Transcend Announces 1TB JetDrive Lite 330 Expansion Card for 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro

[subjonas]

The price of the 1tb relative to the 128gb is strange. It’s almost linear. 1tb(1024gb) / 128gb = 8; $250/$36 = 7. I guess 1/8 is something, but I would have thought producing one 1tb chip would cost much less than seven or eight 128gb chips, and vice versa, which would be reflected in the price relation (either cheaper 1tb or more expensive $128gb), but what do I know.

 

[alexandr]

Wee you might not need that much amount of space when you purchase and since there is no other upgrade option once you have it, people buy this stuff to expand the memory.

Not everyone need a huge amount of space always available (512 form me is more then I need9 for some the need comes at a later stage.

It makes much sense, if you bought something that fitted your needs and now you need more.

I used those kind of stuff for music back in the days, where read / write speed made the difference once (when moving music in) then I never felt the need for more speed from them anyway.

That sounds like bad planning to me))) These MBPs are way too new to play the "later stage" card. If you purchased a Pro laptop and a year later realized that you're out of storage — that's just sad imho)

 

[ruka.snow]

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.

The two cameras you listed use CF, and XQD/CF Express as there card. The SD slot is for backup only and crippled the camera. You use the SD card for a wedding where you can’t lose a image so want the jpg backups on the SD card just in case. You aren’t working with nor transferring your images with the SD backup. Often that SD backup is put in a safe or filed away incase of data loss as a last resort. Your pulling these two up as examples but you might as well say that you transfer files on tape spools just because that is the final backup on a enterprise mainframe.

 

[vzand]

instead of paying that much money for that slow R/W speed, I bought a 2TB WD Black Game Drive for $165 (there is a deal recently). R/W speeds are around 900Mb/s.

2TB WD BLACK D30

 

[Zdigital2015]

Ohh we have come full circle and are now back to the time in 2012'ish where you could get a NIFTY Minidrive for the exact same purpose. This would be fun if it wasn't due to apple removing all upgrade options in chasing a few mm

A few millimeters that people on this forum seem to enjoy bitching about despite getting that precious SD Card slot and HDMI.

Lack of upgrades has more to do with integration of the SSD controller into the SoC and giving us Unified Memory which has several benefits over traditional SO-DIMMs to the PCH and then the CPU or even directly to the CPU. This upgradability has been gone from MBPs for almost
10 years now. When are people going to accept that this isn’t coming back and move on? Let it go.

 

[yabeweb]

That sounds like bad planning to me))) These MBPs are way too new to play the "later stage" card. If you purchased a Pro laptop and a year later realized that you're out of storage — that's just sad imho)

For me it's not bad planning, the one I get fits my Pro needs, I might add at a later date a small space for music and pics, something I do not need but like to have.

Also needs can change over time, what it might be fine now might not in 3-4 years, a pro machine is not something you keep 1 year anyway.

Get the most you can now, but it's nice to ass more later...... I forgot having choices and option is bad for Apple fans, glad I am only a happy Apple user.

instead of paying that much money for that slow R/W speed, I bought a 2TB WD Black Game Drive for $165 (there is a deal recently). R/W speeds are around 900Mb/s.

2TB WD BLACK D30

See it's great to have choices, for me, the ease of use, the "I won't forget to bring the hd" when I need it, make the slow r/w speed worth.

It's not like I am putting video for video production in there anyway

Some rooms for opener, some pics and some music, those do not need all that speed

But I can see why other needs an external drive, and it's great that both needs are addressed.

 

[Zdigital2015]

This is a moot point if you buy the storage size you need from the get go instead of trying to nickel and dime it, but not this crowd. Nope…nickel and dimers think they deserve an 8TB SSD and want it on the cheap and are astonished to find out that storage still costs a pretty penny. I’d love to take a poll to find out how many rubes here would vote for apple to include a 2.5” SATA bay on their next MBP, then they proceed to order the smallest possible size and then upgrade to an Inland Empire (or whatever the hell they’re called) 1TB Newegg Shellshocker Deal and gripe loudly about the performance of their NEW MacBook Pro.

Stop it. Apple isn’t going to do that and thank God. It’s not a PC, it’s a Mac, go buy a PC and **** it up to your heart’s delight, but stop bringing that nickel and dime PC Parts Picker mentality over here. We get it, Apple charges too much for upgrades and won’t let you do your own…I’ve heard it for 10 years since the 2012 Retina MBP launched. Go cling to your non-Retina MBPs and your 2012 Mac Pros while the rest of us move on and get done the things we need to get done.

 

[Zdigital2015]

This whole thread is the perfect microcosm of why Apple should have left the damn SD Card slot off the 2021 MacBook Pro instead of caving into the incessant whining of people on this forum. Good grief, SD Card is the most ubiquitous card format in use today, bar none. Apple gave the lowest common denominator to users. The rest of your esoteric card slots have zero penetration for the average consumer and are completely worthless to the conversation. Go buy a reader and move on. Feel free to dispute me, but you’re wrong.

 

[Trusteft]

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.

You mean SD cards in Apple laptops don't go all the way in? You need to get this specific version or else the card is partly outside? That's hilarious.
Still, thank you for the explanation.

 

[pshufd]

I got my MBP with 1 TB and 500 would have been enough so I don't really need one of these but I can just live with a standard SD card that sticks out. It's not a big deal for me.

 

[theluggage]

Lack of upgrades has more to do with integration of the SSD controller into the SoC and giving us Unified Memory which has several benefits over traditional SO-DIMMs to the PCH and then the CPU or even directly to the CPU.

There are good justifications for making the RAM non-upgradeable - it's not just M1 Macs, no systems with LPDDR RAM are upgradeable, having the shortest possible, lowest resistance connection to the CPU is part of the speed/power tradeoff. The M1 goes one step further by putting the RAM on the processor package.

SSD is a different matter - you won't see standard NVMe M.2 modules on a Mac because NVMe has an on-module controller whereas Macs have the SSD controller on the M1 processor or T2 chip and the SSD modules are more like "raw flash". However, even Apple's fast SSDs are running at a fraction of the speed of RAM and there's no reason why the flash has to be soldered in on anything bigger than an iPad - and, indeed, it isn't on the Mac Studio or the Mac Pro. Apple could offer after-market SSD upgrades if they chose to - and, in the case of the Mac Pro, they do. So far, they don't offer that for the Studio.

 

[pshufd]

I feel that the cloud has made up for media space for me.

I used to store videos on an SD card or on the SSD but now it's on a NAS in the basement and everyone can access the NAS so it solves a lot of problems. There are commercial cloud companies, like Apple if you need space when you're on the road. The JetDrive is a nice solution but I'm curious as to how many really need it over other solutions.

 

[EntropyQ3]

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.

The thing is that it arguably doesn't make sense at all.
First level analysis is, of course, "We'll make a ton of extra money when people upgrade their systems to the level they actually want/need. And if they don't, we'll sell another baseline model once they have to upgrade. Muahahaha!"
We all understand this.

However, there are a number of costs to Apple as well.
* Interested customers spec out a machine that they want, look at the resulting price tag, and simply say - "Nope."
These are lost sales, lost user base to platform for developers, and thus contributes to people also rejecting Macs due to lack of apps.
* Interested customers look at Apples policies, and say "This is ********". They might have accepted either the higher cost, or a baseline config, but object to what they perceive to be user hostile practices.
* Interested customers buy a lower config than they actually wanted, and are unhappy with having to, for instance, juggle storage to an SD-card, or experiencing bad performance when their minimum RAM runs out from something as simple as web browsing. Not a particularly premium experience.
* Interested customers actually do what Apple wants them to, but feel exploited. They aren't feeling happy about the purchase, they feel taken advantage of, and are both less likely to repeat buy, and less likely to encourage others to buy Macs.

Looking at the bigger picture, I believe it would yield both more customers in total, and more satisfied customers overall, if Apple didn't price gauge on upgrades, alternatively let them upgrade storage when they see fit. This in itself would generate more revenue. The fact that would also lead to more people buying Apples offerings directly rather than feeling compelled to look for external solutions would also generate both goodwill and revenue. The current state of affairs is a liability in terms of brand image, but I believe (I obviously can't put numbers on this) that even from a purely financial point of view, changing would represent a better way of doing business for the company.

 

[JosephAW]

That’s why I didn’t buy those for my Mid 2012 MBP, slow throughput.

 

[Scotticus]

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.

Do you work for the CompactFlash Association?

Even the smallest CF Express cards are thicker than standard SDs. And why would Apple go with a non-ubiquitous standard (with three different sizes - the fastest of which are much larger than standard SD cards) that only appeals to a subset of their customers?

 

[alexandr]

For me it's not bad planning, the one I get fits my Pro needs, I might add at a later date a small space for music and pics, something I do not need but like to have.

Also needs can change over time, what it might be fine now might not in 3-4 years, a pro machine is not something you keep 1 year anyway.

Get the most you can now, but it's nice to ass more later...... I forgot having choices and option is bad for Apple fans, glad I am only a happy Apple user.

My point was — when you're getting an expensive, pro laptop — you need to consider how long you're expecting to have it and plan storage/ram accordingly.

Not sure what exactly you forgot, or who told you that options are bad, definitely shouldn't have found that in my message. It great to have options and be able to "ass" more later, but 1tb is not going to be a game changer if you maxed out your MPB. This is, of course subjective, but if I'm maxed out — 1tb will only go so far.

 

[nwcs]

Do you work for the CompactFlash Association?

Even the smallest CF Express cards are thicker than standard SDs. And why would Apple go with a non-ubiquitous standard (with three different sizes - the fastest of which are much larger than standard SD cards) that only appeals to a subset of their customers?

Same reason why Apple went all in on USB-C on notebooks or abandoned the floppy or adopted USB in the first place: skate to where the puck is going, not where it is right now.

 

[Makosuke]

I don't really think the slot is really the issue here? The MacBook Pros have UHS-II slots, so they could conceivably have drive speeds easily 2-3X faster than these Transcend models (up to 312MB/s). UHS-III, which is pretty new and currently not in a Mac, can do more than 600MB/s. Or you can get super fast and super niche SD express.

Do any UHS-III cards actually exist in the wild? I was searching quite recently because I was curious what they cost, and was unable to find a single product anywhere. (Note: There were some off-brand UHS-I cards with U3 speed that were falsely being sold as "UHS-III.")

I was able to find a single SD Express card for sale, and announcements for a few others that don't seem to actually be available yet, but are there any cameras or other devices with an SD Express slot onboard on the market yet?

This is just a guess, but based on claimed speeds it seems like only the highest-end UHS-II cards are capable of maxing out the half-duplex speed of that bus, so there would be little real-world benefit at this point of an SD-Express card, and since it operates at UHS-I speeds in backward-compatibility mode, you'd actually be buying a slower card that UHS-II if you had a UHS-II device. Or, in the case of the MBP, putting in a slower slot for the UHS-II cards that people are actually using today, in favor of a future standard that nobody uses yet.

So THAT’S why Apple didn’t include a UHS-III, because it knew many users would be happy with the speed it offers and would choose it over expensive internal storage upgrades.

The slot in the new MPB is UHS-II, which has full-duplex speeds of ~150MB/s, and half-duplex speeds of over 300MB/s if you put a UHS-II card in it, and if there's even a UHS-III card on the market, please do post a link.

These Transcend cards are only UHS-I, which operates at one third the speed of UHS-II (50MB/s full-duplex and 100MB/s half-duplex) so the limitation in speed isn't the slot--the MBP as-shipped supports a hypothetical UHS-II flush-fit card with up to 300MB/s read/write speeds. However, fast UHS-II cards are really expensive so Transcend presumably didn't want to triple the price (or more), when relatively slow speeds are probably sufficient for the main use case of this thing.

If you want a ~300MB/s SD card you can buy one right now and use it in your MBP, it just won't sit flush and will cost you on the order of $1/GB of storage (Lexar has a few that are cheaper, but they're also much slower in write speed). I also can't seem to find any 1TB UHS-II cards, period.

All that said, the one area that I wish Apple would be less dead-set on an integrated architecture is M.2 SSD slots, given how quickly storage advances, how fast M.2 SSDs are, and that flash storage has a finite lifespan. Even RAM I can accept for most machines, but given the bulk of the current MBP surely they could have squeezed an M.2 slot in, at least as a "second drive" storage in addition to the integrated storage, and it's really disappointing that the desktops don't have any way to upgrade fast internal storage. C'mon, just slap an M.2 slot in under that screw-bottom on the Mini!

 

[Fuzzi]

These are perfect for frequent backups of my most important data, so in case of internal ssd failure I still have a backup. (Of course also backing up to external disks, but while on the go this is great)

 

[CarlJ]

SD is a "lowest common denominator" slot for the convenience of having a card reader built into the Mac.

Yep, if they put in a CF slot instead, more of their customers would have to use a USB-to-SD dongle than currently have to use a USB-to-CF dongle.

In any case, my SD slot will get used exclusively for writing MicroSD drives for Raspberry Pi's. I would have been a lot happier with an Ethernet jack (it's not something I'd use often, but hanging a lengthy Ethernet cable off of an Ethernet-to-USB dongle is a lot more risky than having a USB-to-SD dongle hanging off the side of the MBP).

 

[CarlJ]

Basically, the A-series chips have the all the SSD controller logic and fimware that's usually on an NVMe SSD itself built directly into the SOC, so it only talks with raw flash storage modules. Since you can't buy raw flash storage modules, Apple's just soldered them for now (or made custom swappable modules in the case of the Mac Studio).

This makes a lot of sense, but I still wish they had made the flash storage modules in the MBP socketed rather than soldered - so if one develops a problem 3-4 years down the road, they could replace the module (yes, would have to restore from backups), rather than replacing the entire motherboard. And, hell, if flash becomes cheaper down the road (as tech advances), and I need more storage, I'd be happier to have an upgrade path that's "let Apple charge me an arm and a leg to swap my 2 TB of flash for 4 or 8 TB of flash" rather than having to resort to "sell this machine and buy a new one". I had previous Mac laptops (2004, 2008, 2011) that all benefited greatly from having replaceable storage and RAM (it was a bonus that it was user-replaceable, but I would have settled for Apple-replaceable).

 

[mdw1]

Does the T7 still force you to install questionable software (likened to a root kit if I remember correctly) in order to access the full storage space and speed?

I put a new T7 a month ago on my Time Capsule, I just formatted it and hooked it up and works great, so you can use it after formatting it.

 

[torontotim]

I have an old NifyMiniDrive for the 15" Retina MBP that I understand fits perfectly in the 16" 2021 MBP. I have the 14" model and this card protrudes just a bit. From what I've read I need the old 13" NiftyMiniDrive model.

Lets you use a microsd card - better than spending money on a proprietary size SD card like these ones.

If anyone wants it - hit me up and let's make a deal

 

[maxoakland]

I think the general consensus from the Ashai Linux project reverse-engineering these Macs is that it's a byproduct of the M1 being a scaled-up iPhone/iPad chip more than anything else. Basically, the A-series chips have the all the SSD controller logic and fimware that's usually on an NVMe SSD itself built directly into the SOC

They’ve been doing this since the 2016 MacBook Pros, so that’s definitely not their reason

 

[Zdigital2015]

They’ve been doing this since the 2016 MacBook Pros, so that’s definitely not their reason

No matter how many times you explain this to people here, there is simply a contingent that just won’t accept the reality.