Why would it need to be built in on a desktop machine? External drives aren't that large...
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Transcend Announces 1TB JetDrive Lite 330 Expansion Card for 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro
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That's the Novelty Introductory Price. It should eventually drop in price depending on demand and competition.
The whole situation is ridiculous. Easily 95%+ of Mac users never touch memory cards. Of the hobbyists and professionals that do, their needs are all over the place.
When the card readers were removed from Macbooks, the folks who still needed card readers had to carry card readers around. That made sense. Now people who don't need card readers are carrying card readers around, and folks who DO, it's often the wrong type! Outstanding.
it drains some but not enough for most to really notice, you're basically pinching pennies on the dollar here.
Even the first time round professionals that may have used SD and not CF at the time where also using an external reader because the internal one on the MB and MBP of the time was so infuriatingly slow compared to even a £10 external USB 2.0 reader. My reader of that era was a FW800 for CF cards. I did have a backup Canon D500 which used SD and for that I ether plugged in via USB 2.0 or used an external reader since both options where significantly faster than using the internal SD slot on the MB.
Edit: also the SD slot on the studio is even more daft. A front 3.5mm port would have been far more welcome as something you might want easy access too.
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My first add-on storage volume was a 100MB (mega) hard drive which fit under the 10x10” footprint of my Mac SE. It sold for about $1000.
This worth a lot to many in certain situations. I hate moving around with a cabled SSD. Here, form can matter more than (or as much as) function. Or, form actually plays a huge functional role.
1. I'm assuming a CF Express slot would have made the laptop thicker.
2. Are CF Express cards used anywhere outside of photography? SD is ubiquitous.
I had these 10 years ago. They were OKAY back then.
Today it's pathetic Apple is stuck with a crappy SD port and we're still talking 50MB/s. It's absolutely unusuable for 1TB
Today it's pathetic Apple is stuck with a crappy SD port and we're still talking 50MB/s. It's absolutely unusuable for 1TB
CF Express can come in several form factors, including small size factors. https://www.lexar.com/en/FAQs/what-is-the-difference-between-cfexpress-type-a-type-b-type-c-cards/
Photography and Video are the primary uses right now but only a matter of time until more uses it.
I use one in my 2015 MacBook Pro for offloading the complete Logic Pro sound library and some other audio related things and it is works like a charm.
likewise, i use it on my 2015 mbp as well, its a cheap and doable solution without going in and swapping out the ssd. even more imperative now consider the ssd in modern mb are soldered.
I learned quick that shelling out the extra cash for higher internal storage is well worth it if you keep your computer for more than a minute. As someone who works with large files a lot, I don't know what I would actually use this for. Those R/W speeds are quite low. Maybe for other documents and smaller files, but for anything larger than 1GB, hard to say that's worth using. I'd rather carry at T5, T7 or Sandisk Extreme Pro with me and plug it in when needed.
Just looking at what's on sale, I wouldn't call (for example) the £2900 Canon EOS 5D mk IV (SD and CF - not CF Express) or the £3600 Nikon Z7 II (CF Express and SD) "very low-end" even if they're not the very latest bleeding edge professional option... and that's picking a couple of models at random, I haven't trawled through dozens and cherry-picked the ones with SD. Anyway, people will have existing mid/high-end DSLRs - they're certainly not things that existing users are going to throw away overnight. As I said, Apple made the mistake of assuming that everybody would rush out and buy all-new peripherals with the latest interfaces for their new Macs in 2016.
...and I don't know how many times it has to be repeated before it registers but SD cards are used in a lot of other things than pro DSLRs. If you want to download pictures from your drone, dashcam, sports cam - or program your Raspberry Pi etc. then a CFExpress slot is as much use as an inflatable dartboard. Or, if you're using a phone for photography, if it's using a memory card at all it will be SD. I'm not a pro photographer, will probably never buy anything with CFExpress but I do have a bunch of devices that use SD or microSD.
Okay, but it blocks the slot for SD cards. Especially for videos and photos, a large storage is necessary, so I either have to connect an SD card reader via USB C or take the data via the diversions of the SSD of the Macbook.
I also find it very expensive, I bought a 2TB Sabrent Rockt XTRM Q as a storage expansion for 330 €, it has significantly higher write and read speeds than what Transcend offers there.
I also find it very expensive, I bought a 2TB Sabrent Rockt XTRM Q as a storage expansion for 330 €, it has significantly higher write and read speeds than what Transcend offers there.
This is an SD card. Its just been explicitly designed so that it fits flush with the case on a MacBook Pro and be left plugged in semi-permanently, whereas a regular SD card would stick out and get damaged. You're paying a premium for something designed specifically for a MacBook rather than a generic mass-market device - but 1TB SD cards aren't that cheap if you ignore the obvious fakes.
Completely irrelevant. The point is that it fits flush with the side of the MacBook so you can leave it plugged in semi-permanently - a regular SD card would protrude, leaving a pen drive sticking out or an external SSD dangling from a cable is a recipe for damaging your USB-C ports.
Anything that slow just erased whatever convenience it claims. May have been worth it in 2010 but not today.
Just more of Apples anti consumer ways that so many drink up and try and justify. The thing is Apple creates everything from the ground up, so there is no reason for anything to be closed off, unserviceable, non upgradeable. It is purely because it brings in billions. No excuses when you design the case and all internal components.
I like the idea of this sd drive for the sd card slot. Not a fast speed but nicer then an external if you simply want storage and not something you work off. I will probably add one at some point to store work files. Any live jobs get moved over the main drive anyways. Of course could be cheaper but the simplicity of nothing sticking out, always connected without anything dangling is great.
