Even if they continue to force the anti-feature that is the Touch Bar onto users, I'd immediately buy an M1 MBP with MagSafe and actual ports.
Yes, I did use the SD card reader from time to time, but most serious cameras use other cards (my older camera uses compact flash, and the newer one uses XQD). It makes no sense for Apple to integrate readers for those, and my XQD/CF readers also read SD cards, so the card reader is useless.
All of my mobile peripherals at this point are USB-C, so I don't care about USB-A ports either. And when I'm at home, I use a dock, which has all of the ports I need.
Honestly I'd much rather that they keep the laptops thin instead of adding ports I'm not going to use.
The vast majority of people these days just use their phones for cameras, and don't use point-and-shoots or other things with full-size SD cards.
So really SD cards cater to just the mid-range camera market, where people use mirrorless/DSLRs but not high-end versions that often use faster cards.
I don't think it's a good idea for Apple to make everyone's laptops bulkier so a small minority of people can avoid using a $17 adapter like this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NW8RPYN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
With that said, I have cameras that use SD cards and don't see the need for an SD port. I have usbc adapters that are not much bigger than the SD card that I can use on my MBA or iPad. With LR, I can basically load my days pics on either device and have them available everywhere.
I'm very skeptical they are adding back SD, so we'll see. I think MagSafe is going to be something like what came to the latest iPhone and not what people think of traditional MagSafe. Or maybe they'll add something to the usbc port that works like MagSafe if using an Apple cable.
It's finally, years later, getting merely not infuriating to be stuck with only USB-C ports.
Single port for display + charging is very nice, when it works.
That iPhones and most iPads still don't use it is annoying. Having two kinds of charging cable around, years after Apple went all-in on USB-C for laptops, sucks.
[EDIT] two kinds of charging cable and still needing to buy & carry two kinds of adapters/dongles for everything. Ugh.
The most recent non-pro iPad does have USB-C and I expect whenever they get around to redesigning the lowest cost iPads they’ll also move to USB-C.
Man, my 2017 MacBook Pro's USB-C charging cable (the official one, not third party, and in pristine condition) constantly disconnects itself to the point where I'm basically traumatized from the annoyance of it now. It only provides power if it's ALL the way in, and the damned thing just pushes itself out half a millimeter and cuts power repeatedly.
I really want to like the generic nature of USB-C charging, but proper magsafe with a strong magnet is just miles better (third party magnet adapters for USB-C both break the spec and also tend to have very weak magnets which can cause damage from sparking at the port).
Yeah, well, it's not.
> Yes, but how about the _inside_ of the USB-C port?
It's pristine, like I said elsewhere already.
Yesterday I moved it around. And noticed what you described. The plug will come back out by a millimeter. And then it won't charge.
Maybe just a bad design of the usb-c port then.
I don't have anything helpful to offer but I feel your pain. Reading your comment almost brings on PTSD from remembering what it was like.
I actually restored my 2015 Macbook Pro and have been so happy and content using that in the past two years or so. Not sure about the other sizes, but my 13" from 2015 does everything better than the one from 2017. Performance, keyboard, connectors. None of the overheating bullshit where the fan is constantly going and performance is throttled.
I felt the same until my cat pulled my laptop off my desk by the cord. It landed on the corner with the USB plugged in, destroying the port on the laptop itself. Probably knocked a few hundred off the resale value. The little shit.
They never quite got their Intel laptops there, though. (Especially running MS Teams, Slack, and Chrome!)
It’s kind of funny that, now that they can make a laptop that really does last all day on one charge (according to tests of M1), they’re switching back to MagSafe.
There's this stupid dream that the computer needs to be light and fanless and thin and sexy. It doesn't need to do that. I'm happy if it doesn't melt while trying to run some software I need to do my job.
Modern computing is a sad place :(
lol, it's not only browsing though but web-infested Electron apps as well. Used draw.io (which is otherwise a fine diagramming app) the other day, with fans spinning up all the time. It's sad to see that draw.io was (and internally largely remains) originally a Java (Swing) app, seemingly only ported to a fscking browser frontend as a fashion statement when the exact same things it does I could do almost 20 years ago on a PowerBook using OmniGraffle.
Man is that an understatement. My work MBP - a 16" i9 - may as well be a desktop.
Whats up with photo/video people gatekeeping “serious” vs functional
Your point might have some merit but SD will hold out for the next 5-8 years that purchasers of this machine will expect
That said, I'm glad to see Apple has finally realized some of the ways they've been alienating their customer base, and they appear to be walking back some of their most unpopular changes.
I’m looking forward to having that in the new processor and with touchbar
They are acknowledging the folly of their ways as they have gotten rid of the butterfly keyboard, adding magsafe back, and adding sd cards back
They are making the least contentious and perfect machine
My "perfect machine" could also play DVDs, but that may be getting a bit contentious.
Regardless, the point remains that high-end cameras often use high-end memory cards that are not SD cards.
Have you heard of these obscure websites called Amazon or eBay.
They have tens of thousands of cables in every configuration you need.
Last time I needed a cable on short notice before a gig I had to settle for an adapter, and was really lucky that it worked. I've had other seemingly simple pin-to-pin adapters not work on me before.
Next time I'm in a jam I'll run down to my local ebay though, thank you for this super helpful reply.
From these reports, the next revision to the Air is going to get a bit of a redesign, colors, faster CPU, etc., but "Air" is still almost certainly going to mean the line that prioritizes being thin and light. You will still have a Mac laptop that gives you what you want. But people who do want more ports will, for the first time since Mac laptops went USB-C, also get what they want. (Or at least get closer to it.)
For what it's worth, once I got the physical escape key back, I've come to really like the Touch Bar.
When they first announced the transition last year, it was implied that some products will still get refreshed during the 2-year transition period. But based on this article and common sense, there is minimal incentive to do an Intel refresh. Refreshing both discourages buying of Apple silicon-powered Macs and lessens the performance jump that Apple is so eager to publicize.
For example, Tiger Lake H-series was just announced/released and it'd logically target the Macbook Pro 16.
Yes, Tiger Lake H-series was just announced, but it's likely Intel proposed selling this chip to Apple 2.5 years ago, and Apple didn't like the roadmap, and said No Thanks.
That's how much time supply chain changes like the move to apple silicon chip will need - I wouldn't be surprised if Apple already knew of all of Intel's roadmaps 5 years into the future, and decided, nope. No thanks. Not giving any more money to Intel.
From this point of view, you can tell, it's detrimental to Apple to go back to Intel now, if they wanted to use the Tiger Lake H they would have used the threat of M1 as a bargaining chip to lower the pricing on upcoming chips. It's obvious they didn't do that.
That's the only change that my next laptop isn't a ThinkPad
https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/21/apple-ransomware-leak-new-mac...
looks like it has physical keys.
I think that's the right side of the laptop, so from the bottom up, it is shift, return, \, delete, and the connectors for the fingerprint sensor.
hallelujah
The fact the OS runs a dozen network services without being able to deactivate them is (the final straw) the pushed me back into the Linux camp.
I want to both beef up the memory/processing power of my laptop and switch to Linux (which comes with built-in performance bonus of native Docker). So I am headed to ThinkPad anyway, but there's a chance Apple could keep me locked in if they make a nicely-powered proper dev machine with no damn touch bar.
Migrating to Big Sur has been a pain in the ass even though I am still on an Intel model. Tons of Python language versions and packages are a total PITA to get built on Big Sur.
To be fair this seems to be a pretty Python-specific issue, but the inability to do much about it really has dug the feeling into me that I don't own/control my machine, Apple does.
The touch bar is handled by the T1/T2/M1 chips in the laptops. It could be that just cramming a T2+OLED into a keyboard may have made it way too expensive for a keyboard. Plus does Bluetooth even have enough bandwidth to handle sending screen data that size reliably?
It is a niche item and it does suck but for some reason they keep tacking it on...
That's because changing the chassis is too expensive, but when they redesign it, you'll see it most likely without a touchbar.
I'm not a TB hater (more indifference), and I still think it's going away :)
Looks like you won't have too long to wait:
Apple ransomware leak corroborates 2021 MacBook Pro ports: HDMI, MagSafe, SD card slot https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/21/apple-ransomware-leak-new-mac...
Not exactly sure if I'll end up buying a MBP later though. I basically only use my Mac for recording audio, and once you get your mic set up , your not too portable anyway