How small is your Lenovo Thinkpad?
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Iām sure @shaddack wil tell us that good engineering can overcome physical limitations. Or that it wouldnāt be a problem if they only made it 5mm wider. Or cut the size of the shift key in half. Or something.
I think the smallest Thinkpad with a full-sized nonprotruding SD reader is the X250 at 12.03" x 8.21" x 0.8"
thatās smaller than the 13 inch macbook pro.
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128GB has been out for a while, and SanDisk just announced a 200GB card.
Have one, works fine.
Well thereās a great solution to a problem that shouldnāt exist! My laptop manages to have a full depth SD slot, not sure why Apple think theyāre too good to have one in theirsā¦
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The SDHC standard only specified cards up to 32GB. When the SDXC standard was formulated, it defined support for cards of up to 2 TB. However, real-world cards are constrained by the availability and price of high density NAND dice, which currently makes full size SD cards of more than 256GB nearly unavailable and very expensive, and 128GB the de-facto ceiling for comparatively reasonably priced microSD cards. CompactFlash and CFast theoretically have more space to work with; but interest is pretty minimal so nobody seems too excited about taking advantage of that. (In passing, the SDXC bus is fairly tolerant, so āextensionā adapters exist that plug into a microSD slot and have an SD slot connected by a short cable. For devices where this physically works with the case, you can then put a full size SD card into a microSD slot. Very long runs are probably asking for trouble; but you can get away with short ones.)
In principle, any SDXC reader should cheerfully Just Work when confronted by a 2 TB card; but such a beast is about 8 times the size of what is commercially available now, unless you count SSDs, which have substantially more volume to work with, even in M.2 sizes, never mind 2.5inch.
In fairness to Appleās engineering, Iād be the first to agree that its priorities are wrong; but it (mostly) delivers on them competently enough.
A half-ish depth SD card reader vs. a full depth with clicky-latch decision is classic Apple: we only grudgingly support expansion interfaces at all, and if we do something slightly atypical we can save a couple of square centimeters of board space, which can then be used to either make the system smaller or the battery larger.
During the Woz era, they were a bit more expansion friendly(in part just because you couldnāt integrate as tightly without DoD sized budgets); and during the Scully era they popped out a few designs with delusions of being PC whiteboxes, which included expandability; but Jobs and post-Jobs has always been eager to either kill things or shrink them absolutely whenever it can get away with them(eg. the use of mini-VGA and mini-DVI on most of their pre-displayport laptops, despite those never getting enough traction to save users from dongles). Thatās just what they do; because thatās ultimately what the care more about. I
As for your proposed adapter, that sounds like the best DIY approach, especially because it involves leaving the microSD socket to the professionals. Itās only 8 pins, and not a terribly demanding bus; but fiddly little spring contact sockets are one of those places where mechanical engineering and ājust bodging at itā part ways, and I know which side of that bridge Iām on.
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All the Intel/Microsoft laptops Iāve used in the last few years have SD card slots, and I donāt think Iāve seen a mechanical level release in all that time. The standard is something that pushes in flush or almost flush (perhaps a milimetre clearance) which is removed by pushing it in.
The Cult of Macās willingness to laud Apple for delivering something that everyone else regards as standard continues to amuse.
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Yes, there are dozens of ways to approach such simple problems. Many are good. Some compromise on the usability and these are wrong. A computer is something whose role is primarily to be used, and often used in suboptimal and rough conditions. Taking compromises that hinder usability is just plain wrong, and it takes a significant emotional investment in the brand, aka being a fanboy, to not see it.
Delivering well-ish on wrong priorities sadly does not make the product good.
Good old Woz. I like him, he designs things based on their functionality. Jobs, on the other hand, doesnāt earn my admiration; he is all style and little substance.
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To all the Apple haters here:
Could it be that Apple understands their market and you are not it?
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I could be I suppose, but usually it does seem that Appleās market is unbelievably forgiving of every idiosyncrasy coming out of Cupertino.
I long ago deduced the three underlying laws of personal computing:
- Linux! Do anything you want, so long as you can code it yourself!
- Windows! Do anything you want, as long as you donāt mind having to deal with malware!
- Apple! Do anything you want, so long as itās what Steve Jobs wants to do as well!
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Again, you do not get to decide for everyone else what priorites are wrong.
Appleās priorities are not right for you. Your priorities are not right for Apple users.
And perhaps emotional investment comes from associating a brand with products that consistently gets things right for you.
I think itās basically a matter of having an āunnecessaryā moving fiddly part. There are no moving parts on the macbooks like that.
Well, there is a very solid feeling, flush aluminum button that lights up flush leds to show battery percentage - if you didnāt know it was there you might easily not even notice it. And a similar flush aluminum power button. Thatās it. Not sure if the latest macbooks even have that actually. Plus the keyboard keys of course but those are very solid too.
I donāt dislike the spring loaded card slots you find elsewhere. The functionality is good. Itās a very, very different design aesthetic though, and it feels like clicking a cheap plastic retractable pen. To make it feel like it fits in with the macbook theyād have to massively overengineer it, and it would still be the only moving part.
Plus if you use the slot for what apple knows most of its customers do, which is frequent downloading of digital camera photos (or anything similar) and not long term storage expansion, the slot works great. Thereās really no issue with the card sticking out because itās always going to be removed quickly.
You can definitely argue that for your purposes this design decision is wrong, but it is not half-assed and isnāt without reason.
This is the one big issue I have with Apple, where I think they are vulnerable to legitimate criticism. Although I honestly think their base models represents decent value, their upgrades are always obscenely priced. Itās still $100 to jump from 4Gb of RAM to 8GB, and to go from a 1TB conventional hard drive to a 1TB fusion drive is a $200 upgrade (even though you can buy a WD Black2 1TB + 120GB SSD driveāwhich is what a fusion drive isāfor $130), but when they used standard components it was possible for users to avoid the Apple tax (I donāt consider there to be a real Apple tax outside of this context) by installing their own RAM or upgrades.
Now theyāve moved exclusively to soldering on the RAM (which makes some sense given the bulk of SODIMM slots), as well as using proprietary connectors for their SSDs (which is less defensible, given that standard connectors should still work), making it very difficult to avoid the Apple tax if you want to ever configure beyond the base specification.
Itās possible that the refusal to include full-length SD slots (and, more transparently, to include any slots on their phones) is intended to prevent users from avoiding the upgrade tax (although it makes less sense in the non-Retina Pros, as they use standard SATA connectors on the inside and are easily upgradeable).
On the other hand, the refusal to upgrade the non-retina Macbook Pross to Haswell/Broadwell, but instead stick with 2012 technology, has ensured their battery life isnāt comparable to either the Retina or the Air, gently nudging people towards those options.
http://www.amazon.com/Black2-Dual-Drive-2-5-WD1001X06XDTL/dp/B00GSJ9X4Q/?tag=mercycorps-20
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Sadly, no. I just tend to get called for help when the priorities bite the people. Quite some preventable work.
My priorities arenāt right for Apple users. But I am good enough for them when their priorities show their side effects.
Apple-worshippers tend to harbor a lot of self-denial. If they have doubts, they suppress them because the design decisions of Holy Jobs and his Cupertino priests must be better than what they can ever come up with. Thatās the best explanation for the reverence to lack of ports, lack of modularity/upgradability, and poorly chosen interface connectors.
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10 minutes more battery life are worth the inconvenience of a non flush sdcard?
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I canāt imagine needing an sd card. I think that is the point.
No, you get called when some priorities bite the people. But I highly doubt people call you to complain about how heavy their computers are, how short the batteries last, or how little they like using their computers. you probably donāt get called when people are unhappy about getting serviceāin warranty or outāfrom the manufacturer. And Iām guessing you donāt get called when people want to talk about what they like about their computers, either.
Maybe these factors simply arenāt important to most people who buy Apple? And maybe the quality, reliability, service, and ease-of-use are factors other than the Holy Jobs that people take into consideration?
Is it Jobs or the products that actually made the reputation? How big was Apple before the iMac? Before the iPod? Before the iPhone? Before the iPad?
I never used my SD slot on my Unibody Pro (mainly because my cameras used CF cards). But with the flash-based Macbooks I can see adding an SD card to expand drive space. On the other hand, having to buy a special size SD card or adapter for this purpose probably wouldnāt bother me much at all.
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