Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Anyone who had a pre retina 2012 MBP model but had an issue where the SD card reader died after a year or so? I wonder how the SD card readers are on the pre 2016 models. Fingers crossed for these to be more reliable.

Still works fine on my first retina MBP from 2012. It is still my main laptop until the 14 inch hopefully arrives next week
 
Apple's Pro Machine finally has the quantity and range of ports that the Air should have! The pro devices should have a ethernet port as well. It looks as though the height of the base of the laptop is perfect for it. Lots of valid 'pro' use cases that need the reliability of ethernet. Pretty much any industrial process can't (or shouldn't) be run over WiFi. So nearly perfect.
I feel like ethernet ports on laptops in 2021 is such a niche requirement that you may aswell just buy an ethernet to usb-c adapter and leave it attached to your ethernet cable
 
Was hoping for UHS-III but I can settle for just UHS-II. Theres not that many UHS-III cameras out there yet. At least its not a case of outdated spec like the HDMI port.

UHS-III will never see the light of day in a camera. SD Express is being pushed to take on CF Express Type A, though the downside of that is all your old cards get knocked back to UHS-I speeds.
 
Apple's Pro Machine finally has the quantity and range of ports that the Air should have! The pro devices should have a ethernet port as well. It looks as though the height of the base of the laptop is perfect for it. Lots of valid 'pro' use cases that need the reliability of ethernet. Pretty much any industrial process can't (or shouldn't) be run over WiFi. So nearly perfect.
The cost of a USB-C to ethernet adapter is so low. I'm a big fan of ethernet but having it in a laptop is pretty niche.

If you are at a desk then there's a decent chance (like myself) you have a USB-C/TB3 hub that everything plugs into then one cable into the MacBook. If you are someone who needs to use ethernet a lot then it's really not going to kill you to carry round a tiny adapter. I don't think ethernet would even fit into this machine.
 
Apple's Pro Machine finally has the quantity and range of ports that the Air should have! The pro devices should have a ethernet port as well. It looks as though the height of the base of the laptop is perfect for it. Lots of valid 'pro' use cases that need the reliability of ethernet. Pretty much any industrial process can't (or shouldn't) be run over WiFi. So nearly perfect.

No seriously, just use the correct adapter, this is ridiculous thinking.
 
Anybody planning to use a 1TB SD for Time Machine?
How long would it take to do a Time Machine backup to an SD card? I know, it depends... but I stopped using TM years ago because it took hours and hours to do a backup (to an admittedly old WD My Cloud drive, done wired and WiFi at different times). Given that I keep all my pertinent data in the Documents directory, and that is backed up to iCloud, I didn't see the need to use a separate device for TM, anyway.
 
Last edited:
I think this continues to support the thought that someone smarter than me (sorry I forget who) tweeted: that to achieve this, Apple took one of the 4 max thunderbolt ports and split it into these new ports. All of the new ports could have limitations because they all feed into the bandwidth of a single thunderbolt port. Put another way, Apple built the dongle in so you don't have to carry it. I think this is a good tradeoff, and the limitations so far don't seem to outweigh the benefits of having these ports always with you. If you need better, use a dongle with the actual thunderbolt ports, but that is a far less likely scenario.
 
I am more interested in whether the SD slot can act as an urgent alt boot port for installing macOS or trouble shooting. Doesn’t seem likely given how locked up Apple Silicon is though.

The other application of the slot is as someone already mentioned, the short flush custom cards or even a micro SD tray. Great for cold data that doesn’t need the speed of internal NVMe nor the redundancy of APFS.
 
  • Like
Reactions: zapmymac
I think this continues to support the thought that someone smarter than me (sorry I forget who) tweeted: that to achieve this, Apple took one of the 4 max thunderbolt ports and split it into these new ports. All of the new ports could have limitations because they all feed into the bandwidth of a single thunderbolt port. Put another way, Apple built the dongle in so you don't have to carry it. I think this is a good tradeoff, and the limitations so far don't seem to outweigh the benefits of having these ports always with you. If you need better, use a dongle with the actual thunderbolt ports, but that is a far less likely scenario.

That's how it always worked anyway - previously this stuff just ran as basically built in USB adapters - you could see it all on a built in USB hub in the machine, including the Facetime camera.
 
I think this continues to support the thought that someone smarter than me (sorry I forget who) tweeted: that to achieve this, Apple took one of the 4 max thunderbolt ports and split it into these new ports. All of the new ports could have limitations because they all feed into the bandwidth of a single thunderbolt port. Put another way, Apple built the dongle in so you don't have to carry it. I think this is a good tradeoff, and the limitations so far don't seem to outweigh the benefits of having these ports always with you. If you need better, use a dongle with the actual thunderbolt ports, but that is a far less likely scenario.

But now we lost one TB3 port for a HDMI port that most will never use or at best use infrequently. And a SD slot when consumer DSLR's have been replaced with smartphones and professional cameras use CF Express A and B. It is a really questionable time to re-introduce these ports. But at least Engadget and the like won't be able to mark down the lack of a floppy drive SD slot.
 
Does anyone know if this slot supports the new SDUC standard for card sizes 4TB and up?

For many, this could mean the difference between a £1200 upgrade now for storage space I may not even need in the future vs. a couple of hundred £ in a few years' time for a micro-SD card and a £25 adapter.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.