6 ms·

I think the SD card example encapsulates the issue perfectly. I'm pretty sure that in 2021 that is an _extreme_ niche use case. I feel like only extremely serio

I think the SD card example encapsulates the issue perfectly. I'm pretty sure that in 2021 that is an _extreme_ niche use case. I feel like only extremely serious photographers and perhaps a particular slice of musicians use them. It makes absolutely no sense for them to have that built into the laptop. 99% of people who own Macbooks or whatever don't own an SD card dongle because they don't need it. However, and extra USB-C port can be used for a multitude of things, including being an SD card reader if you have the dongle. It's completely logical. > The whole point of laptop is to save YOU space and headache or space in your BAG! It most certainly is not. The point of a laptop is to strike a balance between portability and usability. Requiring the extra like two cubic inches of space in your bag for a dongle is assuredly not a design concern.

sib 6y ago
And most "extremely serious photographers" today are probably using cameras for which SD cards are not the storage format (or at least the preferred format.)
- Terretta 6y ago
  Exactly. And since we might carry more than one model of camera with dissimilar memory cards, the Mac could need 3 or 4 slots. That’s why the good pro photo USB-C adapters have 3 or 4 slots. Further, those readers seem to be made /just/ fast enough to read ahead of the current speeds, so when new speeds come out, you need a faster reader. That works fine if you have a USB 3.1 or USB 3.2 adapter, but not so great if the reader is built into a laptop with an otherwise much longer life.
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  It Depends how you measure "extremely serious photographers". Starting from Nikon d610 you have descent quality on sd-card plus portability in the same time. I understand that you can't put all the ports in the world in the laptop and while CF Cards reader would also be useful for photography I think sd-card reader or even micro-sd-card reader gives a compromise for mobile solution that covers many needs. Lack of this sd-card reader gives additional headache and nothing more useful as I see it.
webmobdev 6y ago
> It makes absolutely no sense for them to have that built into the laptop. 99% of people who own Macbooks or whatever don't own an SD card dongle because they don't need it. That's the issue - you are speaking only from an Apple user perspective. Android (and other non-apple) phones allow us to extend our storage with sd cards, and they are mostly used to store and transfer photos and videos.
- EvilPaticus 6y ago
  Is that an Apple user perspective or just reality for the average user? I recently had an Android phone for a while and never thought to use an SD card because it had plenty of internal storage. I can say the same about my family and friends who use Android devices, I can't think of any who use SD cards at this point. Even in the past when I did use an SD card in my phone, I simply plugged my phone into the computer and wrote to the SD card that way, I don't recall ever removing the card.
- bigiain 6y ago
  > Android (and other non-apple) phones allow us to extend our storage with sd cards /me looks glumly at my Apple-ized Samsung Galaxy S6Edge, with no SD card or removable battery. (Both of which would make the S6/GearVR combo significantly more useful...)
- thw0rted 6y ago
  I'm an Android user whose phone supports microSD. I never take the card out of my phone -- it's a PITA, requires an ejector tool I always manage to misplace, and I think I'm only supposed to do it with the phone powered off -- but I do plug my phone into a computer to move files on and off of it. I do this with a USB-C cable.
dvdkon 6y ago
I use my notebook's SD card reader all the time. Cameras, ARM SBCs, 3D printers, random SD cards I find laying around... There's plenty of use cases for an SD card reader, I certainly use video out on my notebook much less.
- tait 6y ago
  > random SD cards I find laying around Can we explore that a bit? Laying around your house? Or like on the ground at work? I seem to remember some corporate espionage that relied on people looking at random SD cards they found on the ground...
  - dvdkon 6y ago
    Mostly my and my friends' homes, but I do remember finding an SD card on the ground once... Do you think I'm being targeted by spies? :) It had someone's pictures on it, but no identifying information, so I had no way of returning it. Thankfully random SD cards should be much safer than random USB devices, but it's probably better to be careful.
    - bigiain 6y ago
      > It had someone's pictures on it, but no identifying information, so I had no way of returning it. You could hav put your laptop on a network with heaps of monitoring going on, and then mailed it back to NSA/GRU/MSS/Mossad as required based on the ip addresses your machine started connecting to... ;-)
- opan 6y ago
  It's also the main storage on the Wii, DSi, 3DS, (maybe Wii U, but it also had USB storage. I guess the Wii did too.) and Switch. An SD card reader lets you back up your game saves or install homebrew. More recently there's the PinePhone as well. It's not just expandable storage, you can boot off the SD and have all your OS and files there. I would say I definitely use SD cards more than flash drives now.
ogre_codes 6y ago
I generally think the whole dongle issue is over exaggerated, you can mostly just buy new cables (once) and be done with it. The SD reader is one of the big exceptions I think. If you always need a cable to do something, you can just replace the cable with a USB-C one and be done with it. Having an integrated reader is handy for a fair number of people and it’s something where you don’t otherwise need an adaptor.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  The new cables means your cables aren't backwards compatible though - one day you need to plug in a display port cable to someone's desktop/old laptop and you don't have the cable on you, because you replaced it to avoid dongles. Dongles are both cheaper and more flexible than replacing the cable, at the cost of having a slightly shittier experience.
lovelyviking 6y ago
>I think the SD card example encapsulates the issue perfectly It does. Micro-sd-card reader fits even in raspberryPi Zero ... Neglectable "space saving" advantage vs huge usability disadvantage. > The point of a laptop is to strike a balance between portability and usability. I think MacbookPro should be about philosophy of amplifying creative person with power tools for creativity in a portable way. Not a dumb machine mimicking more and more some TV . While this it should also do easily it shouldn't do just this, I think. Look at my use-case: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=26271855 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=26271855 From my perspective of extensive use of a laptop some people barely use laptops at all and thus perhaps they better be designing something else because for me it appears they have no idea what 'Pro' usage is. When you travel you never know what environment you'll have and therefor ports and connectivity make a difference between: Creative idea done/ not done. >Requiring the extra like two cubic inches of space in your bag for a dongle is assuredly not a design concern. It's not 2 cubic inches. It's huge adapter with all missing ports. Why Pro Laptop should consist of two parts is beyond me. Again look at my use-case. I have no place for dongles nor time for dealing with them. If those real 'Pro' requirements are not a design concerns then perhaps MacbookPro should not have 'Pro' in the title in my opinion.
- craftkiller 6y ago
  This looks to satisfy all your requirements from your original post: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1514535-REG/sabrent_cr_bca2_usb_3_0_and_usb.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1514535-REG/sabrent_c... Its ~2 cubic inches and doesn't dangle on a cable so you don't need a table/lap. As for your more detailed post you just linked to: > Only for that purpose more ports are justified because I would prefer to have 4 at least to connect all 3 iOS devices plus hard_drive for backup etc. If there is additional monitor around that I could use I would love to use it which means I need HDMI/display port. USB4/thunderbolt 4 allows for type c hubs that also support alt-modes like displayport alt-mode so you can have a small cellphone-sized hub to significantly increase your ports: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08RYZJY8M https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08RYZJY8M > I would also need HDMI/DP/DVI or even VGA port to have external screen connected. Surely you're not suggesting that laptops built in 2021 should have a VGA port? This is exactly what tomtheelder was referring to when he said: > I'm pretty sure that in 2021 that is an _extreme_ niche use case [...] 99% of people who own Macbooks or whatever don't own an SD card dongle because they don't need it. However, and extra USB-C port can be used for a multitude of things Just think of all the extra thickness Apple would be adding to their laptops just to fit a VGA port 99.9% of people would never use.
lmm 6y ago
If we actually got enough USB-C ports to make up for all the removed ports (like, 8 or so?) then I'd agree with you, and be willing to put up with the temporary pain of dongles for the sake of a glorious future where everything's USB-C. But we've ended up with the worst of both worlds: say I bring out my laptop for movie night and I want to plug in power, projector, surround sound, a DVD drive, and a mouse, that was easy 5-10 years ago and it's impossible now.
- opan 6y ago
  They make hubs/docks with many ports that only need one of your USB-C ports. There's also daisy-chaining to consider. I think you most likely could connect all those things.
  - lmm 6y ago
    I ended up having to daisy chain a dock to a USB hub, and then I would get errors if I connected the wrong things to the hub because I was breaking the 7 hub limit (turns out a lot of things have extra internal hubs). Obviously I did get it to work eventually, but it felt a lot more complicated and fragile than in the old days.
- c17r 6y ago
  This is my complaint about the latest iPhones. I’m fine with the move from analog to digital but WHY just one port!?

sib 6y ago

And most "extremely serious photographers" today are probably using cameras for which SD cards are not the storage format (or at least the preferred format.)

Terretta 6y ago
Exactly. And since we might carry more than one model of camera with dissimilar memory cards, the Mac could need 3 or 4 slots. That’s why the good pro photo USB-C adapters have 3 or 4 slots. Further, those readers seem to be made /just/ fast enough to read ahead of the current speeds, so when new speeds come out, you need a faster reader. That works fine if you have a USB 3.1 or USB 3.2 adapter, but not so great if the reader is built into a laptop with an otherwise much longer life.
lovelyviking 6y ago
It Depends how you measure "extremely serious photographers". Starting from Nikon d610 you have descent quality on sd-card plus portability in the same time. I understand that you can't put all the ports in the world in the laptop and while CF Cards reader would also be useful for photography I think sd-card reader or even micro-sd-card reader gives a compromise for mobile solution that covers many needs. Lack of this sd-card reader gives additional headache and nothing more useful as I see it.

webmobdev 6y ago

> It makes absolutely no sense for them to have that built into the laptop. 99% of people who own Macbooks or whatever don't own an SD card dongle because they don't need it. That's the issue - you are speaking only from an Apple user perspective. Android (and other non-apple) phones allow us to extend our storage with sd cards, and they are mostly used to store and transfer photos and videos.

EvilPaticus 6y ago
Is that an Apple user perspective or just reality for the average user? I recently had an Android phone for a while and never thought to use an SD card because it had plenty of internal storage. I can say the same about my family and friends who use Android devices, I can't think of any who use SD cards at this point. Even in the past when I did use an SD card in my phone, I simply plugged my phone into the computer and wrote to the SD card that way, I don't recall ever removing the card.
bigiain 6y ago
> Android (and other non-apple) phones allow us to extend our storage with sd cards /me looks glumly at my Apple-ized Samsung Galaxy S6Edge, with no SD card or removable battery. (Both of which would make the S6/GearVR combo significantly more useful...)
thw0rted 6y ago
I'm an Android user whose phone supports microSD. I never take the card out of my phone -- it's a PITA, requires an ejector tool I always manage to misplace, and I think I'm only supposed to do it with the phone powered off -- but I do plug my phone into a computer to move files on and off of it. I do this with a USB-C cable.

dvdkon 6y ago

I use my notebook's SD card reader all the time. Cameras, ARM SBCs, 3D printers, random SD cards I find laying around... There's plenty of use cases for an SD card reader, I certainly use video out on my notebook much less.

tait 6y ago
> random SD cards I find laying around Can we explore that a bit? Laying around your house? Or like on the ground at work? I seem to remember some corporate espionage that relied on people looking at random SD cards they found on the ground...
- dvdkon 6y ago
  Mostly my and my friends' homes, but I do remember finding an SD card on the ground once... Do you think I'm being targeted by spies? :) It had someone's pictures on it, but no identifying information, so I had no way of returning it. Thankfully random SD cards should be much safer than random USB devices, but it's probably better to be careful.
  - bigiain 6y ago
    > It had someone's pictures on it, but no identifying information, so I had no way of returning it. You could hav put your laptop on a network with heaps of monitoring going on, and then mailed it back to NSA/GRU/MSS/Mossad as required based on the ip addresses your machine started connecting to... ;-)
opan 6y ago
It's also the main storage on the Wii, DSi, 3DS, (maybe Wii U, but it also had USB storage. I guess the Wii did too.) and Switch. An SD card reader lets you back up your game saves or install homebrew. More recently there's the PinePhone as well. It's not just expandable storage, you can boot off the SD and have all your OS and files there. I would say I definitely use SD cards more than flash drives now.

ogre_codes 6y ago

I generally think the whole dongle issue is over exaggerated, you can mostly just buy new cables (once) and be done with it. The SD reader is one of the big exceptions I think. If you always need a cable to do something, you can just replace the cable with a USB-C one and be done with it. Having an integrated reader is handy for a fair number of people and it’s something where you don’t otherwise need an adaptor.

Qwertious 6y ago
The new cables means your cables aren't backwards compatible though - one day you need to plug in a display port cable to someone's desktop/old laptop and you don't have the cable on you, because you replaced it to avoid dongles. Dongles are both cheaper and more flexible than replacing the cable, at the cost of having a slightly shittier experience.

lovelyviking 6y ago

>I think the SD card example encapsulates the issue perfectly It does. Micro-sd-card reader fits even in raspberryPi Zero ... Neglectable "space saving" advantage vs huge usability disadvantage. > The point of a laptop is to strike a balance between portability and usability. I think MacbookPro should be about philosophy of amplifying creative person with power tools for creativity in a portable way. Not a dumb machine mimicking more and more some TV . While this it should also do easily it shouldn't do just this, I think. Look at my use-case: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=26271855 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=26271855 From my perspective of extensive use of a laptop some people barely use laptops at all and thus perhaps they better be designing something else because for me it appears they have no idea what 'Pro' usage is. When you travel you never know what environment you'll have and therefor ports and connectivity make a difference between: Creative idea done/ not done. >Requiring the extra like two cubic inches of space in your bag for a dongle is assuredly not a design concern. It's not 2 cubic inches. It's huge adapter with all missing ports. Why Pro Laptop should consist of two parts is beyond me. Again look at my use-case. I have no place for dongles nor time for dealing with them. If those real 'Pro' requirements are not a design concerns then perhaps MacbookPro should not have 'Pro' in the title in my opinion.

craftkiller 6y ago
This looks to satisfy all your requirements from your original post: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1514535-REG/sabrent_cr_bca2_usb_3_0_and_usb.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1514535-REG/sabrent_c... Its ~2 cubic inches and doesn't dangle on a cable so you don't need a table/lap. As for your more detailed post you just linked to: > Only for that purpose more ports are justified because I would prefer to have 4 at least to connect all 3 iOS devices plus hard_drive for backup etc. If there is additional monitor around that I could use I would love to use it which means I need HDMI/display port. USB4/thunderbolt 4 allows for type c hubs that also support alt-modes like displayport alt-mode so you can have a small cellphone-sized hub to significantly increase your ports: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08RYZJY8M https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08RYZJY8M > I would also need HDMI/DP/DVI or even VGA port to have external screen connected. Surely you're not suggesting that laptops built in 2021 should have a VGA port? This is exactly what tomtheelder was referring to when he said: > I'm pretty sure that in 2021 that is an _extreme_ niche use case [...] 99% of people who own Macbooks or whatever don't own an SD card dongle because they don't need it. However, and extra USB-C port can be used for a multitude of things Just think of all the extra thickness Apple would be adding to their laptops just to fit a VGA port 99.9% of people would never use.

lmm 6y ago

If we actually got enough USB-C ports to make up for all the removed ports (like, 8 or so?) then I'd agree with you, and be willing to put up with the temporary pain of dongles for the sake of a glorious future where everything's USB-C. But we've ended up with the worst of both worlds: say I bring out my laptop for movie night and I want to plug in power, projector, surround sound, a DVD drive, and a mouse, that was easy 5-10 years ago and it's impossible now.

opan 6y ago
They make hubs/docks with many ports that only need one of your USB-C ports. There's also daisy-chaining to consider. I think you most likely could connect all those things.
- lmm 6y ago
  I ended up having to daisy chain a dock to a USB hub, and then I would get errors if I connected the wrong things to the hub because I was breaking the 7 hub limit (turns out a lot of things have extra internal hubs). Obviously I did get it to work eventually, but it felt a lot more complicated and fragile than in the old days.
c17r 6y ago
This is my complaint about the latest iPhones. I’m fine with the move from analog to digital but WHY just one port!?