re: Several comments
A few things.... let's see here:
1. To the person asking about the performance of a Macbook with an external 24" LED Cinema display attached? Those displays aren't even shipping until November, so I'm pretty sure nobody has tested one first-hand yet. I'm 99.9% confident, though, it will perform on the external display EXACTLY the same as it does on the internal LCD panel. The video chip doesn't really have to do anything different to route the display to the external monitor attached to the "mini-Displayport" connector than it does for displaying things on the internal LCD panel of the notebook.
2. To the guy asking why anyone would still consider buying Windows notebooks? As much as I *love* Apple notebooks and will gladly pay more for one myself -- I also work in I.T. and see situations every day where some other product is more appropriate. For example, we have a lady here who works in our H.R. dept. She already owns an iMac at home, so she's certainly not adverse to using Apple computers. But she needed a cheap notebook primarily for connecting to our corporate VPN and getting remote control of her office PC from anywhere. I found her a Lenovo Thinkpad for under $500 that worked perfectly for the task. It still came pre-loaded with Windows XP Pro (no performance sucking Vista!), and allows use of the Sonicwall proprietary VPN client (free for Windows users) required to connect. If she had gone with even the cheapest Apple Macbook out, she'd still have to fork out another $80 or so for the commercial "VPN Tracker" software, just to connect to our VPN from OS X - because natively, OS X can't connect to a Sonicwall. Essentially, she could have *2* of these Thinkpads for what a usable Macbook would have cost her.
3. In response to CrackedButter's comments: I'm quite sure Steve did say that, and like most things that come from his mouth, it's *generally* true, but always spoken from a marketing/sales perspective. Even as far back as the Apple // and //e computer days, Jobs was the "salesman" and Wozniak provided the technical know-how. "Better" is a very relative term anyway. Is the new Macbook Pro keyboard "better" than the last version? I never thought a "chicklet" type keyboard could *ever* be considered better than a standard type - but I'm slowly changing that opinion as I use this new one more. When Apple removed the 3.5" floppy disk drive from their machines, did many people think that was "better" than leaving it in them? In retrospect, was it a good idea to help nudge technology forward though?
I remember an interview a while back with Steve Jobs and he was talking about features and upgrades with Apple products. If I could find it, it would help and add credibility to what I'm saying but alas I can't and maybe somebody will remember as well because he was talking about when upgrading a machine it has to be better than the old product in every way otherwise people will complain and Apple generally doesn't update their products until everything can be upgraded or enhanced.
Seems they forgot this time around.