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To me it feels more as if they are losing their vision. The design of the new MacBooks looks a bit dated, too. The SoC seems to be fantastic, though. As for po
by kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
To me it feels more as if they are losing their vision. The design of the new MacBooks looks a bit dated, too. The SoC seems to be fantastic, though.
As for ports, who still uses SD cards? Most people only take photographs with their phones and sync to the cloud directly.
- e-clinton 5y agoWhat Apple has done here is accept that MacBook Pros are indeed for Pros. Who uses SD cards? Pros! In Apple’s view, the people who use only their phones for photos will be perfectly served with the M1 machines (Air, Pro 13, iPads). The ugly design is because they realize that it’s the lowest priority for Pros… performance and ports are far more important.
- least 5y agoBoth the SD card slot and HDMI port are on release outdated. SD card reader is limited to UHS-II when UHS-III is out and the HDMI connector is 2.0 instead of 2.1. I'm assuming they're using the pci-e lanes that would've been consumed by the thunderbolt 4 connector it replaces which would mean it'd require an additional controller to meet the bandwidth requirements for both UHS-III and HDMI 2.1 (which consumes 48gbps on its own), but I wouldn't exactly describe either of these connectors more "pro." I'd describe them as convenient.
- goalieca 5y agoThe pro is for professionals which include photographers.
- Godel_unicode 5y agoAlso 3d printing, single board computers, drones...
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoAll fringe hobbyist activities, not "pro" stuff (except perhaps photo drones). I don't think that many people are photographers, overall. Most people who buy "Pros" probably work in an office and their company buys the computers for them.
- Godel_unicode 5y agoWhere to even start with this. What if I told you that just because you can't imagine it doesn't mean it doesn't exist? There are tons of small businesses in the physical automation space that run on hooking SBCs up to various things. Many of their components are 3d-printed, by them, until they get everything laid out just right. Source: security evaluations for the software those people write is an extremely lucrative side-hustle, and it's all word of mouth. The photography business you casually ignore is quite large (Google "wedding photographer" in your city and then realize that most photographers don't even shoot weddings). Or just realize that on the order of 200k DSLRs ship in a given month, almost all using SD as at least one of the onboard cards. Add to that the high-end mirrorless segment which is about the same size, plus all the GoPro addicts (and just to head off the inevitable "what pro uses GoPros" comment, go look at b-roll in any car review). Then round it out with the dashcam/security camera crowd that either doesn't trust wifi or is required to have on-device recording for regulatory reasons. There are also lots of scientific instruments which use SD cards for data logging in remote locations, especially since they're cheap so you can buy 2-3 from different manufacturers and duplicate the writes without appreciably increasing cost. Ditto other kinds of data loggers like IoT stuff that actually uses an air gap.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoCan't you connect modern cameras to USB-C directly, though?
- Godel_unicode 5y agoYes you can use your DSLR as a +500g (without the lens, or the mic, or the cage) dongle. There is a huge list of problems with this approach but it boils down to the simple truism that, for pros, ports are good and dongles are bad.
- amelius 5y agoPerhaps time for pro cameras to include better connectivity options such as WiFi?
- detaro 5y agoI very much doubt that'd be "better" in any meaningful way, at least for the use case that a card reader covers. You still want removable storage, it's useful to be able to read that storage without the camera, ...
- JKCalhoun 5y agoKind of don't want that. Out "in the field" there may be (will often be) no WiFi. I want removable storage.
- amelius 5y agoYeah, but you can use your camera as a storage drive which you access over WiFi.
- hstaab 5y agoI prefer physical mediums to sending data over the network. Especially when there are no benefits in doing so.
- wbsss4412 5y agoIn what way would WIFI be better? SD cards work and work well.
- amelius 5y agoYou still use SD cards. But you access them through WiFI and your camera.
- chrisseaton 5y agoEveryone is a 'pro' at something. The term's meaningless. Vast majority of pros don't need any ports whatsoever and can do with a MacBook Air.
- e-clinton 5y agoYes, if you believe everyone is a “pro”, then I agree most pros don’t need any ports. Hence why the IPad Pro and iPhone Pro exists. That should be enough computing power for most “pros”
- Anechoic 5y agoAs for ports, who still uses SD cards? SD cards are used for a lot more than just cameras, especially among pros of many different stripes.
- hellweaver666 5y agoAgreed. I spend a lot of time writing SD cards for use in various projects I do using the Raspberry Pi. Unusual for a week to go by when I'm not doing it.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoYeah they don't have to add ugly SD card readers in there MacBooks for people who want to use Raspberry Pis.
- yreg 5y agoLess than 50% of people using SD cards is not a great argument for removing the SD card slot from the 'Pro' MacBook.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoWhat about less than 5% of people using it?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- svantana 5y agoI've used the SD slot to flash the OS for raspberry pi's, not sure how I would have solved it otherwise.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoDongle. But, yeah, I prefer the convenience of an integrated slot.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoYou can buy a card reader for 5$.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoIf you go down the "most people" path, all the ports go away. I am certainly not most people but still use SD cards as a "thumb drive", to format for the Raspberry Pi, for my wife's dash cam, and I also have a few digital cameras I still use that are SD-card based. I do however expect this will be the last MacBook with an SD card slot.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago"If you go down the "most people" path, all the ports go away." Exactly.
- dylan604 5y agoGoPros and other action cams. Wild life cameras. Dashcams. RaspberryPi. These are things that just popped to the front of mind. I'm sure there's plenty of other things that we could find that you were also unable to think about.
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoI can think of things that use SD cards. Just not very relevant things. Like if you read the card from your wild life camera once per month, you can easily attach a card reader.
- dylan604 5y ago>Just not very relevant things to you. FTFY. Luckily, you're not in charge of what other people think are relevant and find useful.