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Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

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Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#271

Post by dunmalg »

texasbigdata wrote: post #220
fluffything wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a MacBook Air 2012 with an SD card reader. It has a 256GB SSD drive, and a 1 TB SD Card inside that I use for storing photos, video, music, etc. essentially everything that does not need fast storage. This laptop was only meant to be a 1 year temporary solution, so I’ve been waiting 9 years to upgrade. I’ve yet to find a new reasonably priced MacBook with 1,256Gb of built in storage. Carrying an external drive…

This is sort of unreasonable too hot too cold type thinking. If you need a certain price point for a certain feature, why not expand to not limiting your search to only one manufacturer, which seems to be your binding constraint here since you’ve delayed updating 7 years, instead of expecting a manufacturer that has less than 10% of the total market share of an industry to meet you needs?

>why not expand to not limiting your search to only one manufacturer

Software. People become accustomed to the closed ecosystem of OSX, which you can't duplicate on others' hardware. This is a key facet of Apple's business model and as GP poster illustrates, it works. Apple can screw up the hardware for 7 years, and GP poster will simply wait for them to come back to doing it right.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#272

Post by veridies »

exhilaration wrote: post #262
varispeed wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use SD cards daily to transfer data from cameras or different devices for further processing. It is handy to be able to just slide it in. I also have a dongle in an other laptop which works fine, but you need to be careful with these - I bought one cheaper dongle and it totally destroyed my SD card upon inserting. Unfortunately there was no backup as there was original material on it. So now I first do backup on a…

The dramatic decline in camera sales has been discussed a few times on HN, here's a random google result: https://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/dont-look-at-this-graph-sho... Cameras are rapidly turning into a niche product, it makes no sense for any laptop manufacturer to include an SD card reader at this point.

Cameras are used for multiple professional purposes, including videography and commercial photography. SD cards are also used in devices such as Zoom audio recorders, which I often use for recording music. Especially right now, I'll loan a Zoom and a nice mic to a musician so that they can record tracks for me remotely.

They're also the standard boot device for computers like the Raspberry Pi. Basically, they're a professional tool which one might expect in a professional laptop.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#273

Post by cassianoleal »

retromario wrote: post #167
BluSyn wrote: post #14

My controversial hot take-- I have never needed an SD card, and have gone all-in on USB-C. I will be very disappointed if they add back in USB-A/HDMI/SD ports, or remove USB-C charging in favor of proprietary charge port. Sounds like unnecessary feature bloat. Please just do MagSage + USB-C, so I can maintain my one-cable-for-everything, making traveling lighter and simpler. Here's my counter argument to all those th…

> eg, having a custom one-touch screen lock button that's always present Do you know that clicking the TouchID button will lock your screen?

Indeed. So does ⌘⌃q (Command+Control+q).

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#274

Post by oblio »

varispeed wrote: post #266
exhilaration wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dramatic decline in camera sales has been discussed a few times on HN, here's a random google result: https://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/dont-look-at-this-graph-sho... Cameras are rapidly turning into a niche product, it makes no sense for any laptop manufacturer to include an SD card reader at this point.

That's interesting. I also use SD cards to transfer data from my phone (I make tons of photos). I used to do it by connecting via USB cable, but after a couple of months the USB-C port worn out and no longer works, so for me the only reasonable way to get the data out is through an SD card. I tried things like setting up network server and sending files wirelessly but that was flaky.

You're an outlier. Most people don't take and process as many photos as you, and if they do, the processing is Instagram filters :-) Also the need to transfer photos around has decreased drastically with social media sharing and cloud storage.

You'll see in the next few years that smartphones, tablets, laptops will cater less and less to your needs. Sad... But probably inevitable.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#275

Post by wtallis »

mbirth wrote: post #76
grishka wrote: post #42

The last paragraph mentioning touchscreens is weird. Please don't add a touchscreen to a device running a desktop OS. 99% of people won't be using it anyway, but it would lead to those atrocious spacious phone-style UIs I despise so much.

Think of the new M1 macs and how they can run iPad apps and how lots of developers opted out of their apps being offered for those new Macs because their apps are meant to be used on a touchscreen, not via trackpad and keyboard.

That opting-out is a good sign. Apple and their customers shouldn't want the Mac platform to become polluted with half-assed ports that retain a touch-oriented UI rather than designing a UI that's actually appropriate for desktops and laptops.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#276

Post by oblio »

minikites wrote: post #228
rbanffy wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extra port competes with USB-C. If Apple wants to make USB-C more valuable to users, they must ensure companies make more products for it and, therefore, remove such redundant ports. I have an HDMI monitor connected to my MacBook via a USB-C to HDMI/USB dongle, which also charges the computer, keyboard and trackpad, and another another via a UDB-C to DisplayPort cable. I've been using my SDcard based camera less…

>The extra port competes with USB-C. If Apple wants to make USB-C more valuable to users, they must ensure companies make more products for it and, therefore, remove such redundant ports. The userbase of all tech products is too big for this to be reasonable now. This attitude was only successful during a time when fewer people overall each owned fewer devices individually. USB-A won and it will be around forever. HD…

HDMI will probably be around for TVs, but with USB 4 I imagine we're 5-10 years from most of the current ports going away completely, except for a collection of USB C ports of different levels (3, 3.x, 4).

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#277

Post by dunmalg »

Terretta wrote: post #245
AndriyKunitsyn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is “unnecessary feature bloat”? Do you think something like “gosh, I _hate_ all these additional ports” about MBP 2015? There’s a reason it is still holds (not much, but) some value on second-hand market.

I do hate the extra ports when at the beach. It’s easy enough to find usb-c rubber gaskets to keep sea salt air out, but not for arbitrary ports or slots. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BPNBNJ5/

On the list of most marginally relevant edge cases, I think "beach proof design" ranks pretty high.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#278

Post by BlackFingolfin »

p_l wrote: post #260
jimnotgym wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since 2015 we have had all this clutter in the meeting rooms with different chargers, adaptors for monitors, projectors etc. In fact every mac user I know has a little hub to run everything! I'm currently using a Thinkpad and I have never felt that I had too many ports! I don't carry any adaptors.

on site at a client fresh after they started upgrading people to USB-C/thunderbolt MBPs/Airs... Very quickly meetings started with question of "who has a laptop with real HDMI/DisplayPort? We would like to start in 15s instead of 15 minutes of fighting with dongles..."

Anecdotes are not data. I can easily counter yours with mine:

I use such a dongle a lot whenever I am presenting on conferences etc, and have been doing so for many years (even before the all-out for USB-C/Thunderbolt on MacBooks, there were no VGA ports, while many projectors still were; now I see a lot of HDMI, but still need the adaptor).

And I habe yet to have a single issue caused by that! Sure, damaged VGA cables and other weirdness, but never ever anything tracing back to the dongle.

In the same time I helped lots of people who struggled with their laptops with builtin VGA/HDMI Granted, usually not the laptops fault but rather PEBKAC / or people not knowing how to control Windows / Linux. Doesn't really matter: my point is that I see zero correlation between dongle usage and projector troubles.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#279

Post by simonh »

exhilaration wrote: post #262
varispeed wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use SD cards daily to transfer data from cameras or different devices for further processing. It is handy to be able to just slide it in. I also have a dongle in an other laptop which works fine, but you need to be careful with these - I bought one cheaper dongle and it totally destroyed my SD card upon inserting. Unfortunately there was no backup as there was original material on it. So now I first do backup on a…

The dramatic decline in camera sales has been discussed a few times on HN, here's a random google result: https://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/dont-look-at-this-graph-sho... Cameras are rapidly turning into a niche product, it makes no sense for any laptop manufacturer to include an SD card reader at this point.

On the other hand Macs are heavily used by audio and video professionals, the Pro in the name doesn’t just refer to developers.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#280

Post by oblio »

Retric wrote: post #259
chris_wot wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That analogy is silly. Two methods of propulsion is a good idea - when the wind is not blowing then use the engine. If the engine runs out of petroleum use the engine. Having a proprietary power interface and a USB C interface that does the same thing is ridiculous.

USB-C can’t charge nearly as quickly as a high power proprietary charger. In use USB-C needs to supply power for both charging and operating the laptop, so what might take 3 hours to charge with USB-C might take 20 minutes to charge with a dedicated connector. That’s not to say every laptop’s proprietary charger will supply noticeably more than 100W, but many examples exist.

I'd be surprised if a 13" Surface doesn't charge well enough at 100W, though.
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