Kuo: New MacBook Pro Models With HDMI Port and SD Card Reader to Launch Later This Year

[Jony Ive and Co.]

So bringing the ports back will mean we are basically back to the 2015 MacBook Pro. I wonder how thick the new MacBook Pro will be.

 

[dragje]

bringing back the sd slot is such a stupid idea. for professional cameras, plenty of them use CFAST cards and a lot of them are moving over to USB-C SSDs. have you seen the cost and max size of high performing SD cards to record 4k/6k/8k ProRes RAW/Blackmagic RAW footage?

let's move on from SD. Apple was right to remove them. rather have an extra USB4/Thunderbolt 4 port.

this is one of those situations where Apple should tell everyone to shut up and be glad they're removing the Touch Bar at least.

I agree, I bought a brand new EOS R 5 from Canon and a few new lenses as well. I'm primarily using CFAST isntead of SD cards now. To fix this issue I need to use a thunderbolt CFAST reader, more equipment in my bag.

 

[JKAussieSkater]

You misread. I never said the majority didn't use SD. But the trajectory is going down and suitable alternatives are going up.

This is no different than MacBook Air killing the CD/DVD drive. >90% computers had the DVD drive when the MacBook Air was released, but Apple rightfully killed it off.

I didn’t misread your original comment and neither did DexBell, the person you replied to. Your implication was strong: built-in SD card readers are a bad idea because plenty of professional cameras use CF card readers (they don’t), many new cameras are using USB-C SSD connections (they don’t) and that we should leave SD behind (we can’t).

SD-cards, and it’s micro-SD variation, have become the de facto extension of all modern cameras. The professional and amateur photography market has matured now and this ubiquitous card has not been made redundant by a succeeding technology.

SD cards cannot be compared to DVDs or Blu-Rays because they serve fundamentally different purposes (reading vs writing). Read-only optical media was replaced by read-only on-demand streaming services, not USB memory sticks.

Even USB memory sticks haven’t been replaced, they’ve been upgraded to USB-C variants for data-writing purposes.

But SD Cards? They have no successor. They serve their purpose so perfectly it’s industry standard. They’re very fast, and have a very high storage capacity. They’re instantly interchangeable.

I think Apple were anticipating/expecting a succeeding replacement to SD Cards but this never happened since it never needed to. It’s difficult to realise when we’ve reached the peak of technology, but with SD Cards, we solved a universal problem for cameras.

I hope Apple do bring back the SD Card reader for the sake of amateur and professional photographers everywhere.

Oh, and before anybody tries to grasp at straws, SSD or USB-C or other bigger/faster storage types for cameras are certainly for an extraordinarily niche market. For example 8k+ cinematography on extremely high-end devices. This isn’t the mass market, nor is it a trend that will approach the mass market.

 

[vladi]

bringing back the sd slot is such a stupid idea. for professional cameras, plenty of them use CFAST cards and a lot of them are moving over to USB-C SSDs. have you seen the cost and max size of high performing SD cards to record 4k/6k/8k ProRes RAW/Blackmagic RAW footage?

let's move on from SD. Apple was right to remove them. rather have an extra USB4/Thunderbolt 4 port.

this is one of those situations where Apple should tell everyone to shut up and be glad they're removing the Touch Bar at least.

SD is not going anywhere! I've been in video business for almost 20 years now and I've seen so many "SD replacements" that I can't keep a count and what happened? Cameras got updated to support vanilla SD along side next "proprietary revolutionary super fast memory". Forget USB-C no one is hooking up a whole freakin rig just to offload files. And speaking of cost you can't imagine how much were 128GB or 256GB proprietary cards back in the day.

EDIT: Thank god they came back to their senses regarding full size HDMI port, killing that was one of Apple's dumbest moments in it's history.

 

[UltimaKilo]

Add a 1080p camera, WiFi 6e support and a dGPU option with DLSS and I would come back to the Mac after almost 6 years.

 

[Ma2k5]

no my memory is clear. maybe it was a major inconvenience to you but i think we're all happier today not carrying laptops with cd drives. thank Apple for accelerating that death. same with flash.

Apple didn’t accelerate it, cheaper alternative storage and faster/better access to internet for the masses did.

 

[bryanios]

I’m glad they finally found their mac notebooks hideous

 

[bitterdock]

That's my plan too!!! 😃😃😃

I wonder how easy/difficult it would be to load my entire iTunes library onto a permanently-inserted SD card. That would sure free up a ton of space on my internal drive.

 

[The Game 161]

Took them away she people could be wowed when it returns...good business

 

[Chancha]

Semi-pro photographer here (for in-house music recording & production)

My current camera setup:
Nikon D850 - XQD main card, SD redundancy
Nikon D500 - XQD main card, SD redundancy

Previous cameras:
Nikon D4 - XQD main card, CF redundancy
Nikon D800 - CF main card, SD redundancy

Future cameras:
some form of Nikon Z series bodies: CFExpress main card, dual same card redundancy (probably SD Express, depends how they roll it out)

We almost never need to use the SD cards, they are slower and strictly for redundancy purposes. When shooting and saving concurrently it just bottlenecks the XQD, whenever burst is needed you have to save only to the XQD to reach maximum buffer offload speed.

I did a certain odd jobs involving video shooting, whenever the Nikons cannot handle it we just rent / borrow a few SONY alphas, now those do use SD card primarily but it is preferred to use external recorder anyway, which often save directly to some form of SATA SSD

So no. We almost never used the SD cards on our pre-2015 Macs, and never needed SD card dongles for current Macs.

 

[farewelwilliams]

I didn’t misread your original comment and neither did DexBell, the person you replied to. Your implication was strong: built-in SD card readers are a bad idea because plenty of professional cameras use CF card readers (they don’t), many new cameras are using USB-C SSD connections (they don’t) and that we should leave SD behind (we can’t).

You literally did misread. Let me highlight the keyphrase

"and a lot of them are moving over to USB-C SSDs."

This is completely different than saying "many new cameras are using". Why is that important? Well if I said a lot them *are using*, then you would look a the current landscape of "many new cameras" and infer that it's actually not that many (which you did in your post). But if you look into the future, the adoption potential is unlimited for when "a lot of new cameras" include SSD capability.

But SD Cards? They have no successor. They serve their purpose so perfectly it’s industry standard. They’re very fast, and have a very high storage capacity. They’re instantly interchangeable.

Sorry but if new and upcoming cameras are introducing CFx alongside SD, there is obviously a transition period to move over from SD to a successor. Otherwise they would have simply offered 2x SD slots, one for redundancy.

Not to mention the BMPCC6k compatibility list shows a few SD cards up to 256GB to accomodate 6k RAW recording vs many CFAST solutions offering up to 1TB cards.

 

[chucker23n1]

Took them away she people could be wowed when it returns...good business

I doubt "let's remove something people want, needlessly depress sales for _half a decade_, then wow them when the feature is back" was a deliberate or smart business decision. It was simply a misstep.

 

[Jar Jar Abrams]

bringing back the sd slot is such a stupid idea. for professional cameras, plenty of them use CFAST cards and a lot of them are moving over to USB-C SSDs. have you seen the cost and max size of high performing SD cards to record 4k/6k/8k ProRes RAW/Blackmagic RAW footage?

let's move on from SD. Apple was right to remove them. rather have an extra USB4/Thunderbolt 4 port.

this is one of those situations where Apple should tell everyone to shut up and be glad they're removing the Touch Bar at least.

I agree it’s a MacBook “Pro” why put SD back. It’s a consumer card, CFexpress/CFast is what pros are shooting on, an SD slot is a waste of space as is HDMI!
What a bummer the direction Apple is going now thanks to such a people pleaser in TimCook, you can totally see why Jonny Ive was ousted, he wanted to pave the way for the future of macs and lead the industry as they had been doing, Tim is star struck and if a couple of youtube “unboxers aka influencers“ aren’t happy with something then Tim will put the past back in the mac, should have stayed USB4 only and if people even think they’d need to plug a cd burner or a TV into their MacBook “PRO” then there’s a dongle.

 

[Michael Scrip]

That looks cool...

But the current 16" MacBook Pro starts at $2,400

 

[farewelwilliams]

Forget USB-C no one is hooking up a whole freakin rig just to offload files.

Plenty of people are, infact, doing this. Very popular among Blackmagic Pocket 6k camera users. It's actually quite convenient considering the transfer speeds are quick and the economics of using an SSD far outweigh an SD card that can record 6k RAW.

And speaking of cost you can't imagine how much were 128GB or 256GB proprietary cards back in the day.

Can't really buy 1TB SD cards that can record 6k raw video, simply because they would cost much more than CFAST cards that can do the job today.

 

[D-a-a-n]

Just a basic HDMI out so that presentations in higher education are possible without a stupid dongle.

Not to mention I have never been more infuriated with a design update that turned changing my volume into a 2 step process I know need to pay close attention to. Function key; press. Done. Ugh.

I'm not a fan of the touchbar either (that's why I still have an old MBP). But in fairness, you can do it in one swipe: press and hold the sound icon and then swipe to the left/right while holding down. It doesn't always work though..

 

[Seanm87]

Will there be a headphone jack? That picture suggests there won't be 🤔

 

[farewelwilliams]

Apple didn’t accelerate it, cheaper alternative storage and faster/better access to internet for the masses did.

Disagreed. The MacBook Air design was iconic and became very popular. The only way for PC laptop manufacturers to copy the design was to also remove the DVD drive from their product too. That accelerated the death of drives.

I'm sure internet and storage had something to do with it, but you can't say Apple didn't play a role in ACCELERATING the death of the DVD drive.

 

[ruka.snow]

But SD Cards? They have no successor. They serve their purpose so perfectly it’s industry standard. They’re very fast, and have a very high storage capacity. They’re instantly interchangeable.

SD cards are replaced by CF Express A where space is limited or CF Express B where performance is more important. SD Express is likely dead before it starts as CF Express A is smaller and more durable.

 

[ruka.snow]

Putting an SD card slot back in the mac will come as a pleasent surprise to many audio and video users who's devices uses SD cards. In my opinion the biggest sector who would be in support of this is the photography sector because being able to save photo's onto a SD card and then put that SD card into other machines to work on the photo's is extremely important because of it's simplicity and ease of use.

It'll help music people. Photography world moved on from SD if we ever used it. CFExpress is the current format and before that we had XQD, CFast, CF.

 

[acalegari]

I can say that for the good or for the bad, this is only happening because Jony Ive is no longer at apple!

 

[Tozovac]

bringing back the (sd slot...MagSafe...USB-A port...upgradable RAM...headphone jack...upgradable SSD...T-shaped arrow keys...physical function keys...) is such a stupid idea. for (users other than my closed-minded self), plenty of them use (newer option that’s not yet become the 99% universal norm and/or has a functional or cost trade-off) and a lot of them are moving over to (newer expensive option that’s hardly replaced the current technology that’s very embedded still and very functional still). have you seen the cost and max size of (very pervasive technology still very out there and very useful and affordable)?

let's move on from (something I don’t use so therefore nobody should care to use). Apple was right to remove them. rather have an extra USB4/Thunderbolt 4 port (which won’t ease the frustration of those with plenty of current, useful usb-A devices for which its a true drag to buy and manage dongles).

this is one of those situations where Apple should tell everyone to shut up and be glad they're removing the Touch Bar at least. (I care for touchbar either so anyone who does find it extremely useful, I’m right you’re plain wrong with what you’re doing)

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

It would be nice if the SD card was flush with the outside when it was inserted and it could be ejected with a software command, similar to how Mac floppies worked. Then it could be safely used as additional portable storage.

Every DSLR camera on the market uses a simple spring-mechanism to keep the SD Card flush. No need to reinvent the wheel. Push to pop out, done ✅

Just like on furniture for 100 years.

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

Please add a USB-A or two. Pretty please.

 

[richinaus]

I agree it’s a MacBook “Pro” why put SD back. It’s a consumer card, CFexpress/CFast is what pros are shooting on, an SD slot is a waste of space as is HDMI!
What a bummer the direction Apple is going now thanks to such a people pleaser in TimCook, you can totally see why Jonny Ive was ousted, he wanted to pave the way for the future of macs and lead the industry as they had been doing, Tim is star struck and if a couple of youtube “unboxers aka influencers“ aren’t happy with something then Tim will put the past back in the mac, should have stayed USB4 only and if people even think they’d need to plug a cd burner or a TV into their MacBook “PRO” then there’s a dongle.

Because it’s a proSumer machine.