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Phil Schiller Says the MacBook Pro Doesn't Need an SD Card Slot (theverge.com)
Apple's new MacBook Pro models have upset many people for many different reasons. Some are unhappy with the inability to get more than 16GB of RAM, some are upset with the high-price, some are unhappy about the missing physical Escape and function keys, and many are unhappy because Apple didn't put an SD card slot in the MacBook Pro. But Apple has an explanation. From a report on The Verge: Speaking to The Independent (paywalled), Apple exec Phil Schiller said the company had dropped the SD card slot as it was "cumbersome" and because wireless transfer technology for cameras is "proving very useful" as an alternative. Schiller said, "Because of a couple of things. One, it's a bit of a cumbersome slot. You've got this thing sticking halfway out. Then there are very fine and fast USB card readers, and then you can use CompactFlash as well as SD. So we could never really resolve this -- we picked SD because more consumer cameras have SD but you can only pick one. So, that was a bit of a trade-off. And then more and more cameras are starting to build wireless transfer into the camera. That's proving very useful. So we think there's a path forward where you can use a physical adaptor if you want, or do wireless transfer."
Apple's idea of value is hilariously distorted. Let's charge more than everyone else and deliver less.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Here is a thought to all you people complaining about Apple's decision making on their products ... DON'T BUY IT.
The only way to get Apple to listen, is to vote with your dollars. If you buy their products, you prove them right.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Let's be honest. The last few changes from the Apple design team have afforded little or no explanation behind them, and they certainly were not done based on consumer input.
Provide all the weak-ass explanations you want Phil. We know the real answer is Fuck You, that's why.
The disgusting nature behind this behavior from vendors is the Fuck You mentality is becoming rather addictive.
Consumers, if you want design change that even hints towards what you may want or need, vote with your wallet, because all other channels have been effectively silenced.
Because if you put two card readers on a laptop that would be crossing the streams open a vortex? Seriously the amount of bullshit these 'journalists' accept from company mouth pieces is absurd.
Or, more likely, Apple just couldn't figure out how to get a SD reader into the stylishly small housing for the MacbookPro. Style over function - welcome to Apple's world.
On my 7 year old macbook pro, I think I used the SD card slot maybe 2 or 3 times total. Same goes for the ethernet jack. If your'e going to use it so infrequently, doesn't seem like a disaster to expect an adapter.
Professional cameras are expensive. Even amateur photographers will have many thousands, even tens of thousands tied up in their equipment. These people are not going to buy one of your new "pro" laptops Apple, because you've taken away the ability to either plug the (camera end) proprietary USB cable into it or the the SD card. Your solution, which is to hope that we all upgrade our camera bodies to something more convenient to you, or buy a dongle from you so we can use our cables is not going to cut it.
The counter argument to this is that people who already have thousands invested in their expensive equipment won't mind spending a few more dollars for the adapters if they want to stay in the apple ecosystem. Because you can charge people who are already spending a lot of money to spend a little more. Apple knows its target audience REALLY well. The solution to buy a dongle is definitely going to cut it for a lot of the people.
I'm a guy that is full in the Apple ecosystem and I make money programming for apple devices. But the latest macbook pros are NOT pro.
Wireless from the camera? Is this guy that much of a dipshit? Go ahead and see how fast you can transfer these 36 Megapixel RAW images from my D810 camera. Yes I use the XDHC slot and I dont want to wait a week for these to transfer over wifi. slapping the card in the macbook was super fast and worked great.
Macbook pros are not for pros anymore. It sounds like they really want to eliminate any professional use of their products by removing features that pro photographers use heavily.
It is pretty sad when the last version of the product is significantly better than the latest version.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It seems that Apple wishes, in the end, to sell people what will ultimately amount to slabs of metal and glass. I can see them removing just about every port from their hardware that they can. The Macs will eventually ship with only 1 USB port, with Apple telling customers to just get adapters, etc. Why, because fuck you we're in the dongle and add-on business now, that's why. Oh, and don't go buying that cheap shit off Amazon, because it will only break your machine, conveniently.
The iPhone? Oh, I'm calling this one right now. In the next few years, the iPhone will ship with no ports or physical ways into it, whatsoever:
The "New" iPhone will be 100% wireless, and serviceable only by Apple. Why? Because fuck you, that's why. Thinking of switching? Good luck with that, all your apps, music, movies, books, and shit you bought from us are tied to our services. You don't own it, remember? Now, how would you like to pay for your new phone, charge pad, Airpods, and extended warranty?
Ah, good choice, sir. Yes, we do offer financing. Why pay for it now when we can fleece you for 15% more over 2 years ...
True, *you* probably don't need a professional grade laptop.. But photographers use the SD card every day. IT professionals use the escape key and ethernet jack every day. If you don't use either of them, you're probably not using your MacBook in a professional capacity. Writing emails and surfing Facespace doesn't count.. Apple really should be calling these "MacBook Air" or "MacBook Lite" because they are missing all the things that made them "Pro".
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
The macbook pro ships with a headphone jack and no port to plug the lighting headphones they force you to buy for the iphone. So you need an adapter for an sd card slot, an adapter for your headphones either for your phone or laptop, an adapter to plug your current usb devices into the macbook pro... One thing I've always admired was how polished the macbook line hardware is but the dongles are starting to add up.
This guy is an obvious s(c)hill. I haven't seen many SDcard slots on laptop computers that stick out when there's no card in it. On my Dells, they usually have a little plastic insert to keep dirt out, the slot is spring-loaded, and that plastic insert sits completely flush. Only if you have an actual SDcard in there does something stick out, but that's not a problem because normally you don't leave the cards in there very long, only for when you need to transfer stuff, then you put them back in the camera or whatever.
And yeah, expecting people to just use wireless transfer is indeed idiotic, especially given the gargantuan image sizes that modern mega-megapixel cameras create.
Now, using a USB card reader could be a workaround. I have one of those lying around in case I ever need to read a CF card again (not likely), or my SD slot were to fail, or if I needed to read a Sony MemoryStick (not likely at all). But wait! There's no USB-A slot on this shitty new MacBook! So I'd have to go buy some kind of hub or adapter, or buy an all-new USB-C card reader.
This new MacBook is just a giant failure in every way. It'll be interesting to see how the sales for it fare; will the Apple faithful buy it anyway and delude themselves into thinking it's wonderful even though it's a big step down? I wouldn't be surprised.
That's because that's what makes a laptop a professional model: a bunch of parts that you may or may not ever use.
Any real business laptop these days has an HDMI or DisplayPort output, and probably even a VGA output, because conference room monitors use those connectors. You can't go to some customer site, where you don't know exactly what their conference room has (and they probably don't either, off the tops of their heads), and then bitch at them for not having some brand-new USB-c connection or not having an adapter for your laptop.
Real business laptops have Ethernet jacks, because many businesses (and governments especially) require them for security purposes. How exactly do you think you'd ever use a MacBook with no Ethernet on a secure government network? You wouldn't; those networks are NOT wireless.
A "professional" laptop is not going to require you to carry around a bunch of adapters for all the circumstances you might find yourself in and not anticipate beforehand. This is why *real* pro laptops have all these ports, even if it does make them slightly bigger and heavier. For cheap-ass consumer-grade computers, leaving out stuff that's not used as much may be just fine, but that doesn't work for serious business and professional users.
They may not be hard to find on Amazon. But walk into any store, which will normally have USB sticks, and right now, chances are 99,999 out of 100,000 that you'll find a Type A, not a Type C
Where is the use case that they are lugging around a DSLR, lenses, lights, tripods, and a laptop but are really put out by the SD reader?
Its not about the 'lugging it around'; its not even about the cost; it's about the sheer blind arrogance and idiocy of making a tool less useful. The 'pro' series stuff is supposed to be a TOOL for PROFESSIONALS.
Tools are supposed to be functional. When they are less functional for absolutely no good reason, people who use them get pissed.
Nobody thought that macbook pro was too big, nobody wanted it thinner. Nobody wanted them to remove the sd card.
Meanwhile apple comes out with this nonsense...
"and because wireless transfer technology for cameras is "proving very useful" as an alternative"
You know how a photographer works? They fill a card, pull it out, and put in the next one and keep going. They don't sit around for 2 hours doing an 8 or 16GB wireless transfer.
" Then there are very fine and fast USB card readers,"
And it used to be built in.
"and then you can use CompactFlash as well as SD"
Great idea Apple. Add a CF slot. That would be an actual feature.
"we picked SD because more consumer cameras have SD but you can only pick one"
Bullshit. You can pick more than one. You've got all that space from taking the DVD out, and the expresscard slot out, and the SSD is a fraction of the size of the old hard drive... so room isn't a problem. Add the 2nd most popular slot, and watch people actually get excited about the new laptop instead.
Better still make it a modular part, so if it breaks, it's easy to replace. That would be how you design a professional tool.
Oh... you took all that space and made it thinner instead... nobody wanted it thinner.
Imagine you used a heavy duty pickup truck for work.
Then the next years model is announced its new truck, basically a Porsche 911 with a trailer hitch.. And the maker told you, well... this is better because people need to carry different cargo... and this way you can buy exactly the trailer you need!! Oh and with the availability of courier services (aka 'wireless transfer') a lot of people don't even need a truck bed at all... they just make a phone call and the cargo shows up at the destination!!
And just look at this new 'truck' its smaller, and lighter, and handles great. Look how sleek it is. (Well.. until you actually hook up a trailer (aka usb dongle) to it and then its unwieldy as shit... but we didn't REALLY want you to use a trailer with it... did we mention you can get a courier to move stuff for you!!)
Oh, and it's virtually un-serviceable except at specialized dealers; so keep it in the city and maybe the highway -- don't take this truck onto farm roads and mountain roads. Its just not built for that. If you need something from a farm or mountain road... it has this great built in phone you can use to call real professional with actual tools to do it for you!
That's about apple's recent approach to dealing with 'professionals' who need 'tools'.
That is nearly accurate, except that *every* professional would appreciate a USB port and a Gigabit Ethernet port. They may not always use them, but they are just essential for a lot of different jobs. On the SD card I half agree: I like it, I use it a lot, but it is getting less common.
Of course the elephant in the room is that both USB port and SD port can be used for (cheap) storage extensions. And Apple absolutely wants to prevent that. So I think that is the real reason: form and money over function.
Make it a modular part? That's a great idea. Like, maybe they could make it detachable, and then it would be easy to swap. They could use a standard interconnect for it, maybe with a standards based cable that's really fast, so you don't have to worry about bandwidth.
Modular is good, that way people that don't need it don't have to have their laptop burdened with a useless port.
Not all people that buy Mac Pros are photography professionals. We have a Nikon D3s at home--a pro level camera--and it uses compact flash, so we've NEVER used the SD card slot. My point-and-shoot camera uses a mini-SD card, so I still can't use that SD card slot. Just give me a USB port and an adaptor so I can put WHATEVER thing I want there.
Not all professionals are the same, and not even all professionals of the same type have the same needs. More ports, yes, but more multi-use ports.
Ah yes, a card sticking half way out for a few seconds. Way worse than a dongle sticking out several inches.
You still need a goddamned adapter. Buy a USB-A drive, it works on every machine. Buy a USB-C drive, it works on.. like this one Apple thing?
Yes, eventually that will change. But at the end of the day, we are entering a world of dongles, because the U in USB is gone. It's just "dumb stupid computer plug that doesn't work".
And this is why I haven't bought a MBP since 2011. And the way things are going, it may well be my last Apple product. I use ethernet *constantly*. Sometimes I need to set up ad-hoc ethernet connections in order to test networking equipment.
Hell, in high population urban centers, Wifi almost isn't even an option because the frequencies are so heavily saturated.
Omitting things like ethernet, USB pre-C ports, and the SD card slots is not even the slightest bit justifiable. It's flat out stingy. Hell, if they're so dead set on making the laptop as thin as possible, then maybe you have to lose the ethernet cause it is admittedly big. But there's *still* no justification for omitting USB and SD ports.
If you want a super-lightweight laptop, then get an Air. That's the point of an Air. You sacrifice options for portability. The point of the Pro was to be... well... a PRO laptop, for people who do complex, high-end work. Apparently they don't care about our demographic anymore.
but in fairness: no major-brand, professional laptop has had VGA or DVI outputs for awhile. HDMI and [mini-]DisplayPort for sure, but not the pinned ones. Both VGA and DVI are too thick. Most professional laptops have also dumped the ethernet port for the same reason.
What are you talking about? My Dell E6420 isn't *that* old, and has both VGA and Ethernet (and HDMI). My HP laptop at work is about a year old, and also has these same ports. You can't have a professional laptop without Ethernet. Where I work, there is NO wifi at all, for security reasons. Ethernet is the only thing allowed.
For example, the Surface product line has gotten along just fine without HDMI, VGA, or DVI. They expect you to use a dongle, which is itself fine.
That's fine I guess for a consumer product, not a professional laptop. I'm not going to carry around dongles just so I can use the conference room systems at work. And I don't have to, because they're smart enough to buy laptops with a full complement of ports.
Most importantly though? I use ESC without looking and I also use function keys regularly throughout the course of the day: keyboard brightness (up/down), play/pause, and volume (up/down/mute). Now, not only do I get no haptic feedback when I use them, like Surface's failed TouchCover, but they're context aware, which means that they won't always be there!
Yeah, that's really lame. But to be fair, a lot of consumer laptops got rid of the dedicated volume/mute keys ages ago too, just to save money. You're supposed to change volume in software I guess. Business laptops still have these though. So again, Apple shows the new MBP isn't a real business laptop. And not having an Escape key is an outright deal-breaker and makes the machine completely unusable.