Apple Rumored To Remove Old-School USB Ports On Next MacBook Pro (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: First the headphone jack, now the USB port? Rumor has it that Apple may get rid of the USB 3.0 port and the Magsafe port (where the charger plugs in) on the next generation of MacBooks. Japanese tech site Macotakara, which accurately predicted that Apple would kill the headphone jack on the iPhone 7, now also claims that the USB port is on the way out. The move would be similar to Apple's latest 12-inch MacBook and its streamlined profile. There's also word that Apple may discontinue the 11-inch MacBook Air to focus instead on the 13-inch laptop. Discontinuing the 11-inch MacBook Air would also potentially boost sales on the 12-inch MacBook. If these rumors are in fact true, then the new MacBooks will have only a USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 ports. Both of these ports are about the size of the part of an iPhone charger that plugs into the phone. But since most laptop accessories still plug in via the USB port, Apple owners might have to use an adaptor, or upgrade their technology. Meanwhile, the new MacBooks would likely be charged through the USB-C port or Thunderbolt 3 port. Currently, Apple already sells a USB-C dock with other USB and HDMI ports for $79. The USB-C port uses USB 3.1 Standard, according to PCWorld, which will connect to a wide variety of accessories, such as external hard drives, cameras, and printers. The USB 3.1 can also transfer data between the host computer and the peripheral accessories at a speed of 10 gigabits per second, which is twice as fast as the USB 3.0. Apple is expected to reveal the new Macs at an October 27th event in Cupertino, California.

Comments

Re:MagSafe have save me tons of money

[chinton]

If you've lost multiple hard drives and a broken screen because you keep tripping over the cords, maybe you need to think about where you are plugging things in.

Re:COURAGE

[dgatwood]

Meh. Most people who carry around USB devices can carry around a different cable just as easily. In the grand scheme of don't care, it's a lot less annoying than the headphone jack would have been.

And as much as I think removing the HDMI port is annoying, the truth is that I already have to carry around a retractable HDMI cable, so carrying an adapter for the relatively rare situations where I use the HDMI cable isn't that annoying either.

What is annoying, if true, is the removal of the SD card slot. Yes, Apple's SD card slot is many years out of date and should have been updated at least half a decade ago to support UHS-II, but Apple's inclusion of an SD card slot, slow as it is, has been a significant driving force in pushing camera companies to move to SD instead of CF, and has resulted in standardization that otherwise would not have happened.

Without that anchor, the industry is very likely to devolve into the wild west of card formats again. In five years, some consumer-level cameras will use CFast, others will use UHS-II SD, and others will use XQD. I wouldn't be surprised to see three or four other formats by the time all is said and done.

If true, this is a crippling blow for standards. And I really have to ask what makes this laptop "pro" at that point. It sounds like the only meaningful difference between it and the standard MacBook will be a second USB port. They're apparently dropping all the other distinguishing features that made it worth hundreds of dollars more—the HDMI port, the SD card slot, MagSafe... and the only thing replacing all that lost hardware functionality is a set of soft-reconfigurable action buttons at the top of the keyboard. Whee.