New Macbooks: Mysterious Vanishing Connectivity

For the money, now you get a Mac laptop that can actually compete in the workplace, handling Photoshop, video and audio tasks with aplomb, and offering excellent gaming performance to boot. Glenda Adams, veteran Mac game programmer and director of development at Aspyr Media, called the 9400M video card in the MacBook "a big win for gamers."

But can you do without a FireWire 400 port - the connection most video cameras still support? (Apple will make adapters available, for a price, apparently.) Apple seems to be saying ‘it's USB for consumers and FireWire for professionals' as the new MacBook Pro still has Firewire 400 and 800 ports. A growing number of consumer hard drives and DV cameras do use USB instead of FireWire, tis true. Soon enough for you, though?

We're still trying to figure out how Apple, among other concerns, plans to resolve the dichotomy between MacBooks that ship with iMovie and the lack of a FireWire port for DV cameras; the few relatively expensive solutions we've found so far (USB to FireWire DV Adapter) are all Windows-only.

Less has changed on the inside. The biggest change is the move from the Intel GM965 chipset and integrated GMA X3100 graphics to an Nvidia chipset and integrated GeForce 9400M graphics, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs says is up to five times as fast as the old Intel graphics. The default memory complement stays at 2GB, but you trade 667MHz DDR2 memory for faster 1066MHz DDR3 memory. You can also upgrade to 4GB of RAM for £100.

In an insane move, there is no video adapter included. I don't care if DisplayPort is an industry standard or not, I just paid $2161.92 for a computer that won't plug into any monitor Apple has shipped to date! But Apple is happy to sell you one for $29.00!