Re: New Macbook - Deliberately hobbled?

All very good points, Ben. You caught me in a major case of jet leg so I am up extremely early, and extremely bored at the moment.

[Ben Holmes] "As I said before, Apple could put these drives in machines to order, and cover the per-machine licence costs in the extra charges. Whether or not they chose to develop a proper authoring solution is a completely separate issue, surely? "

And that is my point. As of right now, Apple cannot do BluRay in way that makes sense and that is 'Mac like', otherwise they would. As of right now, it's a bit too complex for the consumer and it sounds like it's pretty complex for professional application builders as well. I think that BluRay is still too new to simplify.

[Ben Holmes] "I don't think it's any stretch to say that Blu-Ray players (and playback) do not appeal to Apple because it would be in direct competition to the iTMS"

Perhaps, perhaps, but if this were the case, they wouldn't put DVD drives in their computers either as DVDs still outsell BluRays by far. I just don't believe that putting a BluRay burner in their computers would help or hurt iTunes sales, or the number would be so low due to the amount of new computers they would sell if BLuRay came standard and a user could author BluRay on the Mac that the number would be offset. To me, it's just two separate revenue streams that don't really converge. I could be wrong though.

So if you need firewire on a MacBook, it sounds like they just made it cheaper for you. And seriously, the Macbook shouldn't be used as an editor anyway (in my opinion). You can get the new 15" macbook Pro for $600 or $800 more and have a computer that really works instead of one that limps along. In the Pro market, I would call this the cost of doing business and also a smart thing to do if your business depends on owning the right tools to get the job done.

On a side note, if you want to see how bad the glossy screen reflection is, check out the keynote and watch the last video that starts a few minutes before the end of the entire presentation. Those glossy screens are rubbish.

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/0810rtdws876/m_08100053744wuasd_1200...

What is extremely cool is the direct access to the hard drive. No more taking apart the whole case to upgrade to a larger hard drive.

Jeremy