Some users say the new MacBook Pro’s SD card slot simply doesn’t work

By Alex Blake Published December 7, 2021

Apple’s new range of MacBook Pro laptops have gone a long way to fixing much of what was wrong with the company’s previous Mac efforts. Part of that was bringing back far more variety in the ports on offer – yet it’s exactly this that is apparently causing problems for some Mac users.

A number of users on the MacRumors forums have been voicing their frustrations with the SD card slot on the new MacBook Pro, which made its return in the 2021 MacBook Pro after an absence of half a decade. Concerningly, the complaints cover a wide variety of situations, making it tricky to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong.

Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

The thread was started by user 0071284, who explained that they have several SD cards that go unrecognized by their new MacBook Pro. However, when using Apple’s external USB-C to SD card reader, 0071284 says their Mac has no trouble reading their cards.

Recommended Videos

The issue seems to affect different cards of the same capacity, too. Forum user wilberforce states that their 64GB Sony SD card works in the MacBook Pro, but their 64GB SanDisk SD card does not. They added that they have tried all manner of SD cards from different manufacturers and with different capacities, with the likelihood of success seeming to be “completely random.”

For some people, MacOS could take minutes to recognize the SD card and show its contents in Finder. Even so, that still resulted in Finder sometimes crashing. Some users tried formatting their cards, which did not help.

While it’s certainly possible that some of the fault lies with old or outdated SD cards, we doubt that can be entirely responsible for the slate of issues users are having. Indeed, the fact that some cards seem to work perfectly in an external SD card dongle but then throw up an error message when inserted directly into a MacBook Pro suggests the problem could lie with the laptop itself.

It’s not an auspicious return for the SD card slot in Apple’s MacBook Pro. The company was criticized for many years for streamlining its laptops to only use USB-C slots. While that remains the case on the MacBook Air, Apple evidently felt it was right to concede on this point with the MacBook Pro, where demanding workloads that often involve SD cards are more the norm. If the SD card slot is here to stay, Mac users will be hoping Apple can fix this issue as soon as possible.

Computing Writer

Alex Blake has been working with Digital Trends since 2019, where he spends most of his time writing about Mac computers…

Topics

Computing

Google makes Gemini’s AI avatars social, so friends can now appear in each other’s content

Google Gemini lets you share your AI likeness with friends, tag each other in prompts, and star together in generated videos.

Google is making Gemini's personal AI avatars more social, letting you share your likeness with friends and appear together in AI-generated images and videos. You can share your avatar, tag friends in prompts, and create content featuring everyone's digital likeness.

https://twitter.com/GeminiApp/status/2115885244805251519

Computing

Subvocal’s glasses promise to let you talk to your computer in complete silence

Voice dictation is incredibly convenient, but talking to your computer in public can be embarrassing. Subvocal thinks it has a solution.

Subvocal smart glasses use radar to track your mouth movement and convert it to text using AI

Typing has always been a bottleneck between what we think and how quickly we can communicate it to a computer. AI-powered dictation tools like Wispr Flow have made things considerably better. You can practically ramble your way through an entire email, or even an article, and have it transcribed into text in seconds.

But there's a rather awkward problem with talking to your computer. Try doing it in a quiet office, a library, or even your favorite cafe, and more often than not, you tend to attract some attention or end up disturbing others. A startup called The Subvocal Company thinks it has found a solution to this issue. It has developed a pair of smart glasses that promise to turn silent mouth movements into text at over 200 words per minute.

Computing

North Korean hackers pull off a $6.3 billion crypto heist in one of the biggest thefts so far

Cryptocurrency issuers and networks froze approximately $2.7 billion, the remaining stolen assets pose a major challenge.

binance-crypto-theft

North Korean hackers have stolen a staggering $6.36 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance, according to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs. On October 29 the attack reportedly drained funds across 10 different blockchains in roughly 20 minutes. TRM attributes the operation to TraderTraitor, a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group.

How did hackers steal $6.3 billion from Binance?