Stolen MacBook Pro Schematics Confirm Apple's Plans to Add More Ports and Remove Touch Bar

[theluggage]

And yes, for any likely number of displays supported: if one is "forced" to be via HDMI that is a failure, in my opinion.

Got it. You're obsessed with maxing out the number of Thunderbolt/USB displays to prove some sort of point and totally deaf to all of the people who have good reasons why a regular HDMI port would be of more practical value.

Given that the alternative to that hard wired HDMI port, is to offer support via TB3/USB-C/USB4 ports... which can still drive that HDMI display, using nothing more than a different cable

...and that hard-wired HDMI port can still support the majority of third-party displays using nothing more than a basic $5 HDMI cable (that you can buy in any large supermarket should you be stranded).

I was highlighting how you're happy to assume that behaviour will carry over, but you also assume other behaviour present in the same machines will not carry over, because it suits your narrative.

Yet you latch on to the hardwired port on the Mini (Apple's cheap option) as if it were absolute proof that any future product (even if its in Apple's flagship pro laptop) will have to be the same and/or not support a reasonable number of displays via TB/USB-C. Meanwhile you totally ignore all the valid use cases for HDMI ports that other people put forward, and insist that they should have to buy extra cables/dongles/hubs while flatly refusing to consider any compromise yourself.

Reality check:
All TVs have HDMI (or nothing). All modern data projectors have HDMI. Cheap 3rd party displays have HDMI, premium 3rd party displays usually have DisplayPort and HDMI. Even 3rd-party Thunderbolt displays have HDMI (apart from the more-or-less discontinued LG/Apple ones which were pretty obviously specified by Apple). Yet you refuse to accept that having a HDMI port on a laptop might be more useful to many people than the theoretical ability to run 4 thunderbolt/displayport-only displays.

Even a pro video editor might be happy for their third display to be a HDMI TV since that's what most people will see their work on.

If the new 16" MBP doesn't at least match the old MBP support two 6K XDR displays (or any new displays that Apple is rumoured to be making) - plus the built-in display, of course, then a lot of people are going to complain (although rather fewer will actually be inconvenienced). That's going to need a GPU that supports more/faster DisplayPort streams than either the M1 or the Intel Mac Mini, and if they add HDMI they'll need a second external eDP output from the SoC, so speculating how it's going to work, and if/how the streams are going to be wired and switched based on those machines is pointless. What the new chip won't need is fewer TB controllers than the M1.

Of course, that may not happen - Maybe Tim Cook just wondered into the engineers' office one day and shouted "throw in an HDMI port or you're fired!!!" and they had to bung it in - not impossible. Or, maybe Apple did the market research and found that more people wanted a built-in HDMI port than the possibility to connect $12,000 worth of displays to their $2500 laptop - and that it made sense for the minority to need the expensive work-around. Or maybe even the marvellous new Apple Silicon GPU will start to struggle and oveheat if its asked to push around more than 12K of pixels. Maybe Apple will cheap out and throw in a warmed-over M1 (and all the true fanbois will start explaining why nobody needs more than one external display). Whatever, you're taking the worst-case scenario and presenting it as the unassailable, inevitable truth.

You apparently see the 1 controller per port aspect, and use as a way to justify the removal of 2 ports, so you can <checks notes> use a different HDMI cable.

But they haven't simply removed 2 ports. First - there are three USB type C ports. I'm speculating that the third one is USB 3 only (like the iMac) but that's not proven - it could be a third full TB3 port, or share a controller with one of the other TB3s. And if it is just USB3 (and this is what you really don't seem to get) that will be because Apple have cheaped out on TB controllers/port drivers/eDP streams - the presence of the HDMI port has nothing to do with it. You can't drive a full extra TB3/4 controller - 4 PCIe lanes & 2 DP streams - with the resources saved by removing the HDMI and SD (1 PCIe lane, if that, and 1 DP stream).

Even if it is just USB3, that's 10Gbps of extra bandwidth that you didn't have before - enough for any single SSD drive - and, with modern TB device controllers, more and more TB3 devices can fall back to USB3 (often with negligible performance loss). If it is a TB3 port, that's 50% more bandwidth than you had before.

Then, the Magsafe connector is back, so you don't need to waste a TB3 port on charging (and you can still use a hub/dock for single-cable docking if you like) - and it is now quite possible that you'll get Ethernet in the charging brick as well - another upgrade from the old model.

...and you can now add USB4 hubs so you will be able to unlock the full bandwidth of those ports, even with all those thunderbolt devices that cheap out on the downstream port so you can't daisy chain them... and I'm sorry if there's only one choice on the market right now, and it isn't bus powered, months before the first computer that they'd be really useful for is even announced.

So yeah, you've lost one physical port but gained potential bandwidth and made sure that your remaining TB3 ports are freed up for the high-speed devices and 5k+ displays that actually need them. For many people - who are currently "wasting" whole TB3 ports driving 4k-or-less displays, USB 2/3 devices, SD readers or for charging and having to carry around adapters with their laptop for the privilege this is going to be a far more efficient arrangement.

Of course 4 TB3 ports would be better - and there's plenty of space for more ports on the chassis as well as HDMI/SD. Just magic up 4 spare PCIe lines and 2 DP 1.4 streams to drive them.

 

[Nuckss]

Oh let’s not pretend you haven’t been “creative” on your taxes so you can get off your Anti-Apple moral ground. (provided you receive an income.). Avoiding ways to pay taxes is not illegal or unethical. You’re confusing ethics with legalities. Hardly the same. I just love how some people here have the audacity to crap on Apple about paying taxes when no doubt more than 50% of the people here required to pay taxes find ways not to pay, for example by requesting their payer to give them funds under the table, and often not even filing.

You assume a lot.

 

[Costino1]

I was sooo excited for the Touch Bar when I got my MacBook Pro. I thought itd be improved upon with software updates. I barely use it. I use it to change the volume and brightness. Thats it.

 

[Stephen.R]

You're obsessed with maxing out the number of Thunderbolt/USB displays to prove some sort of point and totally deaf to all of the people who have good reasons why a regular HDMI port would be of more practical value.

I like to be able to use the ports I'm paying for.

A person can use a HDMI device with a USB-C port, possibly with minor inconvenience.

A person can't use anything but a HDMI device with a HDMI port.

This the epitome of the USB-C concept: adaptable to practically anything you can imagine.

I am not tone deaf to those who want HDMI. But let’s keep in perspective: they ****ing have HDMI support right now, too, and the cables/adapters are ubiquitous and cheap.

You can't drive a full extra TB3/4 controller - 4 PCIe lanes & 2 DP streams - with the resources saved by removing the HDMI and SD (1 PCIe lane, if that, and 1 DP stream).

Conversely if you have a DP stream dedicated to HDMI that’s one stream you can’t route to a DP controller. So if you had four, and one goes to HDMI you can’t run two controllers.

Of course 4 TB3 ports would be better - and there's plenty of space for more ports on the chassis as well as HDMI/SD. Just magic up 4 spare PCIe lines and 2 DP 1.4 streams to drive them.

Well if there’s no hdmi port stealing one dp stream, that’s one less to magic up, as you put it,


I’m done talking to you. Apple are gonna do what Apple are gonna do regardless of this forum. If the rumours work out accurate, I’ll be skipping any new laptop until the next inevitable flip flop back to actual modern ports, and you’ll be able to make a fortune selling that extremely rare hdmi adapter you had to fight a space weasel to get your hands on.

conversely if the rumours are just rumours and it has actual modern ports, maybe I will upgrade, and you’ll have to defer your hdmi-adapter-funded retirement for now.

 

[sportyfish]

Most leaks are "stolen" property from Apple and their manufactures, how is this any different? Also, Apple is being ransomed for money, how is that not NEWS WORTHY... this is going to be on every news outlet, so, why wouldn't an Apple specialized news page is not gonna report on it? And besides, they didn't even post the pictures.

And all you ethical and moral police don't forget that most of the leaks are obtained illegally by someone breaching a NDA contract or stealing classified information about Apple intelectual property.

My concern is that when we help reward ransomware (by enabling it with publication), it makes ransomware profitable, and therefore more rampant. That's different than other leaks, where typically there exists risk (to the leaker) and not financial reward.

 

[sportyfish]

What’s the difference how it was stolen, through hacking or an inside job (leaks)? And just because there’s no ransom makes it ok steal and post? That’s an arbitrary line in the sand.

I’m not saying whether MR should or shouldn’t have posted this, only that people who are drawing the line here are shutting their eyes to a lot more.

When there is ransom there is financial reward, which leads to more ransomware attacks, on many different companies and institutions, including not for profit public good organizations, etc. The difference is the financial incentive to the leaker.

 

[subjonas]

When there is ransom there is financial reward, which leads to more ransomware attacks, on many different companies and institutions, including not for profit public good organizations, etc. The difference is the financial incentive to the leaker.

Ransoms lead to more ransomeware attacks if Apple Pay’s the ransom, not if tech sites publish the leaked information. Publishing leaks in general lead to more leaks (ie. IP theft) in general, which is what many tech sites including Macrumors are fueled by, which is what people here are unwittingly condemning, despite being readers of these sites. The leaks we read about are provided by people who are paid to leak, so there is always financial incentive.

 

[sportyfish]

Ransoms lead to more ransomeware attacks if Apple Pay’s the ransom, not if tech sites publish the leaked information. Publishing leaks in general lead to more leaks (ie. IP theft) in general, which is what many tech sites including Macrumors are fueled by, which is what people here are unwittingly condemning, despite being readers of these sites. The leaks we read about are provided by people who are paid to leak, so there is always financial incentive.

I haven't considered that people are paid for their leaked information; if that's true, then you make a very good point, that there is already a financial incentive.

I also agree that Apple's paying of the ransom leads to more ransomeware attacks, but so does the cooperation of MR in making the ransomware attack threat credible by publishing findings from the attack–––it's not one or the other, it's both publishing and paying, together, that fuel ransomware attacks.

 

[sportyfish]

I haven't considered that people are paid for their leaked information; if that's true, then you make a very good point, that there is already a financial incentive.

I also agree that Apple's paying of the ransom leads to more ransomeware attacks, but so does the cooperation of MR in making the ransomware attack threat credible by publishing findings from the attack–––it's not one or the other, it's both publishing and paying, together, that fuel ransomware attacks.

(I also agree that I shouldn't be reading this site if I fundamentally have an ethical position about leaks and privacy of information. In this case, my concern wasn't just ethics, it was about the impact that supporting ransomware could lead to damage to other institutions.)

 

[Tozovac]

So that's the disastrous MacBook pro "revolution" of 2016 completely undone.

• MagSafe is back.
• The Touch Bar is no longer mandatory.
• The butterfly keyboard gone.
• The one-port-does-everything delusion is over.
  
  
  

Yup. Take that one-trick-pony remove-something-each-year Jony. Don’t miss you one bit.

 

[Stephen.R]

Yup. Take that one-trick-pony remove-something-each-year Jony. Don’t miss you one bit.

You do realise that the m1 Mac mini, m1 iMac have both lost ports compared to the intel predecessors, and the rumour for the next mbp16 is that it will also lose ports?

People really love to attribute **** to Jony Ive without any logic don’t they?

 

[MacBH928]

All USB-C macbooks eh Cook? The first to drop floppy disks eh? Brave you said to 2016 purchasers...One port to rule them all.

 

[MacBH928]

So that's the disastrous MacBook pro "revolution" of 2016 completely undone.

• MagSafe is back.
• The Touch Bar is no longer mandatory.
• The butterfly keyboard gone.
• The one-port-does-everything delusion is over.
  
  

I feel so sorry for those who bought that computer, I remember how they were defending it being the future. and being future safe, USB-A STILL more ubiqtious. I remember how Tim Cook was using the reality distortion field to make it seem that the touchbar is the next big revolution in laptops.

 

[Maximara]

I feel so sorry for those who bought that computer, I remember how they were defending it being the future. and being future safe, USB-A STILL more ubiqtious. I remember how Tim Cook was using the reality distortion field to make it seem that the touchbar is the next big revolution in laptops.

To be fair to Tim Cook going to the touchbar may have been based on some market research ie 'would you like function keys or a touchbar you can configure in anyway you want'? If 75% that bothered to reply back said touchbar (ie the "sounds cool I want it" crowd) than it wasn't a "reality distortion field" but what market research told them.

Yes, I know that is flawed all the way to FUBAR Town but that is the way a lot of businesses make their decisions.

 

[derekamoss]

My concern is that when we help reward ransomware (by enabling it with publication), it makes ransomware profitable, and therefore more rampant. That's different than other leaks, where typically there exists risk (to the leaker) and not financial reward.

We aren't helping reward the hackers. It was already on the mainstream news. Second, these aren't your typical hackers doing it for some cause or recognition. They are doing it for the money and will continue to do so whether anyone knows they are doing it or not.

 

[Tozovac]

You do realise that the m1 Mac mini, m1 iMac have both lost ports compared to the intel predecessors, and the rumour for the next mbp16 is that it will also lose ports?

People really love to attribute **** to Jony Ive without any logic don’t they?

You want logic? What might have been the main logic for making the side arrow keys as large as the up/down arrow keys, completely ruining the ability to use them w/o looking at them? What might have been the main logic for working towards a disaster of a keyboard just to make the MacBook slightly thinner than the prior year? Or ditching certain oft-used keys to promote a symmetrical touchbar to where it takes more steps to do what used to be one action? Call me a conspiracy theorist but I don’t doubt for a minute that Jony Ive rather preferred the harmony of four completely similar usb-c ports to add a smooth, minimalist appearance to the sides of the MacBook back in the Intel processor days. Because of course most consumers buy expensive electronic devices for their appearance first and function second.

My post was mainly about slight giddiness over the possibility of Jony’s unhappiness with each backseat Apple has taken over the past few years righting certain functional wrongs, occurring maybe not unintentionally after the departure of sir genius.

 

[TimFL1]

I'm probably in the minority here but I was on board the second they showed off that 2016 Thunderbolt only MacBook Pro design and I'm incredibly bummed out by the fact that they revert course and go with HDMI and MagSafe ports again.

I honestly would've thought that Apple would go all-in on their decision by keeping the dongle life I got used to in no time. TB is simply superior to any other port they could potentially add.

 

[I7guy]

[…]. Because of course most consumers buy expensive electronic devices for their appearance first and function second.[…]

This is pretty much a false statement. At least one that can’t be proven. It brings down the entire premise of the post.

 

[Stephen.R]

What might have been the main logic for making the side arrow keys as large as the up/down arrow keys, completely ruining the ability to use them w/o looking at them? What might have been the main logic for working towards a disaster of a keyboard just to make the MacBook slightly thinner than the prior year?

I don't know, but the butterfly keyboard was replaced in 2019. It's not exactly a new change for the machines this thread is about.

What is rumoured to change with the new machines, is removal of TB3 ports, as we've already seen happen on M1 Mac minis, and M1 iMacs.

So, I don't know why you're banging on about keyboard changes that happened 18 months ago, but it certainly seemed like you were celebrating Jony Ive having left the company, because he "removed" things, based on rumours of a new laptop.... that removes things.

Jony was the head of industrial design for the entirety of this century until he left, but people seem to forget that part when they hark back to "the golden times" (which will be different per poster, of course), and lament how he ruined what was great with some newer machine, while ignoring that he was in charge when the machine they're lamenting was created.

That's why I said:

People really love to attribute **** to Jony Ive without any logic don’t they?

Or ditching certain oft-used keys to promote a symmetrical touchbar to where it takes more steps to do what used to be one action?

I'm pretty sure the design purpose of the toucbbar was about having a customisable interface as part of the keyboard, and completely unrelated to being 'symmetrical'.

Whether you feel that design goal is worthy or not, will obviously depend on your use case. Personally I could take it or leave it. When I used a 2018 MBP15 as my daily machine, I never used the Touch Bar for much besides what media keys do anyway, but it worked as well as physical keys, and I almost never use function keys anyway.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but I don’t doubt for a minute that Jony Ive rather preferred the harmony of four completely similar usb-c ports to add a smooth, minimalist appearance to the sides of the MacBook back in the Intel processor days.

I don't give two flying ****s why Jony Ive liked or disliked something.

I care about how a computer can be used, and the trend so far (during the transition to Arm) has been a reduction in high performance ports. Yes, the machines in question are all arguably entry level - but they apparently warranted more ports in their previous incarnations.

The details from the OP in this thread suggest the replacement for the current Intel MBP16 will at the very least, lose a TB3 port, and possibly lose two (the iMac has re-introduced the concept lost with the death of the 12" MacBook, of USB-C ports that are USB3.x only and not TB3 (or USB4/TB4 now)).

Dropping TB3 (or USB4/TB4/whatever) ports in exchange for single-use ports, is without question a step back in flexibility and usability for anyone except those that use the very specific single-use ports they happen to pick.

So if you happen to use HDMI and SD cards and have say, a USB-C (but not TB3) external flash drive or SSD, this change is probably a positive for you, but realistically one $25 USB-C hub would have given you more than that anyway (i.e. more card formats, USB type-A ports, etc)

But it's an absolute negative for anyone who does use the capabilities of four TB3 ports.


I have absolutely zero doubt that for all the people complaining about having to use a different HDMI cable or a USB-C hub or dock or whatever, and constantly proclaiming "but pros need X, it should be included", dropping those TB3 ports will bring a chorus of complaints from actual professionals, who actually use the TB3 ports, and can't simply buy a $7 adapter or choose a USB-C to HDMI instead of HDMI to HDMI cable, because the ports that are replacing TB3, are single use ports.



But sure. Going all-in on TB3 was absolutely about making it 'pretty'. It was never about delivering a MacBook Pro with external I/O far beyond any previous model, in terms of both flexibility and throughput.

Some people refer to the last pre-TB3 MBP15 as "the last good MBP" or similar. As a refresher: this machine had 2, USB3 ports, a HDMI port that could only do 4K at 30Hz (or 24Hz if you wanted DCI 4K) and an SD card connected via USB2 internally. The saving grace for any kind of future use of this machine would be the two TB2 ports, which even then, could drive a 5K display (if you had the discrete GPU of course, no way Intel graphics was gonna support that in 2015)

The machine that replaced it, the 2016 MBP15, had four TB3 ports. It supported four, 4K displays, or 2 5K displays - as well as the built in display, and because all the ports are TB3, you could run those four displays from just two ports.

Sure the keyboard had issues, no question. Subsequent revisions added support for one (2018), and then two (2019, 16") 6K displays.


Unless Apple is deliberately gimping their 'entry level' Arm-based Macs even compared to what they previously had, to create a larger gap to the 'pro level', the trend so far seems to suggest that when it launches, the Arm MBP16 will, in terms of I/O and display support, be worse off than the MBP15 from late 2016, and the comparison gets worse with practically every revision since then.


If the replacement turns out the way rumours and existing releases suggest, I suspect the 2019 MBP16 will be the 'last good' MBP for a significant number of people, for a while to come yet.

 

[Stephen.R]

I'm probably in the minority here

I wouldn't necessarily agree that the extremely vocal "where's my HDMI port" and "professionals use SD cards" voices are representative of any kind of majority.

I think most people just buy the $7 adapter and get on with their life.

 

[Playfoot]

USB C is the best thing to happen to device charging in decades.

I absolutely DO NOT WANT to return to proprietary chargers and connectors. Apple, hope the Magsafe is optional and this will remain chargeable from a USB C port.

I have to agree. Initially when we purchased the machines in late 2016 we were all unhappy with the loss of MagSafe. However, have come to appreciate the flexibility AND the ability to charge on either side.

STILL do not like the Touch Bar. And hope the build quality is better. I would have to confirm, but I think 60% of the machines have been in for new batteries, screens, multiple keyboards, etc......Not good for custom laptops.

 

[MacBH928]

To be fair to Tim Cook going to the touchbar may have been based on some market research ie 'would you like function keys or a touchbar you can configure in anyway you want'? If 75% that bothered to reply back said touchbar (ie the "sounds cool I want it" crowd) than it wasn't a "reality distortion field" but what market research told them.

Yes, I know that is flawed all the way to FUBAR Town but that is the way a lot of businesses make their decisions.

personally I think the touchbar could work they just had a bad implementation of it.

 

[Tozovac]

So, I don't know why you're banging on about keyboard changes that happened 18 months ago, but it certainly seemed like you were celebrating Jony Ive having left the company, because he "removed" things, based on rumours of a new laptop.... that removes things.

Oh geez. Why am I banging on? Because the topic of the return of a few more flexible ports (this thread's topic) after they were exorcised is very much in line with the theme of other things that were once removed (for the sake of....?) and then returned... such as a more tactile keyboard. And maybe soon magsafe. And maybe soon physical function keys. As far as the touchbar...I never had a laptop with one. I think I'd rather love it. As long as the physical function keys remained. To me and many there's just something better/easier about physical keys for oft-used functions. Wiping them away via a touchbar was just not a great idea for a majority of users. It's a main critique I have of Apple as a design organization that tries hard to stretch and innovate -- too often the newly introduced innovation involves removing something that maybe shouldn't have been removed per the voice of many a customer. That's all.

This is pretty much a false statement. At least one that can’t be proven. It brings down the entire premise of the post.

I'm not sure if you sensed my irony or not. I don't need it to be proven to me that the majority of computer buyers put function first over how a computer looks. I know it to be true. You should too if you're being impartial. If a windows-based computer maker came out with the "world's most beautiful PC laptop," do you think the average macrumors member (whom I'm assuming prefer the Apple OS X ecosystem) is going to switch over just for looks? My place of employment is 100% PC laptops that can hardly be called pretty, and I'd be willing to bet a majority of folk would say they're less attractive than the average Apple computer. Did my company decide to buy prettier MacBooks over PC's? No. I bought an MI Mac mini last December even though the MacBook to me is arguably a much more attractive piece of hardware. Did I buy the MacBook based on looks? Noper. Function first. I was (trying to) make a funny by referring to (my opinion that) the teams led by Jony appeared to very highly prioritize some risky aesthetic decisions over the past 5 years that all are now being undone. And why might they be being undone...something to ponder.

 

[Tozovac]

I wouldn't necessarily agree that the extremely vocal "where's my HDMI port" and "professionals use SD cards" voices are representative of any kind of majority.

I think most people just buy the $7 adapter and get on with their life.

Most people are forced to buy an adapter and forced to get on with things. In the real world when I'm traveling about over a given day or weekend with my laptop in hand and trying to connect to many, many systems still in use (and which will be in use for another 5 years I'm sure) that use USB-A, it's a real PITA at times to have to look for an adapter or be concerned about being sure to carry one in my pocket. The world has not yet moved from USB-A by a longshot, and often it's a royal pain to worry about a dongle/adapter still. Not asking for the return of HDMI, VGA, etc. by a longshot. But USB-A is still very quite useful and pervasive in the world. And magsafe is just wonderful, always has been. USB-C/thunderbolt are quite fantastic. What's better? 2-4 USB-C ports, 1-2 USB-A ports, and magsafe. Perfection (for now and say the next 5-8 years that USB-A devices will continue to be in regular use I'm rather sure).

 

[Stephen.R]

Why am I banging on?

No, why are you banging on about keyboards. The change of keyboard has literally nothing to do with the new laptop. It happened 18 months ago.

Because the topic of the return of a few more flexible ports after they were exorcised

... HDMI and SD slots are not "flexible" ports. They can do literally one thing.

Even USB type-A us more flexible than either of those.

When people say "flexible ports" they mean ports like USB-C/TB3, that can carry pretty much any signal.

So, no. "a few more flexible ports" are not slated to return - a few flexible ports are slated to be cut, to save the whiners from having to.. use a different cable? Or use a $7 adapter.

it's a real PITA at times to have to look for an adapter or be concerned about being sure to carry one in my pocket.

I am continually flummoxed how people manage to carry an entire laptop... but not one of these:

You know what's a PITA? Wanting to connect a high speed external device, or a display, and realising that you've used your meagre two USB-C ports, and unlike USB-C, a USB-A port can't adapt to serve either data or video, or both.

Going all-in, and maximising USB-C ports means things are slightly, and I do mean slightly less convenient for you, but it means a whole **** load of things are actually possible for a whole **** load of other people.

The world has not yet moved from USB-A by a longshot

Dell still sells a PC today that has USB2, and VGA DSUB.
Lenovo still sells a PC today with not just one, but an option for two god damn SERIAL PORTS.

Exactly how long after the USB-IF has dropped USB-A support from the latest spec, do you expect to wait? Hint: we're closing in on the 2 year birthday of that event.

If all laptops continue to support a dead USB port, accessory makers will keep using it, so laptops will continue to support it, so accessory makers will keep using it.