New MacBook Pro Announcements – “1984” Newspeak on SD Card Slots
I was looking at the Apple Macbook Pro updates announced at the recent 2009 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference. The MacBook Pro reduction in I/O connectivity is getting depressing. The 15″ and 13″ models get an SD card slot but they do so at the expense of an ExpressCard/34 slot. I reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984 “your chocolate ration has been increased”.
At least the SD card slot does support most popular SD size media as Apple clarifies here.
The MacBooks Pros have too little I/O connectivity. Yes I know Firewire 800 is great, but I thought these were Macs for professionals, not PC laptops. Now the 13″ and 15″ models have a single FireWire 800 port and two USB 2.0 ports and an SD card slot and that is it. And yes I know you just can’t count ports to measure really usable I/O performance but the sheer physical connectivity alone of the older MacBook Pros was very useful. FireWire 800 is great but many high-end users need e-SATA based RAID connected via an ExpressCard e-SATA adapter or for various other wireless connectivity or other uses. The 17″ MacBook Pro has an ExpressCard slot and is a great laptop but it is also a bit too big for many users. Adding an SD card slot and keeping the ExpressCard/34 slot would have been great – or they could have even bundled an SD card reader if they needed the marketing claim for SD card support.
I live and die based on my one year old 2.5GHz 17″ MacBook Pro with 3 x USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800 and an ExpressCard/32 slot. A great laptop. And it usually has a SanDisk Multi Card Reader in the ExpressCard/34 slot. That reads more types of media (if anybody cares about Sony MemoryStick Pro) than the SD card slot built into the new MacBook Pros and much more importantly when I remove it I have an ExpressCard slot for other uses.
I am curious if Apple implemented a really fast SD card slot or if it works via USB 2.0 (like the SanDisk ExpressCard/34 adapter I use). Still that would not make up for losing an ExpressCard/33 slot.
Oh well with the matte screen only available as an option on the MacBook Pro 17″ many photography and video professionals and serious amateurs will see that as the only portable computer from Apple they can use. I thought at some time a matte screen for the 15″ MacBook Pro would appear. I take that as more consumer apathy or ignorance about color and color management than Apple making bad decisions.
Hi Darryl,
I agree with all this.
It’s a pity they dropped the ExpressCard slot and two firewire ports (like on my older MBP). I believe the SD card slot is really fast (256Mb/s?) although I don’t believe it supports the “I/O standard” (of which I know nothing).
I’m also disappointed they don’t have the matte display option for the 15″ and even the 13″ MBPs. Steve must use a 17″ – I can’t see him ever using a glossy display.
It’s all a result, I guess of moving the optical drive to the right-hand side so they can have a large battery across the front, and then being left with only one side for ports.
I thought they could be more inventive with battery shapes considering they don’t use standard cells. That said, I think the next move (eventually) will be to lose the optical drive (like in the Air).
Most software (excluding major releases) and content is distributed electronically these days, and maybe they’ll use SD cards for commercial software / OS releases.
Perhaps then we’ll get some decent ports back.
Cheers,
Ashley.
Comment by Ashley Aitken — June 11, 2009 @ 11:01 pm