HDMI Dongles aren’t just finicky… they often don’t work at 4K60. Most of them don’t even support 4K60 444, they support half speed, 4K60 420, which is useless on a computer, so you get 4K30 instead… and window scrolling is terrible.
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M1 Max MBP has all these unnecessary ports….WTF?!
- Thread starter AdonisSMU
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... it may be on someone else’s desk which may not have a Caldigit TS3 Plus dock handy.
I might use 1 USBc port for a weekly backup drive but will be using the SD card slot far more often and the HDMI port occasionally. Everyone's mileage will vary but for me the extra ports means I don't need to buy a dongle at all!
The possibility that I will need more than 3 USBc ports is extremely remote.
Due to events ^, all I have to say now is:
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Well I’ve come round to liking the idea of more ports on the new MBP, I know I will never, ever, use the SD Card slot though - so on a personal note would have preferred an ethernet in its place.
The thing that tipped me was that more than one device I need to plug into Macs has to be plugged directly into the Mac and not via a hub/dock. One being a ghost HDMI adaptor, one being a Looking Glass Portrait HDMI device and another being a USB-C LunaDisplay dongle.
Is there a concensus on the best USB-C/TB4 to Ethernet adapter in case I need one?
The thing that tipped me was that more than one device I need to plug into Macs has to be plugged directly into the Mac and not via a hub/dock. One being a ghost HDMI adaptor, one being a Looking Glass Portrait HDMI device and another being a USB-C LunaDisplay dongle.
Is there a concensus on the best USB-C/TB4 to Ethernet adapter in case I need one?
Please stop spreading this false idea. A few days back I was bothered by the way people keep repeating it without questioning it, because it's a very unlikely thing - what standards body would do that? So, I looked up the responsible standards body and read through a couple docs posted on their website. According to the SD Association, UHS-III is just a new double-speed PHY mode using the same pinout and signaling as UHS-II. I have found no reason to believe that UHS-II cards would be forced back to UHS-I speeds in a UHS-III socket, and lots of reasons to believe that the SDA planned on full speed backwards compatibility.
FYI the M1 Pro/Max machines use a Genesys Logic GL9755A SD card reader IC which connects to the M1 Pro or Max through 1 lane of PCIe running at Gen 2 speed (5.0 Gbps). Same nominal throughput as USB3.1g1 (same physical layer, even - USB3 borrowed from PCIe iirc), much better latency.
Copying the table from Wikipedia... you are correct that UHS-iii cards do fall back to UHS-ii speeds with a UHS-ii slot.I have corrected my posts.
UHS-iii cards are not likely to be commercially available though.
SD Express cards fall back to UHS-i speeds unless a SD Express slot is implemented. If a SD Express slot is implemented then all UHS-xxx cards are at UHS-i speeds except for SD Express cards.
My point is that UHS-ii slot implementation is still limited even though Sandisk announced their first UHS-ii card in 2014. The USH-iii spec and SD Express spec have been available for years now and are not commercially available. Lexar has announced a SD Express card for 2022 which will be faster than current CFe cards but falls back to UHS-i speeds.
On the other hand CFe Type B cards are readily available from a number of manufacturers with a range of capacities up to 2TB with speeds >1400MB/s already.
What slot format will manufacturers implement?
What speed is really needed at the moment. 8k raw is the fastest continuous write speed in cameras with fast speeds also assisting buffer clearance times for burst shots at high resolution. 8k raw also chews up serious space and only internal cards can record the full bit depth (Ninja V+ records 8k prores raw at a lower bit depth via the HDMI 2.0 port).
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I think they may be getting confused with SD-Express. I have read that using a UHS-II card with an SD-Express reader will revert to UHS-I speeds because the 2nd row of pins on the UHS-II card are not compatible with SD-Express.
UHS-III is just a full-duplex version of UHS-II AFAIK, i.e. up to 312MB/s in both directions simultaneously.
[Edit: looks like I have the first paragraph the wrong-way round. If you inserts an SD-Express card into a UHS-II (& presumably UHS-III) slot, it drops down to UHS-I speeds. I'm not sure what happens if you insert a UHS-II card into an SD-Express reader - hopefully, it still works at UHS-II speeds. ]
[Edit 2: in practice, the fall-back of SD-Express card to UHS-I speeds when used in UHS-II readers may not be as bad as it sounds. You would presumably only buy SD-Express cards for use in SD-Express readers, and would only use the card in a different reader in an emergency (i.e. you lost your SD-Express dongle). I don't have high-hopes for SD-Express as a format though unless it becomes as cheap to make the cards and readers as UHS-II is currently. I think CFe may have an unasailable lead already ]
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The question is which slot to have - say on MBPs. SD Express will be the fastest when chipsets are readily available but if you insert UHS-ii or UHS-iii (if available) then speeds go down to UHS-i. Using a UHS-iii chipset would give backward compatibility to UHS-II and UHS-i but is much slower than SD Express.
In general, you are only interested in speed in one direction... write speed for cameras etc and then read speed for downloading. It would be rare for full duplex speeds to be useful in my experience compared to normal hard disks.
With UHSii/iii being limited to ~300MB/s max, this is still 25% less than the slowest CFe Type B sustained write speed of ~400MB/s. Most CFe Type B cards are above 1000MB/s and generally 1400MB/s or more.
Do you need that speed? That is the real question.
The likelihood that Apple will include a CFe Type B slot is remote. The card readers are generally USD50-100 though.
And just for you again - these 4 "multipurpose" ports are useless, if the according accessories aren't USB-C as well. In your home studio bubble, this might be less of an issue, but on the go you usually need dongles. Hence, I rather have 3x TB ports (which now have individual controllers, rather than sharing them like before) plus Magsafe, HDMI and SDXC.
Nope again. Don't generalize numbers just because of your personal bubble. Apple did researches and listened to the majority of users. There had been polls about the port situation, including one here, with conclusive results. There are reviews out there and all of them praise the return of ports, none asked for even more USB-C ports. Simply because it wouldn't improve anything.
Yeah, fully agreed. Even worse, MacRumors seriously linked this clickbait and nonsense thread there.
I bought 3 HDMI dongles. The first one, I didn't realize most dongles didn't support 4k@60hz. The second one, the seller lied that it did. The third one, it gets really hot after 1 minute of use and then forces the monitor to go back to 4k@30hz.
I was running my 4k@60hz monitor at 1440p@60hz for a year because I completely gave up on HDMI dongles.
HDMI port was one of the main reasons I upgraded from my M1 Macbook Air.
Besides the inconvenience of not having an integrated HDMI, I purchased 3 dongles which was definitely bad for the environment. If Apple really cared about the environment, they wouldn't have given reasons for people to always buy dongles.
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Some new hifi amps have a phono stage built in, for people who might want to connect a turntable.
I also saw a new TV the other day with a SCART socket on the back. ?
I don't think I've ever felt so personally offended.
Think I'm going to join enthusiasts' forums for these products and complain bitterly at the members because I don't personally need these ridiculous legacy sockets.
I also saw a new TV the other day with a SCART socket on the back. ?
I don't think I've ever felt so personally offended.
Think I'm going to join enthusiasts' forums for these products and complain bitterly at the members because I don't personally need these ridiculous legacy sockets.
The greatest trick Apple is playing on their customers right now is those environmental reports they post online.
Most of the 21 pages are a majority people trying to explain to a tiny minority why adding very useful 'legacy'* functionality to a product isn't a bad thing even if you personally don't need it.
*not that I agree that HDMI or SD sockets are Legacy/obsolete. Literally millions of in-use devices worldwide still use them, immeasurably in excess of the number of devices which connect by USB-C. To make it perfect I would even have happily swapped one USB-C socket for a USB-A.
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HDMI isn't a legacy port. It's still the standard and newer versions are still coming out.
Nobody is saying that the tech in an HDMI port, for example, is legacy - just that why have a single use port dedicated for it when you can have a port that can be whatever you want instead.
So I really don’t get this at all.
If it were that small of percentage apple wouldn’t have done this. I doubt you have statistics on who actually uses and needs those ports. Apple does. And likely they found users wanted these ports. Apple prefers minimalism whenever possible so adding these ports sort of goes against their whole MO - meaning there had to be good reason to justify adding them. If it was such a small percentage that’s not good reason.
Why is adding ports a bad thing? If you don’t want them, don’t use them?
I agree 100%! I would trade 2 of the TB ports for 2 USB-A ports in a heartbeat
On the plus side, when I sell it, I'll be able to sweeten the deal with all the cables, dongles and adapters ?
Yeah, "whatever you want"... provided you purchased and tested beforehand a dongle that does that transformation, and remembered to pack it, and didn't lose it.
This doesn't do you much good when you find you need to do something basic like hook into a conference room and you didn't buy or can't find the dongle.
Heck, USB-A would be appreciated as well, as my backup disk drives came with USB-3 cables with USB-A connectors.
Due to events ^, all I have to say now is:
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USB-C adds extra cost over USB-A. Low-cost accessories might never migrate over to USB-C. Hence, a single USB-A port on the new MBPs would have been nice.
Is that really true though? USB-C is just the connector, and supports a range of features including basic USB 2.0 functionality, which surely costs the same as it used to. All you are changing is the connector / socket, which is smaller and may even cost less when built at scale. You don't have to supply super speed TB3 cables capable of 100W power delivery, 8K video etc.
USB-C supports USB 2.0, so there's nothing stopping manufacturers implementing only USB 2.0 for low-bandwidth devices, just using a USB-C connector
I have bought a number of devices that have a USB-C connector simply for charging them, with no data transfer capability at all, and it's probably cheaper than having a proprietary connector.
I'm not an expect. Just a googler.
It seems like for an inexpensive accessory, using USB-C over A would add ~$2 cost. That's a lot of money. Hence, we still see more low-cost USB-A accessories than C.
Yes, USB-C is more expensive to implement than USB-A. That’s one reason why devices are still coming out with micro usb instead of USBC power.
OK, I'll accept that may be correct. Do you have any references to support it?
In time, the extension of USB-C connector usage will tip the balance of the manufacturing cost in USB-C's favour. This is mentioned in this Reddit thread: