The next MacBook Pro may bring back an SD card slot to appease Apple’s pro user base

As Apple’s work on engineering the next wave of hardware refreshes to the Mac lineup continues, a tidbit that appeared in today’s Bloomberg report has corroborated earlier whispers which suggest that the next MacBook Pro might bring back the removed memory card slot.

The tidbit was briefly mentioned in today’s story by Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. The story focuses on a thinner, lighter MacBook Air with MagSafe, coming in the second half of this year or early-2022, along with a larger MacBook Air with a 15-inch screen that Apple has considered building but decided against moving forward with for the next generation.

Consternated photographers, rejoice!

Here’s the relevant excerpt from the Bloomberg report:

The upcoming MacBook Pro is an example of Apple’s renewed focus on Mac loyalists. The company is planning to bring back an SD card slot for the next MacBook Pros so users can insert memory cards from digital cameras.

Apple has removed the helpful memory card slot from the MacBook Pro back in 2016.

It coincided with Apple’s transition to USB-C.

Apple giveth, Apple taketh away

Mac notebooks nowadays exclusively rely on USB-C for everything from charging to data to external storage, monitors, etc. But removing all non-USB-C ports has backfired because the world wasn’t ready for a utopian future in which all devices use USB-C for everything.

As a result, dongles proliferated. In turn, that has complicated the lives of professional photographers and video creators who could no longer insert a memory card into an SD slot to transfer their work to a computer without too much fuss. It’s especially problematic for Apple’s brand because those people are some of the key segments of the MacBook Pro’s user base.

That’s not the only thing going away from a notebook that prides itself with having a Pro suffix in its name. The mostly useless Touch Bar function row, for example, is also going. On the flip side, the beloved MagSafe magnetic charger feature is making a comeback.

And we also might get Macs with Face ID and integrated cellular modems in the future.