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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

Of course the SD slot is not a very welcome change to people who have stuff that plugs in that "flap thing", because now the MacBook Pro apparently doesn't have any means of internal expansion. (Why is it called Pro again?)

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According to the keynote, Apple found that only 1% of users were using the ExpressCard slot.

According to market share statistics, less than 1% of computer users have a MacBook Pro.

Which would make it even less of a big deal, applying to less than .01% of computer users.

Like when with the C64 no one uses the "Expansion Slot" or the Rastport or the PCMIA-Card Slots for the Amiga. The only successfull 'flap thing' was the MIDI on the Ataris.

The top of the line 17" still has the ExpressCard slot. Apparently, SD's the new floppy after all, instead of USB thumb drives.

I wonder how long we'll still have CD/DVD drives. I've used mine maybe twice :/ Would much rather just have a bigger battery there TBH.

My current laptop (Fujitsu T2010 tablet) doesn't have one. The only time I missed it was for installing Linux - I had to borrow a USB drive from a friend.

Next time I'll probably just figure out how to put the installer on a USB key.

Yeah, I used my cdrom drive on my macbook pro about 3 times. Now I need it and it's broken. But I have .ISO's and I can just mount those as a drive, so really the drives are obsolete already.

I'd rather see that space dedicated to horsepower.

Then gripe to Steve Jobs (or whomever), he was the one who convinced Apple engineers to remove the dual hotswap bays that used to be standard on the PowerBook line around the time of the marketing transition to "MacBook." A user used to be able to forgo a optical drive to have a second battery installed...

I've always gotten the flip up SD cards for this reason-- it works works every place an SD card works, then you flip it and it works like a USB stick.

Of course the proliferation of mini and micro SD cards has lessened the effectiveness of this plan...

> Of course the proliferation of mini and micro SD cards has lessened the effectiveness of this plan...

Not really, it might be hastening it. You can get housings for mini and micro cards that work with full size SD slots, and USB housings that convert the smaller cards into a plug-in drive. I wouldn't be surprised if there's one out there that does both.

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