5 ms·

Yup. I generally like Apple products, but this feels like a step back towards limiting 'solutions' when the industry is finally catching up with proprietary 'e

Yup. I generally like Apple products, but this feels like a step back towards limiting 'solutions' when the industry is finally catching up with proprietary 'enhancements'. USB-C magnetic break-away cables are absolutely a thing that exist. Zero question Apple could have shipped a solution using this, if they wanted. Fast Charge over USB-PD was probably never going to make it in a 2021 product (PD 3.1 was only 'released' in May or something), but "we just added the most efficient processor in years" seems like a weird time to also say "oh and also you can charge it up real quick". I am not a photographer, by any means, but my impression is that a lot of weekend-warrior/"prosumer" types use cameras with SD cards still. Whether because the camera only supports SD or because SD is cheaper than the 'high end' cards.. most online discussions I see about this will routinely have people who do claim to be professional photographers, stating that SD cards are generally not used - they're on high end cameras as a backup, and that they just use a fast external card reader anyway. I can see an argument that HDMI is more convenient if you're going into a meeting room... but in that scenario (a) you're just assuming they have HDMI, and not any of the other various video ports a projector might have, and (b) wouldn't the MacBook Air be a better choice then? I struggle to see the overlap between "Needs the absolute fastest CPU, GPU and most memory" and "needs a laptop ideally suited for meeting rooms".

matwood 5y ago
The cynic in me says that Apple couldn't figure out how to get 4 tb4 ports on an M1 so threw some single use ports in as a stop gap. I just feel like if they had really sat down and designed the computer around adding these ports back, the latest version of HDMI would have been used. As for the SD cards, I have mirrorless and dslrs that use sd cards, and don't really care about sd in the machine or not. I think many people who are clamoring for an sdcard want to use it as quasi permanent extra storage. /shrug
- stephenr 5y ago
  I tend to agree with you that the HDMI port is actually a 'stop gap' - TB4 mandates 32Gbit - so every port requires the equivalent of a 4x PCIe3 link, (this is what the previous models used to drive two ports). So 4 TB4 ports would mean 16 PCIe3 lanes (I can't find if the M1 derivatives are v3 or v4 - if they're v4 I believe they'd require half the lanes per port as the lanes are double the speed), which maybe is more than they wanted to allocate. The only way I can see this makes sense in anyway, that isn't just "Apple cheaped out on the bandwidth" is that they were caught off guard by Intel's TB4 (which sets the minimum bandwidth requirement) announcement last January, just 6 months before they announced they were transitioning off Intel. They no doubt had the CPU designs at least somewhat done already, so maybe they'd been planning for TB3 ports - but even in that scenario, it's a cop out if their brand spanking new CPU designed in 2021 can't support more external I/O than it's predecessor from half a decade earlier. I've seen people saying the SD card is "a great option for a storage upgrade".. I guess it's an option but I wouldn't call it great, given the speed difference compared to a modern NVMe (either the built in drive or an external one).

matwood 5y ago

The cynic in me says that Apple couldn't figure out how to get 4 tb4 ports on an M1 so threw some single use ports in as a stop gap. I just feel like if they had really sat down and designed the computer around adding these ports back, the latest version of HDMI would have been used. As for the SD cards, I have mirrorless and dslrs that use sd cards, and don't really care about sd in the machine or not. I think many people who are clamoring for an sdcard want to use it as quasi permanent extra storage. /shrug

stephenr 5y ago
I tend to agree with you that the HDMI port is actually a 'stop gap' - TB4 mandates 32Gbit - so every port requires the equivalent of a 4x PCIe3 link, (this is what the previous models used to drive two ports). So 4 TB4 ports would mean 16 PCIe3 lanes (I can't find if the M1 derivatives are v3 or v4 - if they're v4 I believe they'd require half the lanes per port as the lanes are double the speed), which maybe is more than they wanted to allocate. The only way I can see this makes sense in anyway, that isn't just "Apple cheaped out on the bandwidth" is that they were caught off guard by Intel's TB4 (which sets the minimum bandwidth requirement) announcement last January, just 6 months before they announced they were transitioning off Intel. They no doubt had the CPU designs at least somewhat done already, so maybe they'd been planning for TB3 ports - but even in that scenario, it's a cop out if their brand spanking new CPU designed in 2021 can't support more external I/O than it's predecessor from half a decade earlier. I've seen people saying the SD card is "a great option for a storage upgrade".. I guess it's an option but I wouldn't call it great, given the speed difference compared to a modern NVMe (either the built in drive or an external one).