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New Macbook – Deliberately hobbled?
So I’ve been thinking a lot about a new laptop purchase.
To be honest, there’s no point buying a new MBP (I have a 2.33Ghz MBP at the moment) and if I want faster GFX, I use a Mac Pro. Obviously this will be a different decision for different people.
Since getting the MBP, I’ve been lugging it around as a personal machine, and using it a little for FCP and Motion on the go – it’s a great machine for that. It’s just a little big, and honestly I don’t like bashing around something this expensive (insured though it is).
I’ve long wanted a portable the size of the Macbook for this – big storage for the music library and photos I take everywhere, screen just right for all sorts of work – I used to have a Powerbook 12″ and to be honest I found the screen a little small – I’m not a big fan of netbooks for this reason. It would also mean I could bench the MBP and only travel with it when I needed a mobile edit with my IO HD. Be good for years to come then.
The only thing that stopped me was the Intel integrated gfx on the MacBook. It did not allow you to run FCS. Whilst this would never be a main edit machine, there are always times I want to fire up Motion for a little inspiration and prep – or a home movie for the kids.
So I was thrilled when the new MacBook appeared – looks to be everything I needed. NVidia gfx that (although technically integrated) appears to be compatible with FCS (which pointedly only mentions in the specs that you can’t use machines with INTEL integrated graphics). I was absolutely on the verge of increasing the national debt with my credit card when I notice they dropped firewire.
What?
Why?
What purpose could Apple possibly serve by dropping a cheap and well supported port off a $1299 laptop. That’s not exactly Dell money is it? The same port they have championed for years and refer to in relation to camcorders all the time? The protocol that gives proper, continuous data transfer for video, unlike USB2.
Two arguments have been put forward: 1) FW400 is also gone from the MBP – but that’s covered with the FW800 port – after all, it shared a bus with the FW800 port on the old MBP, so it was pretty redundant anyway. 2) Many modern camcorders use USB. Well, a small but growing proportion of domestic camcorders, especially AVC ones, use USB. But that’s still cutting off a lot of camcorder owners – the majority in fact. As well as almost ALL professional and Prosumer cameras.
So why did they do it? Pretty simple as far as I can tell. They just want me to spend $800 more on a laptop I don’t yet need. It’s a simple fact that by adding decent graphics they opened up the MacBooks to Pro Apps – so they hobbled it by removing the only option to connect a proper media drive. I think that sucks. Steve Jobs made a point in his speech the other day of saying they were offering today for $1299 what they offered before for $1999. No.
This may rank as a low point in the history of Apple and Pro users. Dropping firewire was a deliberate attempt to cajole pros (who like me have a number of FW drives and devices) into purchasing the much more expensive laptops. Thing is – I would have bought both. Not now – so it just cost Apple $1299 (actually £950 over here). I wonder how many firewire ports that is?
Ben
PS – I’m fully aware that this ain’t exactly a crisis on a par with the National Debt. Just a little rant…
Edit Out Ltd
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60 Replies
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The new 17″ MBP still has fire-wire 400
Cheers
Alexander -
There’s a long thread down below that already covers a lot of your talking points.
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1007391
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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[Alexander Kallas] “The new 17″ MBP still has fire-wire 400”
That’s just an updated machine, it’s still the same 17″ MBP as before with an updated processor. The 15″ is the totally new machine.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Hi
The FW-loss fuss from the video crowd ain’t nothing compared to the music/audio-tech crowd’s howls. 🙁
A lot of it directly to https://www.apple.com/feedback/macbook.html
The audio interface industry is just now by-passing PCIe in favour of FW….However David Roth Weiss and others here have been saying for months (years) that buying into FW technology for video is investing in an EOL technology. Which I totally agree with.
Apple over the last decade has never been a company that listens to its customers. It is proud of its abilities to take its product range into unimagined territory – where no feedback process could conceivably take them, confident that users will welcome their new-found opportunities…
Apple chucks away technology as freely as it invents – the abandonment of the serial port and floppy disks 10 years ago was just as catastrophic for music hardware/software users. SCSI’s more or less gone gone gone.
Video production Mac users have spent the last 5 years bemoaning the lack of the 4th PCI slot that disappeared with the demise of the G4 tower range. Did Apple listen?
The trouble, this time, is that the dots just don’t join up for us to move on easily. 🙁
USB isn’t a viable alternative for (some) video or (most) audio professionals.
eSATA cable technology is as limiting as SCSI was before it – useable in fixed installations but impossibly inflexible for on-the-move use.
Cabled Gig-Ethernet is beset by old-fashioned/inappropriate protocols for high-bandwidth streaming workflows, and wi-fi is still too primitive.But. Just as it was about floppies 10 years ago, so today its dead on the money to aim for simple uncluttered mainly-wireless technologies for the average, majority, user-base. I reckon.
We just need high-bandwidth/low latency network protocols to come along and it can all work out for the best for everybody. 🙂
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[walter biscardi] “There’s a long thread down below that already covers a lot of your talking points. “
I saw that Walter – I posted in it! I know the lack of FW came up in it, but that’s not my point here. My point is WHY they dropped it. I cannot see any other sane reason other than the one I outlined. Maybe I’m just paranoid…
Oh – no, Apple ARE out to get me.
😉
Ben
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Interesting points Paul. I don’t buy into FW being EOL though – FW3200 proves it’s got life in it, and FW800 is a perfect interface for mobile video – capable of dealing with HD (compressed), daisy-chainable (take that, eSATA) and robust. Backward compatibility is a boon too.
I don’t really want to get into a discussion here about the merits of FW – in a way I think it’s tangential to the here-and-now. It’s still the most used interface amongst pro users. So, once again -WHY DROP IT? Easy – Apple wants $2000 from you, not $1300. I note this was not an issue when the Macbooks were incapable of running Apple’s pro video suite. I wonder what has changed…
Ben
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I’m still not understanding all the fuss over the loss of FW400. The company I worked for in Seattle (and I carry this policy now) stopped using FW400 for capture, or video drive space well over 3 years ago. As mentioned in the earlier thread, there’s an ExpressCard slot if you need FW400 and there are adapters for FW400 to FW800 if you want to use that ExpressCard slot for something else. With all do respect to those who still use FW400 specifically, it’s time to move on. Mobile editing can be handled quite well with eSata as many manufactures offer hot-swappable solutions for this connectivity. The IoHD is FW800 so capture on the go with these new ‘books should be a snap.
Fact of the matter is that FW400 should have been put out to low-end consumer devices long ago to make way for FW800 to be the new standard. I’m sure there are some technically reasons (probably heat or power consumption) that kept this from happening sooner, but it’s happening now so kudos to Apple for finally taking these steps.
Again, just IMHO. 😀
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLCSound it out: Nu-clear, not nu-cu-lar.
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe -
[Ben Holmes] “WHY DROP IT?”
Hi
Because the NVIDEA chipset doesn’t do
FireWire S800T (IEEE 1394c-2006) – FireWire … enhanced to share gigabit Category 5e cable…
automatic negotiation that allows the same port to connect to either IEEE Std 1394 or IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet) devices.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire -
Winston,
While all of your points are true and well taken they do not apply to Ben’s original question. The truth is that there is NO FW at all on the new MacBooks. The pro versions have it, but not the consimer version.
K
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I gotcha. My misunderstanding!!!! Sorry. 🙁
Thing is, the Macbook is a consumer book and not geared for professional applications. I don’t think there’s any real need for FW on consumer level products. USB2.x will do everything at that level that you would need done; backups, music storage, recreational photography, consumer-level video capture, etc. If you need FW400/800 chances are the Macbook’s not going to hack it for you anyway, certainly not in the long run anyway.
Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLCSound it out: Nu-clear, not nu-cu-lar.
Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe
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