How about using your brain instead of putting some cult-like trust in The Steve? PC users stuck with USB covet Firewire (and eSATA) because USB is S-L-O-W in comparison. Do a direct comparison between the best implementation of USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 on an external hard drive or when transferring digital video files. You will quickly (or slowly as the case may be) see what I mean.

There's no good reason that I can see for Apple to go away from a technically superior standard to one that sucks (and is on the way to being replaced because of it) by comparison. If they wanted to ADD a few USB ports, that would be one thing. But ditching Firewire to save 3 to 5 bucks per machine in manufacturing costs strikes me as just dumb.

No firewire ports on the MacBooks?

Firewire is a HUGE help, and a big advantage of going with macs. I don't know if I can count the number of firewire 400 gizmos I have.

The industry moved to USB2 quite some time ago - in fact, as my Mirrored Drive Door G4 can attest - apple was slow to ship USB2.

I suppose they want people like me to be out there buying a card for our FW400 devices, but what a drag.

What percentage of Macbook buyers are using the FW? The primary reason for FW is for AV equipment, ie portable audio/video editing.

Come to think of it, it was the _consumer_ oriented iMac that first dropped the floppy and people with lots of floppies complained about it. People who had old monitors complained about the All-in-One design. Business users complained it was not in a business-friendly color.

If you already have a MacBook or PowerBook G4, they don't stop working. If you want to go the latest and you have FW legacy equipment, you still have the MacBookPro with its better graphics and processing power. If you absolutely must have it at the price point, you can buy the non-aluminum Macbook.

It sucks there is no add-on FW via ExpressCard or a FW<->USB2 convertor for the Macbook.

I was disappointed that they didn't hit the rumored $899 price point, although with old form factor (white) one did go from $1099 to $999 (and it looks like that version still has FW400). And yet *ANOTHER* video connector standard? Now THAT I find annoying.

>>>half of the customers who buy a new Mac from the Apple Store are new to the platform<<<

What about the other half who aren't?

Apple's strategy is obvious. They want to build a better PC, NOT a better Mac.

I can see the ads now: "New from Apple: a more expensive computer that's crappier than its predecessor! Sure, it sucks, but it's designed by the same people who brought you the iPhone. And the iPod. We call it i-cool (tm)."

Dell and Sony are looking better all the time.

Please tell me something good about Firewire 800? Please?

I really don't understand dropping it. I understand going to the mini connector and perhaps just having a single port, but eliminating it completely sucks. There's a LOT of FW stuff out there, and backwards compatibility is never a bad idea.

Come to think of it, why'd they take IEEE1394 networking out of Vista? That stuff is cool for specialized bridging purposes.

Dropping Firewire from a laptop is changing the industry? This is a feature that Lenvo, HP nor Dell feel the need to advertise as a major feature and you have to dig deep to find if a lap top has it or not. Firewire is used by what 20 percent of the people at most for pretty much only 2 applications, external hard drives and some camcorders. The number of people using firewire on laptops are probably even less than that number. Almost every external hard drive that has firewire also has a USB port a port and most consumer camcorders are now shipping with USB. This will have no effect on the industry in anyway except to push the few thousand professional video editors that only use laptops to some other high end laptop solution from someone like Alienware or HP.

I'm a long time Apple enthusiast. My first computer was an Apple, way back in the Mac Plus days. But Apple has an unfortunate habit of throwing older Mac users under the bus. They've done it time and time again, by making it hard to use older peripherals and eliminating older standards. I've seen it happen with floppy drives (although that wasn't really a big deal, since you could easily buy an external drive), SCSI, ADB, and the biggest one - OS X. But in most of those cases, you could see an improvement with the new system - it might have been painful to give up your SCSI drive or your OS 9 software, but you were getting something better for it. (And there was usually some way to bridge the gap - a converter, an add-on card, classic). But USB 2 isn't better than firewire - in many ways, it's worse. The only benefit is that it's cheaper. And there's no easy way to convert firewire to USB. Hopefully Apple will continue supporting firewire in its more expensive models - losing it on the MacBook is not that big a deal, but will it disappear from other models next?

One argument for the Mac used to be that Macs last longer, so even if a Mac costs more initially, the cost per year would be about the same as a PC (or less). But that argument doesn't work as well when computers and peripherals that are only a couple of years old are no longer supported. I can live without firewire, but I hate to see Apple going the same way as so many other electronic items - where a computer is disposable and you're expected to upgrade every couple of years.

As a relatively recent Apple convert, it was the innovative value-adds such as FireWire that factored into making the switch for me.

Firewire, which I use regularly, is a significant reason why I consider Apple to be a superior product for which I'm willing to pay more.

Instead of dumping FireWire altogether, why didn't Apple replace the 400 with the 800, which is 3 times faster than USB 2.0? How will Apple now justify the higher prices its products command when they are stripping them of the features that set them apart?

I think it's bigger in the Mac world so I can understand the anger. But in the real world, you include features based on the cost to build it versus the plethora of devices that actually need it.

My latest laptop also has no serial port, no LPT, no S-video, no PS/2 mouse-keyboard port(s). Thank god since those are all crap. It only has one PCCard slot and I wish it was zero.

I can't even remember the last time I used a floppy. I think it was to upgrade the BIOS on a 10 year old desktop PC.

And if anyone's listening, it's time to drop the standard full sized USB port and move to the mini port. It's cheaper to make, the cables are lighter and smaller, the ports less obtrusive.