iFixit posted a full dissection review of the new MacBook Pros, both 13″ and 15″, as it always does with new Apple computers. The teardown revealed that Apple, an undisputed master of industrial design, may have ran into a bit of an engineering flaw. The teardown pictures showed that the placement of the new SD card slot “is rather unimaginative” given that “half the card hangs out of the side of the computer”, as quoted by iFixit. How this happens to be is that Apple engineers seem to have run out of real estate on the main motherboard to allow for the complete concealment of the length of the SD card, thus allowing it to hang out the left side of the MacBook pro.
As can be seen in the picture below circled in red, the SD card slot seems to be jammed when it comes to real estate on the motherboard. The unknown mechanisms behind it prevent it from being completely flushed with the outer rim of the MacBook Pro.
This may be fine for most users, but for those who like to have an SD card sitting inside the slot whilst they transport their MacBook Pros from place to place, will find this a deal-breaker. Fitting this new design in a soft bag would break the hanging half of the SD card clean off, leaving a useless half of 4.0GB inside your brand spankin’ new computer. Really, Apple engineers? You can create an iPhone that “has an app for [just about everything]“, and you can’t fully fit an SD card slot onto the motherboard?
July 11th, 2009 at 2:09 am
I’m think that it is not a big issue, i have seen other computers with that kind of readers where the card haves the half out of the computer but it is not so bad.
If you want to transport your laptop with the memory inside, then you are not lucky, but the place for memory is not the reader, but the camera or the case for the memory.