Apple giveth and Apple taketh away... ugh... Return of FireWire (800) on the 13" MB Pro... but takes away ExpressCard slot form the 15" Pro (and the 13").. FAIL..

JeffHarris - same problems - eSATA card via ExpressCard slot ... shesh..

Sealed battery on 15" also a deal-breaker... FAIL

sigh

More bad news than good...

So, I guess Apple is listening.. people have been asking for card slots and allot of us wanted firewire back.. so I guess if we all ask for expresscard slots to return the next version may be something I'd buy???

haven't seen any mention of this anywhere...

but check this pic of the new 13" MBP :

http://images.apple.com/macbookpro/images/featuresio1320090608.jpg

looks to me you now have the choice of either using headphones or listen to something. no why to plug in headphones AND monitor what you record it would seem.

kinda inconvenient.

Well, considering that probably around 90% of laptop purchasers only ever use the single included battery from the original purchase

Of course, this assumes you don't end up with a lovely bulging or defective battery as past macbook/mbp users have used. When I got mine replaced via Applecare, it was a quick in and out. Now its off to the repair shop for 3 days!

From what it seems like, despite Apple renaming the MacBook to MacBook Pro (I thought Apple was above just renaming things), they've seemed to have moved the 15" machine more into a consumer device than a pro device.

And I hope no one in need of a new 15" MBP had previously bought any ExpressCard adapters. Apparently Apple thinks USB is the way to connect everything.

the omission of express card is unforgiveable for a "Pro" notebook... it alone is more valuable than firewire, because you could've added firewire, or eSata, or whatever else is the next big thing... completely retarded... and if the geniuses weighed it out and thought the card reader was what was worth eliminating the express card slot I'd really loose it... 20-in-1 readers for like $10...great way to waste real estate...nice.

Huge FAIL! yeah right, uhhh sir, to have a common hardware interface you need not only to buy a "Pro" model, but the 17" beast...finances aside, who'd want to schlep this freakin' thing...might as well get an iMac

the 9400 graphics in the 13" aren't wowing me, but for the tradeoff in size, heat, battery life, it seems to make sense.

Register your protest at the lack of matte, antiglare screens on the new MacBook Pro's at http://macmatte.wordpress.com

the low end still costs $999 so no price reduction, unless you think the fact that technology always advances, faster proc's, more memory, larger hdd's...are price reductions.

Most people don't look at it that way. Relative to other manufacturers, who are also upgrading their products and swapping around products and putting them out with new names/re-arranged features, models moving down/up what-have-you

relative to the regular stream of change...there is no price reduction here at all. zippo.


I do happen to like the 13" model though

And I notice the new macbook pros are just as ugly as the old ones.

Who was the design genius who thought two-tone color themes was a good idea? It so much looks like they hired a guy from Dell or something.

based on what I can tell on the mid-range model, apparently Apple is saving $500 by changing the battery and removing expresscard. Oh, they also reduced the amount of ram on the video card.

That seems like a lot of money for an expresscard slot. Maybe I should rip mine out and see if its made of gold or something.

But its a good time to get a good price on last years model (which apparently was overpriced by some $400 or so just last week).

...eg. to get the 'pro' 9600M GT graphics? So in a sense is this a kind of Trojan Horse upsell strategy...?

Of course its an upsell strategy. Apple always makes the low-end model (of anything) so under-valued compared to the mid-range that you feel stupid not to spend the money to go to at least the mid-range.