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Its absurd that Apple decided adding a direct port for a second monitor needs a "Pro" MacBook. My sister was given a M2 and had to use external dongles which t

Its absurd that Apple decided adding a direct port for a second monitor needs a "Pro" MacBook. My sister was given a M2 and had to use external dongles which then needed DisplayLink to be installed. None of this is necessary.

drooopy 4y ago
100%. An SD card slot and a video out port are not pro features. A typical college freshman will need both of those, regardless of their discipline. In fact, my entry level, 13" MacBook Air had those a decade ago.
- AdamN 4y ago
  SD card is kind of niche these days - it's really just for people with a camera and most people just use a phone at this point. HDMI out though is definitely still useful for regular people (presentations, conferences, TV, etc...)
  - asdff 4y ago
    some internet of things stuff like a webcam will write data to an sd card.
- dalyons 4y ago
  Very few people use SD cards these days, with the massive decline in camera usage.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    The SD card slot is a pretty good way to get yourself a little more disk space - a perennial problem with students in particular. There are a couple of companies that make aluminum trays sized to exactly fill the sd card slot on older Macbooks and remain flush (there's a detente for sticking a wire in to pull it out. The tray has wiring for a microSD card. On that machine, I moved my iTunes library there. Since it's read-only, I don't need to worry too much about wear or write IO bandwidth.
    - dalyons 4y ago
      > a perennial problem with students in particular. is it? AFAIK kids these days need less storage than ever before, because everything's cloud based. No one has itunes libraries, its spotify/applemusic subscriptions. etc.
      - hinkley 4y ago
        Learning to declutter is a life skill. The younger you are the less likely you’ve climbed that mountain. Nintendo switch or gaming computer might be a more common problem than music collection.
      - asdff 4y ago
        Some stuff like photo or video will eat up your freeish cloud based storage for long. iphone backups into icloud too. then you are into the $120 a year plans for like 2tb of storage even though that can probably buy 4tb of local storage these days. they sell 1tb phones for a reason, people have a lot of files.

drooopy 4y ago

100%. An SD card slot and a video out port are not pro features. A typical college freshman will need both of those, regardless of their discipline. In fact, my entry level, 13" MacBook Air had those a decade ago.

AdamN 4y ago
SD card is kind of niche these days - it's really just for people with a camera and most people just use a phone at this point. HDMI out though is definitely still useful for regular people (presentations, conferences, TV, etc...)
- asdff 4y ago
  some internet of things stuff like a webcam will write data to an sd card.
dalyons 4y ago
Very few people use SD cards these days, with the massive decline in camera usage.
- hinkley 4y ago
  The SD card slot is a pretty good way to get yourself a little more disk space - a perennial problem with students in particular. There are a couple of companies that make aluminum trays sized to exactly fill the sd card slot on older Macbooks and remain flush (there's a detente for sticking a wire in to pull it out. The tray has wiring for a microSD card. On that machine, I moved my iTunes library there. Since it's read-only, I don't need to worry too much about wear or write IO bandwidth.
  - dalyons 4y ago
    > a perennial problem with students in particular. is it? AFAIK kids these days need less storage than ever before, because everything's cloud based. No one has itunes libraries, its spotify/applemusic subscriptions. etc.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      Learning to declutter is a life skill. The younger you are the less likely you’ve climbed that mountain. Nintendo switch or gaming computer might be a more common problem than music collection.
    - asdff 4y ago
      Some stuff like photo or video will eat up your freeish cloud based storage for long. iphone backups into icloud too. then you are into the $120 a year plans for like 2tb of storage even though that can probably buy 4tb of local storage these days. they sell 1tb phones for a reason, people have a lot of files.