You meant internal drive like an ssd, I guess is what you mean.
I was confused if you meant that or if you meant it’s like an internal card reader.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
High-End Mac Mini Said to Feature Thinner Design With 'Plexiglass' Top, Magnetic Power Port
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I was confused if you meant that or if you meant it’s like an internal card reader.
An iMac with a built in battery is called a MacBook Air/pro.
if you want a Mac mini running from a battery, buy a ups and unplug it.
I have seen displays with a battery for sale. They are - coincidentally- about 15.6”, the same size as a MacBook Pro. They’re also not particularly cheap and the ones I saw had just 1080p res.
Yeah, for example dongle-based Ethernet ports are a bit notorious for not being as good as the built-in ones.
I hope it has a good GPU, but remember how many cores it would need to be competitive. I was listening to a podcast the other day where they were going a 'back of napkin' type estimate that even the rumored 128 core GPU that *might* appear in an upcoming Mac Pro would only be nearing the power of an Nvidia RTX 3090.
In other words, what Apple has been doing is kind of impressive (re: GPUs), but they've got a way to go to compete with AMD or Nvidia. What worries me is that they'll create some 32 or 64 core GPUs that get like half-way and call that good enough. It might be.... *if* they bring back proper eGPU support for those who need more. Hopefully we hear more at WWDC about Apple's plans in this regard.
As for the external power brick, I think Apple thinks it makes the mini more elegant, when it fact, it makes it far more clunky and awkward on the whole.
Exactly! What the heck would people do if in fact they actually jumped on the USB-C bandwagon and somehow got 5 or 6 peripherals with USB-C connection. Where would you plug them all in? You'd have this 'hub' with a bunch of non-USB-C ports which doesn't help you much at all.
I think I saw rather recently an article on some real USB-C hubs, with like 4 ports coming soon. If you had a few ports and then added one of those, you could plug those devices in.
I'm sure USB-C will be great someday (if it isn't replaced before then with some next-gen port), but until rather recently (and even now) it's a pretty big kludge-job aside from having a rather nice physical port/plug.
Any ordinary internal hard drive - SSD or spinner. I wasn't meaning to be highly specific. But with USB2 you sort-of watch the files transferring but with USB-C by the time you think to do so, the transfer has likely completed.
(That might be an exaggeration for huge SD cards/data transfers.)
An iMac doesn't have the keyboard attached to the screen. It still has the screen connected to the CPU, which is sad for future value and bad for performance, but at least the keyboard and trackpad are separate and have rechargeable batteries.
I want the UPS to be built in, like it is in a MacBook Air/pro. That way I don't have to carry a 20 pound battery with me if I want to use my desktop on a different desk without having to shut it down.
Ah. Well the HDMI port is also the one non-USB-C port I want built in. While I don't mind dealing with an adaptor at my desk, I often plug my laptop into a TV or projector away from my desk and suspect that's a very common use case. Would love if video output devices all used USB-C, but nearly 0 do, and they old ones will be around for a long time. On top of that, USB-C to HDMI adaptors tend to be very flaky if they're not expensive.
I figured there was a technical limitation like that. So, waiting on 4.0.
I tend to agree that a UPS built-in to power supplies has merits.
My rationale is that I have known so many people lose work due to power cuts. Offering the option of a power supply with or without battery seems entirely feasible - at least technically. And, if that were offered, allowing a choice of battery capacities seems entirely reasonable. Many would be happy with a five minute run-time, just long enough for autosave of everything. Others might want to keep going all day.
Indeed, I have been in offices with up to dozens of computers when there has been a blip on the mains. Some machines kept on regardless, others fell over. Surely the difference was a combination of meatiness of the power supply and demand by the computer at that moment.
This is highly, highly unlikely. If one lives in an area with power outages, one should install a UPS if one has worries about losing work. It’s way too expensive to add to the power supply for something seldom, if ever, needed. It will unnecessarily raise the price (and size of the PS) for most people who don’t need it.
Nobody is asking for a slot that uses "a lot" of dedicated lanes, even less so on an M1 system.
Except nobody in this thread is making that claim, and you were responding to someone who simply pointed out that they were impressed by the speed of their new USB-C card reader (...most likely because it actually supported newer, faster cards).
Of course, there's no such thing as a straw man on the internet, because if you look hard enough you can find someone espousing any opinion but if there were, that would be one. Anyway, ultimate speed is not the reason for having an SD card reader in a laptop.
I didn't claim that. I said "more modern" (than a 2012 USB2 interface). The vast majority of SD cards in circulation and on sale at the moment won't exploit more than ~USB3.0 speeds - and there's an ongoing format war over the super-high-speed successor.
The reason for including SD is that it is a "lowest common denominator" - even new DSLRs with fancy new FlashXTC3000++deluxe-super slots tend to have SD cards, there's a whole shedload of non-pro-photographer devices that use them (phones, GPS, dashcams, sports cams, raspberry Pi etc.) and you can buy the cards in supermarkets. A single-lane (or USB3) reader would be very useful to a very large number of users (and if you don't use it, then hopefully they'll update those flush-fitting SD cards that you can leave permanently plugged in as storage).
Don't take my word for it, though: I assure you that I didn't personally phone Tim Cook and blackmail him into bringing back the SD slot. The demand is real.
Going out on a limb here: more than the M1.
Which is great if you're in the business of bulk copying M.2 drives. Generally, though, people like to process the data as it passes through the computer which kinda does take CPU/GPU power.
Oh, sorry, so you are in the business of bulk copying M.2 drives. That explains everything.
Seriously, though "I could max out" is not a valid use case. Why would you need that? If you do need that and need to plug in an external display as well, then won't you have to carry a hub anyway? Don't you get the concept that a laptop with limited space for ports and limited I/O to support them is always going to be a compromise, or that there are vastly more USB-A flash drives, SD cards, HDMI data projectors etc. in use than the few, high-end, expensive 4xNVMe external drives that can actually actually use more than USB 3?
I do get your position - other people should stop whining about needing hubs/dongles/adapters (for which they have, over these various threads, explained their use cases over and over again) and go out and replace their "obsolete" equipment, so you can exercise your theoretical right to "max out" your laptop, without needing a hub, for no adequately explored reason other than "I could".
If Apple could make a laptop with, say, 6-8 "universal" TB4 ports then I'd stop whining and accept that the versatility outweighed the need for adapters. That ain't gonna happen because of the number of PCIe lanes and DP streams needed for that number of ports - not to mention the need to provide 15W of power to each. The problem is that these wonderful "universal" ports are so expensive - both in cost and I/O resources - to implement that we end up with only 2-4 of them. At that point, what becomes ridiculous is needing to "waste" a port that could be providing anything from 40Gbps of Thunderbolt to a much-needed top-level USB 2 connection with the totally unrelated function of passing through a DisplayPort stream from the GPU or charging the battery.
If I ever have a need to connect $1200 worth of top-end M.2 external drives to my laptop I'll happily buy a $200 USB4 hub (or a multi M.2 enclosure). Because that's an incredible facility to have on a laptop/small-form-factor computer, but not something that the vast majority of people are going to need on the road.
I imagine that chart looks a lot flatter if you filter it by “people who connect the SD card slot on a MacBook Pro”, though.
Um… for any MBP made from 2016 forward, that number would be zero since none of them have one.
And we're done here. I thought we could have an adult conversation this time around. I guess I was mistaken.
Not sure what your point is.
Those people can still buy an external reader. And existing MBP users exist. 2016 has been a while, but many MBP users are still on older MBPs. 5 years isn't that long of a cycle (mine is 7 years old).
The question is: how many people would use a built-in SD reader if there were one, not "how many use a device that doesn't exist". I imagine that number is a lot higher than the chart suggests, since the plummeting is largely relevant to consumer use. Y'know, the people who spend $300-600 on a laptop, not $2000-4000.
I was just responding to your statement:
The chart modified in the way you suggest would show a number of zero for MBPs made from 2016 forward. Stats aren’t based on hypotheticals. You also didn’t say to filter it by people who use external readers.
If one wants to believe that SD card usage is far higher than the numbers suggest… it‘s a free country; believe whatever you want. But Apple is not going to spend money and time integrating an SD card slot when digital camera sales are that low. It’s a niche they aren’t going to scratch.
An external power supply on the Mac mini harkens back to the old G4 Cube days. But that was because they had to cram so much into a small space.
From what I've read, the Mac mini M1 had room to spare. But perhaps the M1X or whatever is going in, plus power supply, couldn't fit into the current form factor.
From what I've read, the Mac mini M1 had room to spare. But perhaps the M1X or whatever is going in, plus power supply, couldn't fit into the current form factor.
And this is still just a rumor. That being said, I have an old G4 Mac mini and it has a power brick that is between 1/3-1/2 of the size of the Mac itself. So an M1X mini (or whatever) wouldn’t be the first..
They're not, but it's easy to extrapolate data from stats that isn't actually there, which you seem to be quite fond of.
You're being pedantic for no reason other than hostility.
No. I believe it's higher among people interested in buying a MacBook Pro. That's a very specific slice of the market, and it doesn't overlap much with your chart, which overwhelmingly shows PoS cameras.
Whether Apple does or doesn't do it is a different question than whether they might have motivation to.
Except, the leaked schematics appear to confirm, with some certainty, the multiple rumours that there is one. They could be false, of course, or refer to an abandoned prototype, but they're the only reason we're having this discussion.
I make that over 80 million digital cameras sold from 2016 onwards, and not everybody throws away their tech after 12 months. Plus - looking at the list of members - that probably doesn't include dashcams, phones, sports cams, GPS, drones, and certainly not Raspberry Pis (which hit 640,000 sales in a month last year).
As for the rumours, if they're wrong, the wrong bit could be the loss of a TB3 port. If they're an abandoned prototype, it could be an attempt to make an M1-based machine (replace one of the 2 TB3 retimers with a suitable peripheral controller => HDMI + PCIe or USB3 for the card reader + downstream TB3 + downstream USB-C3.1).
Let's be very clear: if the new MBP or 5k iMac replacement turns out to feature a warmed-over M1 with the same I/O and display limitations, then the presence or lack of an SD slot won't - or at least shouldn't - be the thing that people are complaining about.
My mistake: I meant to explain why no existing M1 Macs (nor any MBPs in the past 5 years) have the slot. Neither of us know whether the rumored Macs will have the slot or not.
It is possible that SD cards are rebounding, but is it enough to overcome a hundred-million loss in sales per year? I doubt it. You mention 80 million sales (globally) total over the last 5 years, compared to 120 million sold in 2010 alone. There is a good reason that Apple excluded the slot. The demand is far lower than it used to be.
IMHO, given this precipitous drop-off in digital camera sales, an integrated SD slot is something most users will never use.
Fair enough. I guess it’s a trade off between either:
- power transformers etc inside the chassis, meaning a bigger active cooling system, meaning a bigger chassis
- or power transformers in a brick, meaning a smaller (or no need for) active cooling system, meaning a smaller chassis.
No prizes for picking the solution that Apple will likely pick, based on past products (it’s obviously the latter).
I’m not being pedantic. We are specifically discussing the inclusion of a built-in reader. If we want to discuss external readers, that‘s a different discussion.
You are making an assumption that Mac users are using SD cards at approximately the same rate as 10 years ago despite a near-90% drop-off in camera sales. That is quite an assertion, and extremely unlikely. What makes up for that massive difference? Macs are a mainstream computer these days. The days of Macs being primarily for artists are long past.
There wasn’t enough motivation for Apple to include an SD slot on any MBP since 2016 nor in any M1 Mac so far. That being said, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that they would include it on a high-end MBP in order to appeal to professional content creators and editors. I personally don’t think they will. Phone cameras and wireless data transfer have made SD cards unnecessary for most people.
I mean… does it? No amount of TB4 ports is going to fix the embarrassing "uhhh… all I have is USB-C" — "haha, Mac users, amirite" situation. USB-C displays aren't much more of a thing in 2021 than they were in 2016. They barely exist.
USB-C disks and hubs and everything increasingly do, but until and unless both VESA and the HDMI Forum get convinced to drop the DisplayPort (might happen… full-size DisplayPort isn't really that common anyway) and HDMI (not gonna happen in a million years) connectors, this problem remains.