The announcement of both the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro and those that featured the Touch ID and Touch Bar features got rid of every port you knew and loved and replaced them with Type-C USB + Thunderbolt 3 inputs instead. Apple’s executive, Phil Schiller explains the reason why Apple decided to take this route, all the while explaining why the SD card slot has also been removed from the equation.
Phil Schiller Explains That Maintaining the SD Card Slot on a MacBook Pro Is Cumbersome
Talking to The Independent, Schiller explains the reason for removing the storage card slot from all three models:
“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.”
Phil Schiller was also asked if it was considered an ‘inconsistent’ approach when the headphone jack from the iPhone was dropped and not from the notebook lineup. He answers that the MacBook Pro still retains the traditional headphone jack because professionals will require premium audio gear to work on such machines. Though the executive is leaning towards the usage of wireless headphones more than wired ones, I am under the impression that the company would have been met with extreme consumer backlash had it gone through with removing the headphone jack from this lineup.
One perk of owning these latest generation of MacBook Pro notebooks is that their PCIe-based SSD storage exhibits unprecedented read and write speeds for a drive inside a laptop. The spec sheet also claims that the 15-inch MacBook Pro delivers the highest read and write speeds for a stock drive inside a mobile machine, and it looks like critics will be dying to get their hands on one of these machines to see just how fast the drive really is.
Do you feel that Apple made the right move replacing all ports with Type-C USB + Thunderbolt 3? Tell us your thoughts right away.
