Popular aftermarket part and component supplier OWC has taken the wraps off of a new accessory that brings both more storage and additional connectivity to the new 2016 MacBook Pro. Called the OWC DEC, the attachment brings 4TB of storage, an SD card slot, USB Type-A, and a Gigabit Ethernet port to the new MacBook Pros…
What’s unique about the DEC, for good or bad, is its design. The accessory is attached to the bottom of the MacBook Pro, thus making it thicker and heavier, but keeping the overall footprint the same. OWC says it has perfected the color of the aluminum attachment to ensure that it matches with the color of the MacBook Pro itself, making for a more seamless appearance.
OWC says that with the attachment, the 2016 MacBook Pro is a thick as the 2012 MacBook Pro, which comes in at 0.95 inches. That’s a .36-inch difference from the device’s 0.59-inch standalone build.
At this point, it’s unclear how much weight the attachment adds, but given the storage and ports the DEC features, we’d imagine it makes a notable difference.
OWC’s founder and CEO Larry O’Connor says that the company has been working on something like the DEC for nearly three-years and feels that, with the release of the new MacBook Pro, now is the perfect time to release it:
The 2016 MacBook Pro has prompted a variety of companies to take stabs at perfecting the external dock solution, offering legacy ports and in some cases more storage.
“Storage space is always at a premium on a laptop and without the potential to upgrade the factory drive, the OWC DEC brings that option back in addition to cleanly supporting the gear we all rely on.”
OWC itself announced a Thunderbolt 3 dock back in November, bringing 13 legacy I/O ports to the new MacBook Pro with a single connector cable. This dock was a more traditional approach at solving the MacBook Pro’s connectivity “problem” than the DEC is.
The OWC Dec is expected to be available during the Spring of 2017, though specific pricing and availability details remain unclear. It’s worth noting that the early images of the products appear to be renders and do not show all of the connectivity options OWC touts.
