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M1 Max MBP has all these unnecessary ports….WTF?!
- Thread starter AdonisSMU
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I saw and held the new 16” MacBook pro in a store yesterday to my surprise. Most third party stores don’t have any yet.
First of all, I am coming from a 15” MacBook Pro i9 2018 (that I like and prefer the thinner look). Coming from the “15, the 14” looks too small for my needs. Have a 13” MacBook Air 2013 also and the size is ok when using it.
1. It did NOT seem as bulky as i originally heard or thought. A little thicker…but…was not a problem for me. I was in the store looking for a Windows laptop for my father-in-law and held a few Microsoft Surfaces and other “thinner” PC’s, so the new MacBook Pro “seemed” to me still thinner than the PC options…might have helped with my first impressions.
2. It was NOT as heavy as I originally heard or thought. The weight seemed evenly disturbed and was not difficult to hold as I assumed and thought. Better than my MacBook Pro 2018 when holding. Might be the more tapered edges.
3. The keyboard was nice. The all black around the keys was not difficult to differentiate each key as I thought. I actually liked the look to my surprise.
4. The return of a full size function keys actually was ok. I prefer the touch bar…but…just a few seconds typing, I can change back to the standard keyboard with no problems.
5. The screen was nice, was concerned about a headache when first looking at the high res screen (I would instantly notice since last night I was up all night and also most of the week on a project. My eyes were weary and sore). It was under fluorescent white store lighting which would give a screen reflection. It did.. but not that bad (also, i’m coming from an apple thunderbolt monitor).
6. Thought I would miss the Macbook Pro written lettering at the bottom of the screen - now instead etched underneath on the bottom. Looks classy and a decent change. Just a side note and would not be a deal breaker.
7. DOES NOT remind me of past classic MacBook Pros (still have one and love it, so I can compare still since I have one and use it occasionally). Instead, it looks like what WOULD HAVE BEEN the next offerings before the 2016-2020 era. Again, I like that era, though had it issues.
8. NOTCH did not bother me at all to my surprise, though the menu bar was set to a theme that was darker (probably on purpose as per Apple’s direction). I lived with years of seeing something in the middle back in my PC days, so it did not bother me. Of course I don’t want it…but it did not bother me and I quickly adjusted after a few minutes looking - blanked it out.
My first impression: There is NOTHING so far to NOT get this new offering from Apple. I was trying to wait for a possible Mac Mini Pro or A new iMac…but after having one in hand, and hearing about the power it has (as is why I would concider getting one anyway - I need it), it might be the best Laptop I would (if buy) ever had (i have had many).
Now the hard part…getting the funds and like I said before…convincing the wife!
When looking at PCs yesterday (not for me of course), the HDMI port was on ALL of the laptops (and it was practically all of the many at the store).
In the PC world it is a standard. I can live without it on my Macbook Pro, for I have a doggle and I am ok with it…but the port does come in handy on the side and I can see why it is back.
I think it is a good choice by Apple. I will uae both of the returned ports.
As far as a USB port…would be handy…but…can live without it. I need it, but use an adapter. Prefer more USB-C ports in the long run.
Then why did he say “Why do wives” instead of “Why does my wife”?
Seems pretty obvious he wasn’t.
Except you aren’t merely stating your preferences, you are making statements asserting things as true or false that are opinions. There is a difference.
I didn't say that; I said that 10Gbps Ethernet is not commonly used for home/office networks because the network hardware is expensive. An exception is direct 10GbE connections to a (10GbE) NAS. You may not need any 10Gbps switch or router to use a NAS in this configuration, so it is a useful to people who want fast network storage.
I expect the number of MBP users who are using 10Gb Ethernet to be very small, which is why is didn't make the cut on the new MBP. If 10Gb Ethernet because the commonplace, the MBP may also include this capability.
TB->10GbE adapters are quite large and expensive though, so there is also a question of how much internal space is required in a laptop to support this, plus the increased cost to the MBP. Would you pay an extra $200-300 for 10GbE? Most people would say they don't need it and shout even louder than anti-porters on this thread
Yep:
Even the Canon C200, C300 and C500 cinema cameras have SD cards, although these don't support all recording modes. Fortunately Canon has adopted CFExpress B as the main media, and these are likely to come down in price.
I hope that CFExpress replaces CFast 2.0 because the latter is ridiculously expensive. It's still popular in Cinema cameras and I have it in my BMPCC 4K, but looking at the price of the media, I chose an external Samsung T5 SSD on a cage, or SD UHS-II when I need to use a minimal rig. You can still record 8:1 or 5:1 BRAW on an SD card, and I've read that the very best SD cards can do pretty much all of the quality settings (at least at 30fps and some at 60fps).
Beautiful, well build laptop, with best in class display, performance, all rounded
Lets not forget that we get ALL 3 TB4 with independed 40gb/s EACH...in the 2016-2019 era we had 4xtb3 but sharing the bus on each side...so in total we had 40gb/s on the left side and 40gb/s on the right (now we have 80gb/s on the right and 40gb/s on the left) and besides that HDMI SDI and magsafe
These performance are insane and compared with the competition i think these are too cheap
Lets not forget that we get ALL 3 TB4 with independed 40gb/s EACH...in the 2016-2019 era we had 4xtb3 but sharing the bus on each side...so in total we had 40gb/s on the left side and 40gb/s on the right (now we have 80gb/s on the right and 40gb/s on the left) and besides that HDMI SDI and magsafe
These performance are insane and compared with the competition i think these are too cheap
Well, HDMI is good for plugging into the company projector or any old TV in the spur of the moment -- no carrying a dongle around.
The SD card reader is really nice for carrying enough stuff around to totally erase your Mac and reinstall everything without downloading anything, plus any document backups you might need. You will be able to buy one that fits flush to the case, so it doesn't stick out any and you just leave it there, no dongle, no carry around the card.
Magsafe is better than USB-c for power, constantly pugging in and unplugging a USB-c port will eventually wear something out.
Sounds good to me!
That said, I like lots of ports, a couple USB-A's would have been nice too.
- Many "company projectors” are still on VGA. So a dongle is still required.
- Permanently fitting an SD card would prevent the Mac from sleeping. Which could cause long term thermal issue, not to mention battery drain.
- “Enough stuff to totally erase your mac and install everything” means an SD card that is larger than the Mac’s built-in storage plus ~14 GB for macOS installer partition. But if you permanently stick that to your Mac, means that losing your mac would lose your backup as well.
I don’t know, why would they assume a comment about two wives in particular was aimed at the entirety of spousal history, when it wasn’t?
That comment was about wives, but could just as easily be about husbands. I know plenty of couples where that particular role is reversed.
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A few may still be, but I haven't seen VGA-only projects for several years now. Very few laptops have VGA out these days, so older projectors / screens have mostly be upgraded.
I don't think this is true. I used to have a permanent SD in an MBA and MBP and don't recall any sleep problems.
It's for local time machine etc. Obviously you need additional backup solutions. An SD card is just a first-line backup. I generally have 3 or 4 backups. TimeMachine on NAS, CarbonCopyCloner, all user data is backed up continously to cloud storage when connected to the net, archival disks in a safe.
Barely used by you. Not me. Or millions of other MacBook users.
I love how everybody's complaining. You'd complain if there were no ports.
Not here.
Why would it? It never prevents my Windows PC's from sleeping. I haven't had one so I don't know if it wouldn't, but if that happens, I wouldn't keep it connected all the time. It'll be awhile before I can test it though.
Now that's just wrong, you're forgetting it's all compressed. As for losing your Mac, of course I know that, I can't install anything on a figment of a machine anyway.
Mainly for local machine, but I have had to use it when traveling too. I'm the same with backups too. (though I use Acronis True Image instead of CCC.)
pmset -g assertionsLook for “com.apple.powermanagement.externalmediamounted”.
You’re welcome.
Time Machine backups aren’t compressed. Unless you run 3rd party backup solutions that are compressed.
It really does baffle me how people consider the re-introduction of these ports as unnecessary.
Yes, of course I understand that not everyone will use them and we can all be a bit guilty of over generalisation from time to time.
But we’re not talking about, redundant, obsolete tech here.
HDMI is still, and will be for the foreseeable future, the main industry standard connector for most display devices.
And SD cards are hardly an out of date option. It’s still a product category which is under very active development to increase its capacity and speed.
Let’s put a little perspective on it. Market research has shown that in 2020, the global Micro SD Card market size was around US$ 5733.6 million. The global flash memory market as a whole reached US$ 7.8 billion in that same year.
Those figures vary depending upon which reports you read, but are all in the same ballpark.
Crucially, those numbers have been increasing year over year, and are expected to continue to do so.
It’s hardly pocket change, nor does it illustrate any scenario in which the addition of a built-in memory card reader would be an unwelcome one to the market as a whole.
Apple are never going to please everyone, no-one can. But they’re playing the numbers, it’s far better for them to have these ports than not. Those who need them are happy that they don’t need to carry extra equipment just to have them. And those who don’t need them, well, they can simply not use them. Neither side of the fence is losing out on anything.
The only thing that’s changed from the previous generation is the loss of a single TB port. Which to many people is offset by the fact that they don’t need to use those ports for power/video adapters/memory card readers.
Personally I’m happy, I can power the MacBook, connect it to an external monitor and read my SD cards all without impacting a single TB port. Where before I would be using between 1 and 3 of them, depending on which adapters I had to hand.
I don't use SD cards for time machine backups. I have 3rd party, but I never said I had an image backup btw, that's your assumption. I said I could reinstall everything.
No, that doesn't keep it from sleeping in MacOS. I always have external media mounted on my Mac Mini.
I think this is where Apple's thinking was. I would bet that most MBP users without a hub were using one TB port to power the Mac. A good number of them were connecting an external screen or screens via one or two TB ports. That leaves 1 or 2 ports for peripherals, which might include a backup disk for TimeMachine, extra storage, a card reader, some other USB device like an audio interface or camera capture dongle, or maybe an Ethernet adaptor.
Without a hub I would use my 4 ports pretty quickly when connected to two displays, and often had to disconnect something if I needed to use 2 other peripherals together, e.g. copy between external disks.
Now I can free up one port for power, one port for display (HDMI 4K@60Hz is more display than I have at home or in any office I've been to) and don't have to use a port for an SD-card dongle, which I use at least once a week. So I've now got one port for a second display and 2 ports for other devices, where before I only had one.
That's an improvement for me personally, and I expect my usage is pretty average.
If you use a hub, I think the need for the fourth TB port is fairly slight because you are almost certainly connecting some of your other devices to the hub, otherwise, what's the point? If you have a USB-C/DisplayPort monitor with power delivery, chances are that it also acts as a hub, so you have few more USB-C ports on the monitor, and again, the missing 4th port on the computer is a minor issue.
I think Apple got the balance right with this one.
Wow, VGA is old school. I think I still have an adapter somewhere, but it almost certainly has TB2/Mini-display Port on the other end from my pre-2016 MBP15 days. It's somewhat surprising to me that despite all the advanced electronics industry in Japan that in other technology there is somewhat behind Europe, North America and Australasia - e.g. fax machines, banking technology, remote working, and (so I have learned) display connectors