So I've been wondering where the backlash was over the $900 surcharge to edit DV footage on your laptop. Guess that Macworld UK found it (titled "Apple users rage over missing FireWire"):

Within minutes of Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapping up a launch event in Cupertino, users started several threads on the company's support forum blasting the omission of a FireWire port on the new MacBook laptop.


I still tend to agree this was a bad move, and as I posted earlier today, Jobs' answer that new camcorders use USB 2 doesn't make much difference for us folks with a Firewire camcorder we've been using with our older Macs for years.

Then again, all you're really missing is the ability to edit import DV on the move, folks. I don't like it, and if I added a MacBook it'd be far and away my faster Mac, so I'd want to use it even in the home office. Still, I just got a Mac with two firewire ports for $42 shipped.

Though the $42 solution is hyperbolic (I ob need more RAM and a processor upgrade), if you have any Mac from the iBook 500 on up, you've got a means of importing DV and networking it over to your new MacBook, which you could then edit and burn anywhere.

So whine, but whine more precisely. I get the feeling too many of the forum posters fall into that category of, "I can't buy one anyway, but saying this one thing is all that's stopping me [not lack o' money] makes me feel k3wl3r," category.