I am going to get one next month to replace my aging PowerPC Mac Mini.

Most likely they cut the processor to cut costs. Because, come on, you wouldn't think that after 6 months on the market that the component cost would itself diminish.

WANT. my ibook g4 may come to an untimely end, soon.

Who's the idiot who said this was gonna be a 2.8??

To quote my 2 favorite people...

"No firewire on the macbook? That's just powerful stupid."

"Um, no firewire on the macbook pretty much cripples it as far as iLife goes... What's the point? iMovie and iDVD are useless w/o firewire.. at least when they downgraded to iMovie 08, I could still use 06..."

sigh

BTW, for those planning on getting a new mac laptop, be forewarned that in order to connect it to an external monitor will need to purchase your displayport to DVI/VGA/etc adapters separately (assuming you're not a mac geek who just has to have a new apple monitor as well).

I guess there is a good reason for using the port. To get people to fork money over for overpriced adapters.

Am i the only one missing the mat screen finish? Is apple telling me i have to plug in to an external display (with a $29-$99 adapter no less) to work on my graphics projects on my new MacBook PRO???!!!

I think that the new macbook is better than the old one and I am a designer. I design websites and books myself. I use rgb only and my books and websites always look good. As far as screens are concerned, the same thing people are saying about glossy screens they said about LCDs a few years back. The reality is in web design, you are working under greater restraints than designing for print. You cannot control size, proportions, or color absolutely the way you can with print. Regardless of which monitor you use, the gamma is different under Windows and the Mac - this is is software, not hardware - you can adjust it on Linux (I think under KDE there is a gui for it). When my uncle on a PC sees my web graphics on his PC, they are always much darker. You also have to factor in the age of the monitor as LCDs fade over time. And for someone who think they are so much better at determining color than the printer or computer is, then why not get a Apple Cinema display and use a Mac Pro? If you can afford Adobe applications, then why is it so hard to afford the hardware to run them? I am looking forward to the glossy screens as I think most of Apple's customers are. Apple is designing computers now for the 90% of the market instead of 2% of the market. If Apple doesn't offer you what you want, you can always go to Dell and get a Windows or Linux computer.

I really lament the loss of firewire. It started with the iPod and continues on. Firewire was an awesome always there tool.

Oh well. You can remove the hard drive easy enough and put it in an external case when things go wrong. I guess I only really use firewire for service anyway.

The place it REALLY hurts is if you have a Firewire based video camera. I guess a MacBook isn't in the cards for you then. Pony up for a Pro if you want to do that!

Musicians need FW and a reasonably priced Laptop... and what about camcorders w/ iMovie?
Another Jobsian decision.

USB 2 is inferior to firewire 400. It has been reported but not appreciated by many I guess. (I have a USB 2 external HD which is very slow compared to my FW 400 drives). Long ago I was able to do video editing on a 500MHz G3 iBook with an external drive which is something you won't be able to do with this machine. Hope they can come up with an alternative way to import video. Some nice upgrades in technology but as always wait for the second iteration if you can so they can work out the bugs.

Disappointed. Thankfully I purchased a Matte Screen 15 MBP a year ago. I will try to get a 17 MBP now. The glass is a deal breaker for me as I cant deal with reflections and eventually I get a headache. While a appreciate the new build process, IMHO I dont think they are as pretty as the old MBP or even the Air. Apple is moving to much to standard consumers I feel.

in this economic climate.. with no firewire for your video editing, backups, sound editing, target disk mode etc etc, integrated graphics and ANOTHER new video port. What's wrong with mini hdmi that everyone else is using, that carries the sound as well and lets you plug straight into your tv! I really would not buy this laptop and hope rev 2 fixes some of these issues.

I just love the glossy screen-- it's the best way I know to study the flourescent lighting in the airport lounge or office waiting room.

FireWire still has utility for consumer cameras and the like.

It's a thing of beauty ad I love the industrial video (wow!) but stupid omissions will hurt sales, IMHO.

no firewire. the pc crowd has ignored firewire for the longest time without killing it so apple has decided to cut off it's balls for them.

long live inferior technology!

that's the machine that's in my price range but no way without firewire. what a bummer. dude.

While I also think the missing Firewire on the Macbook is pitiful, it does make sense for consumers....

The hottest segment of camcorder sales for consumers is the hard drive models (Tape is dying). All of them have USB connections and appear as a hard drive - drag and drop.

For hard drives it does suck (I prefer FW as it's faster) but USB2 drives are just more popular and prevalent.

So, yes it does suck but it does make sense when you figure the target audience.