What is Apple doing?
A few months ago they remove firewire from the new (aluminium) MacBooks but leave it on the legacy white Macbooks.
Now they put firewire back on the 13" MacBook (re named to a MacBook Pro), but remove the express slot from the 15" models???
Why do they keep removing things?
Who the hell cared about an SD card slot?
An SD card reader costs about a fiver & can plug into a USB port for those who want one.
Jesus - Apple have lost the plot on the specs of their 'Pro' laptops.

Geoff

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www.myspace.com/jazzygb1
www.myspace.com/revox1

Quote JazzyGB1:

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A few months ago they remove firewire from the new (aluminium) MacBooks

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I think they figured no one would miss it, and they were surprised at how much of a stink users made about it, hence:

Quote JazzyGB1:

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Now they put firewire back on the 13" MacBook

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Quote JazzyGB1:

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but remove the express slot from the 15" models???
Why do they keep removing things?

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Apaarently, about 1% of MBP owners used the expresscard slot. Personally, I wish mine had two, but...

Quote JazzyGB1:

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Who the hell cared about an SD card slot?
An SD card reader costs about a fiver & can plug into a USB port for those who want one.

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I agree, but they figured the general user can make more use of an SD card slot than the other. I might be able to forgive them (a bit) if they'd also put at least an eSata port on it as well, but...

Now we know that Pro, at least for us types, means a 17, or nothing...

Quote desmond:

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....they were surprised at how much of a stink users made about it, hence:...

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Hi
He (SJ). Not they...

The protest backfired, didn't it?
"If you want a Mac Pro you can bloody pay for it - from now on we're charging +$1000++ on top of Intel's extortionate beat-the-credit-crunch CPU price ramp..." :(

Quote PaulD:

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Quote desmond:

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....they were surprised at how much of a stink users made about it, hence:...

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Hi
He (SJ). Not they...

The protest backfired, didn't it?
"If you want a Mac Pro you can bloody pay for it - from now on we're charging +$1000++ on top of Intel's extortionate beat-the-credit-crunch CPU price ramp..." :(

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Pardon?

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Matt
www.krcollective.org

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Apaarently, about 1% of MBP owners used the expresscard slot. Personally, I wish mine had two, but...

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What exactly you use it for? just out of interest...

I have an Expresscard eSata interface, that gives me two eSata ports I use to connect two eSata drives for great disk performance (significantly faster than FW800).

(All my external drives have USB, FW800 & eSata interfaces for flexibility.)

It also keeps the disk activity off the FW buss.

I could also use an Expresscard FW interface, to give me a second, independent FW bus. Remeber, connecting any single FW400 device makes the whole FW bus run at FW400. Having two independent busses lets you spread the load, and lets you keep higher speed FW800 devices for throughput, while still letting you use FW400 devices without slowing everything down.

(I'm running this config on my old Powerbook.)

And lastly, for a UAD Card (either UAD-1, or the forthcoming UAD-2 Solo/Laptop). As it is, when I get the Solo/Laptop and use that, I lose the eSATA connectivity completely (only one expresscard slot), *and* FW800 connectivity (my audio interface is FW400), as everything else drops to FW400 speeds (disk drives, audio interface, video camera etc).

It also means all disk throughput gets bunged on the same bus as the audio interface throughput.

But I would sacrifice that to get back my UA plugins.

Yes, laptops are not best suited to these things, but I love being mobile. The point being, I find one expresscard essential, would prefer two (or at least, one expresscard slot and an eSata port), but none would seriously make me look elsewhere - I'd have to resort to a 17in MBP but I find those too big - the 15in is a sweet spot, with an external monitor for desktop use.

I find it *really* hard to have UAD plugins and not be able to use them...

WHEN WILL THEY REALISE THAT 5400RPM HARD DRIVES ARE POINTLESS!! It's just ripping us off because you HAVE to pay for an upgrade (for reference I'm loking at the new 13" Macbook "Pro".

I lvoe Apple gear but hate how they rip us off continuously.

Quote keeno:

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WHEN WILL THEY REALISE THAT 5400RPM HARD DRIVES ARE POINTLESS!!

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Pointless? The one in mine seems to be *very* pointed...

Quote keeno:

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WHEN WILL THEY REALISE THAT 5400RPM HARD DRIVES ARE POINTLESS!!

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Despite being able to handle more "tracks" than most people use.

Anyway, at least, as I understand it, the HD is easily repleacable in these machines.

Exactly! I never had HD issues with my Apple-supplied 5400 drive. When I switched to a 7200, I was amazed at what it did for my video work, but this is an audio forum.

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"It all seems so stupid, it makes me want to give up, but why should I give up when it all seems so stupid?"

So maybe we should start protest about the expresscard, write letters to SJ and ask E-cards also on the 13" version!

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Pro. violinist who likes some experiments...
www.myspace.com/pagannini

I bought an updated white macbook and managed to avoid this whole debacle

Quote Pabs!:

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I bought an updated white macbook and managed to avoid this whole debacle

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My mate bought one of those as well

They are great little machines for the money

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Matt
www.krcollective.org

I still have this white MacBook but replaced the internal drive with a 350 GB 7200 rpm drive which I'll be moving over to my next machines for the forseeable future

I also have external drives connected via both FireWire and USB for backups.

Sometimes I wonder if Apple actually realizes how much more *expensive* upgrades will be for existing Mac users, every time they do something as seemingly trivial as updating the ports to the latest "standards"...

Well, I for one am not complaining. I have just ordered a 15' 2.53 GHz, with 4Gb Ram and a 500 GB hard Drive at 7200 rpm for A$2800 or so. $300 bucks less than the previous MBP base model with 5400rpm HD. I think this should be an absolute [ ****** ] beast. (at least compared to my current first intel generation imac)