Apple, the company that cuts corners on computer products but makes lots of money. Great news that it benefits the investors.
Stupid because they just regressed their product for no reason except saving a few dollars (and blatantly shoving a percentage of their customer base to a higher margin product).
Again, no one is being forced to buy the newest revisions. If you want, you can buy some of the clearance Macs, or you could simply continue to use the laptop you have now.
Apple seems to be expressing a belief that not enough consumers actually benefit from the inclusion of FW in the Polycarbonate MB. Last time I checked they were a company that intends to make a profit and make the greatest amount of profit they can. If they sell a hundred thousand MacBooks and only ten thousand of the buyers actually use the FW port, they've cut their profit by $3 million dollars. As for the ten thousand who
might have used it, I'm sure a portion of them wouldn't bump up to the next level because their perceived value of the FW port is lower then $200. They may be in that group that wants to upgrade to a newer HDD or solid state camcorder. Chances are, any HDD they own that uses FW also has a USB port on the back. Unless they are doing regular video editing, or file transfers measuring in the multiple gigs, they probably aren't going to miss the FW in the first place.
As I've already noted, few consumer level products that are currently on the market use FW as a transfer protocol. A portion of that ten thousand might also be first time computer buyers. As such, they are probably students. Most students I've known don't already own camcorders. They might buy a cheap one in college (key word being cheap), and as such, they probably aren't buying a FW camcorder. Or they use the video function on the DSLR they bought for the one photography class they will ever take in their entire life. Either way, they don't have anything that uses FW, and they probably wont any time soon.
I'd be willing to bet that describes 90% of that ten thousand. I'm also willing to bet that Apple's done research and found the statistics to be similar. If I'm right, that means Apple is only missing out on $1 million in sales. A third the cost of including FW in every MB.
I get how important FW can be to some people. I use it on a daily basis. I need it for my lively hood. However, most people don't. And if they already own a device that requires firewire, they probably own a firewire equipped machine. I own three. My old MacBook, my current MBP, and my current MP. By the time I no longer own these three machines, I'm prepared for the eventuality of having no FW. I'll probably need some USB 3.0 camcorders, or some other high speed transfer protocol. Would it be nice if technology were always backwards compatible? Yes. Would that be ridiculously cumbersome? Yes.
What it all, finally, comes down to is that you have plenty of choices. You could stick with your current machine (just like everyone else, you don't have to upgrade), you could drop firewire from your day to day use, or you could pony up $200 and use whatever equipment is too valuable for you to have to replace. Of course, there's one other option, you could drop OS X and buy a windows based laptop that supports FireWire. Apple isn't the only game in town when it comes to computers... don't know if you'd heard or not, they still only have around 10% of the market.
