SD Card is useful for things like backup storage while USB-A is a legacy port that is superseded by USB-C.
A MagSafe design, i.e. breakaway cable, but using standard USB-C ports and plugs. I have such a cable now for my Air. Works great.
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.
New MacBook Pro Features Breakdown: Everything Rumors Say We Can Expect
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
SD Card is useful for things like backup storage while USB-A is a legacy port that is superseded by USB-C.
A MagSafe design, i.e. breakaway cable, but using standard USB-C ports and plugs. I have such a cable now for my Air. Works great.
If it is true, it is possibly a design limitation of the memory modules since they are part of the overall SoC package and not independent DIMMs like with Intel. The belief with M1 is it was limited to 8GB or 16GB because they only had room for two memory dies that could be placed in the MCM and they were using 4GB and 8GB modules (so 2x4GB for the 8GB machines and 2x8GB for the 16GB machines).
HDMI is definitely happening. on 24 of the 155 pages of the schematics "HDMI" is mentioned...
Seeing Apple is bringing back many features from older MacBooks like the MagSafe charger, HDMI port & SD Card port.
In addition to the return of the start up chime in MacOS
it would be very epic if they bring back the glowing Apple logo (just a thought).
In addition to the return of the start up chime in MacOS
it would be very epic if they bring back the glowing Apple logo (just a thought).
Agreed. I'm posting this from a model half a year older than yours, hooked up to a KVM, so I have one external monitor, and use a portable USB drive for backups.
I'm coming from a MBA with 4GB and 256GB. Granted my MBA is 10 years old, so even 16GB here is a bonus for me.
512GB would be okay for a base configuration, but I would hope that there would be a 1TB or higher option without having to go BTO.
You got me by 2 years. mid-2011 13" MBA. Amazingly enough, it's gone this long without needing a single bit of service or repair. Color me impressed, though I shouldn't be.. my Apple IIe is still going strong, and it's coming up on 40 years.
BL.
You're quite mistaken. In 2021, we're excited about a laptop which offers a performance increase never seen since the launch of I-series intel CPU's. Highest performance to power ratio ever seen on a laptop. For people upgrading from an intel CPU MBP, this is a game changer.
My current 2018 MBP:
- 16GB/512GB
- With just Safari windows and textedit:
- macOS lags
- laptop heats up and fans spin
- battery lasts less than 6 hours.
- Most people don't care about the fn keys or already negligible bezel.
- The ports are a huge welcome bonus. Apple having a positive impact on environment by looking past profits for the first time in years.
- Add NVME expansion to get me excited about saving the environment.
- Don't care for MagSafe bc I'm not using my laptop around kids who would run through the cable.
search the internet. the schematics of the 14" MBP have been leaked about six months ago.
I have a MacBook Pro from 2015 with 256gb of disk space and I never needed more. Big files are on my NAS. I still have at least 40gb space left. If 16gb / 512gb is the minimum for the new models I’d rather have 32gb / 256gb instead.
Actually, consider it this way. When one is only looking at cosmetic changes, it reveals how shortsighted one can be when it comes to the upcoming Macs.
One needs to look under the hood to see what people are really excited for:
- Apple's own CPUs.
- High performance to power ratio.
- functionality given from the ports on the laptop.
- Increased memory and storage specs.
- hugely increased battery life.
In other words, the saying of beauty is only skin deep applies. Don't just look at what you see, but what benefits you in the long run.
BL.
Not a good thing to have if that useless slot prevents a port I could use for my XQD and CFExpress cards from my camera or microSD from my Raspberry Pi's.
Your camera should also be able to connect to your MBP over WiFi or USB (my Canon Eos Rebel T2i can use USB, and that was made in 2010).
The point here is that there are options besides pulling moving the SD card around.
BL.
That’s the section that talks about “not included”
I'm on a 2013 MBP. I don't think the MacBook Pro logo was added until the refreshes a few years later.
until they decide to make them discrete.
You don't expect their Mac Pros to have integrated GPUs, do you?
“Alleged” schematics - just like the CAD drawings that some leaker shared were the AW7 - LOL
I totally agree. Am I the only one who feels like MagSafe is a backward step? Right now, I can connect a Thunderbolt dock with a single cable that charges as well as adding displays and connectivity. Reverting to a dedicated MagSafe port for power would require me to add a separate power cable. And the ability to use either side of the computer has made all the difference in places like coffee shops and the library, since you can't always control how close you will be to a power outlet.
While some people have said that maybe Apple would do both—include a dedicated MagSafe power port and allow charging through USB C/Thunderbolt—to me that makes even less sense. Why waste critical real estate on a MagSafe port when there are already ports that offer that same functionality? And then what cord does Apple provide?
Most of the other rumors make sense to me: personally, I like the Touch Bar, but it is clear that Apple isn't 100% behind it, since they never bothered extending that functionality to the rest of their Mac product line; having a dedicated HDMI port makes sense for business professionals who don't want to travel with adapters and dongles to connect to projectors and shared screens; the addition of an SD card feels a little less "obvious" to me, but again, I can see that catering to a "pro-sumer" market, especially photographers. But a MagSafe port? I don't get it at all.
And while wifi is probably just as fast as reading straight off the SD, and could easily replace it, it’s not nearly as fast as a CFExpress card and can’t replace that.
Personally I don't care about the ports at all. SD card is nice, but HDMI? I thought we moved to Thunderbolt. Why not miniDP anyway?
I would've preferred we stayed with 3x USB-C ports. And with basically every other device moving to USB-C, I see no reason to go backwards anymore. USB A is antiquated and we need to move on.
I would've preferred we stayed with 3x USB-C ports. And with basically every other device moving to USB-C, I see no reason to go backwards anymore. USB A is antiquated and we need to move on.
I’m not sure exactly what their implementation will be, but it looks like they’re about to do 64-core GPUs integrated into a CPU so I wouldn’t make the assumption that they will be discrete. Their whole Apple Silicon coding architecture is based around unified and shared memory.
Magsafe because I drop my machine off my lazyboy leg rest a couple times a week, and if it hits on the top left corner I might eventually break the motherboard itself with USB C impacting the ground.
Anyone with kids wants MagSafe too.
I want both ways to charge. Fast USB C or thunderwhatever plus bringing back the MagSafe.
Here’s a few quotes from the macOS developer sessions from WWDC 2020. I remembered quoting them in a discussion last year. They’re not discrete in the traditional sense, so that’s not a good term for them.
"And to know if a GPU needs to be treated as integrated or discrete, use the isLowPower API. Note that for Apple GPUs isLowPower returns False, which means that you should treat these GPUs in a similar way as discrete GPUs. This is because the performance characteristics of Apple GPUs are in line with discrete ones, not the integrated ones. Despite the property name though, Apple GPUs are also way, way more power-effficient than both integrated and discrete GPUs."
Bring your Metal app to Apple silicon Macs - WWDC20 - Videos - Apple Developer
Meet the Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR) GPU architecture for Apple silicon Macs — the heart of your Metal app or game's graphics...developer.apple.com
"Intel-based Macs contain a multi-core CPU and many have a discrete GPU ... Machines with a discrete GPU have separate memory for the CPU and GPU. Now, the new Apple Silicon Macs combine all these components into a single system on a chip, or SoC. Building everything into one chip gives the system a unified memory architecture. This means that the CPU and GPU are working over the same memory."
Explore the new system architecture of Apple silicon Macs - WWDC20 - Videos - Apple Developer
Discover how Macs with Apple silicon will deliver modern advantages using Apple's System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture. Leveraging a unified...
Bloomberg implies they will be, with "Jade2C-Die" having 20 CPU and 64 GPU cores and "Jade4C-Die" having 40 CPU and 128 GPU cores.