anything else. And if all the peripherals are using USB-A, I kinda want USB-A on my laptop.
 
Aragornii said:
I remember back when the iPhone first came out someone on this forum complaining that it didn't have a blinking LED to notify you when you had an email
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...something that even my cheapo $200 Huawei* manages to provide (along with, aha! a micro-SD card) without compromising its slim and light design. When did missing out useful features, with no downsides, that are ubiquitous on far cheaper products become a good thing?

(* yes, I like to think that those nice folk in Beijing can get my personal data without the bother of having to buy it off those awful Google people or hacking the FBI, like everybody else :) )
 
PLEASE LET THIS BE TRUE! Hopefully Apple has realised there are still some content creators hanging in there with their hardware.
 
There is an SD card reader on my old MBP 2013 but I’ve never used it, because my digital camera is replaced by iPhone.
 
ulyssesric said:
There is an SD card reader on my old MBP 2013 but I’ve never used it, because my digital camera is replaced by iPhone.
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I used to keep part of my digital library on one of them that I could just move it to another machine to transfer files. It was generally read-locked. I have a NAS now so I don't need to use physical media around the house but it is convenient when I'm mobile. What would be nice is 1 GB and 2 GB SD cards.
 
Michael Scrip said:
Only serious photographers and photo-enthusiasts use digital cameras these days. The average consumer just uses their phone to take pictures.
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...and if you move away from iPhone-land, a number of current mobile phones take MicroSD.
I already posted a list of other consumer electronics that commonly uses SD cards - dashcams, Go Pro-type cameras, Drones, GPS, TV Set Top Boxes. Niches, but lots of them. Or just use the slot to add 256GB of extra storage for non-speed-critical files like media libraries.

I wouldn't say SD is a must have, but its a nice-to-have if it can be provided without sacrifice.

...and there's no reason for SD vs. HDMI to be a dichotomy - apart from space (of which there is plenty in a 14" or 16" MBP with simpler logic boards and smaller coolers) they don't compete for I/O resources. Unlike a TB/USB-C port, which competes for resources with everything.

I wouldn't bet the farm on these rumours being true - and this entire debate is about 4 years late - but I don't get why some people are so upset for the idea that a future MBP might include an extra port or slot that they don't personally use. Thunderbolt/USB-C isn't going away, folks.

Note to self: start kickstarter for a set of space grey/silver/gold/whatever stickers to hide these unwanted ports from those who are offended by the sight of USB-A. Only $99.99 a set.
 
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tobiastimpe said:
Why? What device do you have where you can’t just swap out the cable?
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Funny thing with new Macbooks is that great majority finds out they are missing ports when they go somewhere and they need to plug in hdmi cable or use someone else thumbdrive which is of course Type A. I've seen many presentations being delayed cause they didn't know they couldn't hook up to projector cause there is no port. That's real world, it's funny to us computer techies but not to them when they need to copy some important data off PC person that only uses Type A thumbdrives. Of course.
 
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vladi said:
Funny thing with new Macbooks is that great majority finds out they are missing ports when they go somewhere and they need to plug in hdmi cable or use someone else thumbdrive which is of course Type A. I've seen many presentations being delayed cause they didn't know they couldn't hook up to projector cause there is no port. That's real world, it's funny to us computer techies but not to them when they need to copy some important data off PC person that only uses Type A thumbdrives. Of course.
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I have been in those kinds of presentations before.
 
This is fantastic news. I definitely want some Apple Silicon in my life and the removal of the Touch Bar might just tip the scales into me finally upgrading my MacBook Pro.

The Touch Bar, that awful keyboard (which they thankfully fixed), the removal of magsafe -- so many bad decisions in that 2016(?) release. So happy to see Apple reverse and fix things. Honestly really impressed with Apple lately. Some seriously good stuff happening right now.
 
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More ports is always good, if they are needed, and it good places. Putting them in the back isn't exactly usable all the time, but skipping the card reader slot? Wish they hadn't dropped it. I used it a fair amount. *shrug*

Bringing back MagSafe would be great!

EDIT: Although I had an older HP notebook. It had an SD card slot in the front, center. I used it quite a lot because I hauled that massive brick around on vacations often to offload the chips. Until I stuck a card into that notebook, and the chip literally melted in the slot. I was surprised. I grabbed for it as fast as I could, and got a couple of small burns from it. Yikes... I wish HP had put some circuit in that would have limited the power to that slot. I never used another HP card slot ever again. I've never had that problem with Apple card slots yet (knock on wood)...
 
JohnnyWalker said:
This is fantastic news. I definitely want some Apple Silicon in my life and the removal of the Touch Bar might just tip the scales into me finally upgrading my MacBook Pro.

The Touch Bar, that awful keyboard (which they thankfully fixed), the removal of magsafe -- so many bad decisions in that 2016(?) release. So happy to see Apple reverse and fix things. Honestly really impressed with Apple lately. Some seriously good stuff happening right now.
Click to expand...

The coolest thing, from the perspective of an Apple investor, is that giving people what they want - means more sales and more profits. It's really cool how that works.
 
PinkyMacGodess said:
More ports is always good, if they are needed, and it good places. Putting them in the back isn't exactly usable all the time, but skipping the card reader slot? Wish they hadn't dropped it. I used it a fair amount. *shrug*

Bringing back MagSafe would be great!
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Amazon sells a flush SD card using that really small form-factor. That would be a cool option for cheap, archival storage that you can carry around with you.
 
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