An SD card is useful things other than just cameras it also is a great thing for 3d printers. Yes some printers have usb and maybe I should spend a day or figuring out ocotoprint but I usually just use my SD card and get on with printing. My lap has a MacBook Pro 2015. It’s both sturdy and has all the nice features plenty of usb-b ports and sd card slot... newer PCBs are finally shipping with usb c support but I don’t see things like the teensy having usb c anytime soon...
Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
301–310 of 562 posts
Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Others never use SD and have a USB-C to A dongle permanently plugged in (me). The ideal exact connectors probably differ a lot per person, and at least USB-C+Thunderbolt can support everything. HDMI is probably the least controversial, although there will also be people who never connect external displays.
> The ideal exact connectors probably differ a lot per person Agreed. All I really need is more USB-C ports. Both my current MacBook Air and my upcoming MacBook Pro have only two USB-C ports and I don’t understand why they didn’t make them with four USB-C ports.
Its limited by CPU PCI connectors, adding more ports needs a lot more bandwidth, uses more power and needs more pins. The low end models are not expected to have these, but the larger more power hungry ones will.
Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
#303Honestly I've never understood why laptops are so strongly associated with developer culture. They are inefficient and conflated machines - two things that tend to be contradictory with software engineering. More practically, many people find themselves completely dependent on Apple's design whims. Mac Pros (or server racks in general) are closer to the kinds of machines that we deploy to (they use Xeons for one thin…
For my development needs and work style I much prefer a laptop that I can dock at any workstation or just work off the laptop. I recently worked off my laptop while in a car on a road trip. I just wouldn’t have that capability otherwise.
I just recently ditched my workstation for a dock and like it a lot better. I kind of miss having the dedicated computer in the home-office, rather than always having to transport my laptop from wherever it is. But I definitely like having a single machine to configure and everything being consistent.
Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
#304My 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…
Agreed. I do hope they keep USB-C. The one cable that works for all was actually a convenience for me as I could charge a macbook, ipad, and even a samsung galaxy phone all with the same single cable.
Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because I'm going to have to replace everything You mean, you'll have to replace the cables. Not the devices themselves, unless you want to be able to use USB-C-to-C cables everywhere.
Actually, I mean that I'm dreading the choice between replacing everything and dealing with a hodgepodge of different cables. Right now, all of the "source" devices (for lack of a better word) have USB-A "out" — laptop, desktop, charging bricks — and all the peripherals — phone, tablet, bluetooth speaker, xbox controller… — have USB-Micro "in". Thus, the only type of usb cable that I need is A->Micro. If/when I repla…
You can get USB A to C and vice versa adaptors not cables. They are a bit weird in that you cant plug the cables in both ways up but they do work. More convenient and cheaper than lots more cables (and lots of items have captive cables).
Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no problem with the touchpad on my XPS, but I find the touchscreen quite useful. * Have to log kid into Teams classroom in the morning: pick up laptop, tap calendar, tap meeting, tap join, done. Much quicker than dragging a pointer around everywhere. * Cooking dinner, greasy fingertips, want to skip songs: tap Skip with my knuckle. * Looking at pictures, maps, reading a website, etc with family or looking thro…
None of your points seem at all convincing to me. It's like you haven't used a good touchpad. If you say things like "Much quicker than dragging a pointer around everywhere", then your current touchpad sucks . If it ever feels like you're dragging the cursor around, then you're dealing with a touchpad that has inadequate sensitivity and precision that forces the cursor speed to be set unreasonably slow. Likewise for…
I use an MBP for work. If I had a macbook for my personal laptop, I'd still prefer touchscreen for all the use cases above. I wouldn't think I'm the only one either, but maybe I'm wrong.
I don't see what Apple gains by not at least offering it as an option. That way people who didn't want one wouldn't have to get it. I'd pay maybe $150 extra for it. I'd also bet it would outsell the non-touchscreens ten to one.
Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
#307Earlier 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.
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 pr…
Even there, though, there are many competing standards. My MacBook has an SD card reader, but I need an adapter to plug the microSD cards from my Raspberry Pi into it. My camera's CompactFlash cards require a USB adapter. To use the high-speed SD cards, I need to bypass the built-in SD card port and use a USB adapter, anyway.
So it turns out it's easier to just buy a multi-card adapter. My computer's built-in SD port never gets any use anymore, not even for full-size, non-UHC SD cards.
Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
#308Earlier 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.
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 pr…
Regarding videography: professional digital video isn’t usually recorded to SD cards (nor was it ever, ever since “professional digital video” became a thing.) 4K RAW was “too big” when that was what videographers worked with; and 8K RAW is “too big” now. It’s not just that you’ll fill up the card before you’re done a single recording session; often an SD card just won’t have the IO bandwidth to persist writes at the speed the camera wants to stream them in at. (How do smartphones do it? By having lots of RAM for buffering, and expecting that you won’t record for very long.) The SD Forum is always trying to bring new SD interfaces to market to up the total bandwidth; but the needs of professional videography always outpace the implementations of those standards arriving in the market.
What we do instead:
• DSLRs, when used as video cameras in professional workflows, are usually wired directly to a computer, streaming down the wire like a webcam.
• Purpose-built professional video cameras record directly to SSDs (either regular ones, like Samsung T7s; or proprietary ones, like RED’s “mini-mags”) that you’re expected to mount to your computer over USB — either by them being regular USB3 devices themselves; or, in the proprietary case, by the manufacturer selling a USB dock you’re supposed to buy for your editing workstations.
Regarding commercial photography: SD cards have gotten so large — and wi-fi sync so fast — that even the largest RAW photos sync instantly and hardly make a dent in your storage. There’s no real point in taking a 512GB SD card out of a camera.
Keep in mind, integrated ports are only really a demand of professionals when urgent, portable connectivity is a requirement; i.e. when even the time required to find and plug in a dongle would be SLAs broken and revenue lost. This was a true need for professional photography when SD cards were small, as you’d often fill up an SD card in the field and need to “dump it out” onto your laptop to continue shooting (or swap it for another while handing off the first to your editor to establish a pipeline.) Today, it’s not.
None of the other tasks you listed have ever been urgent, in-the-field tasks; they’re tasks where you do have time to go back home/to the office, and plug in an SD-card reader dongle to do the task.
Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Wait, isn’t this the digital nomad site? Call it Thailand proof if you prefer. :-)
Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features
#310oh man... if they remove the touch bar I will be so happy. I have a macbook pro 2015 and I was planning to replace it next year with the M1 16 inches. That would be the perfect timing. Generation 2015 powa!