…and now let's be honest: How many people actually fill all their slots? They're out there, but I don't think many of 'em are going to be the sort to bitch and moan about USB3
For what it's worth, the quadro is double-wide but only uses one slot because Apple designed the machine properly so the second slot is higher up.
Totally agree on the firewire thing though, that's some ghetto crap going on there.
Lastly, who needs a third ethernet port? I don't doubt there are people who do, but… why?
Why you're picking on usb3?
It was just smallest problem of about dozen I wrote.
Once again "pro machines" shouldn't be designed the way, that there's no expandability for something that we don't know now. Expandability should be there so when new need in the future rises, you have hardware to use it.
Maybe very few of us depends on fw card, but those who do, need it for they work, which they do for a living.
There are many other cards that some people need; raid, scsi, cameralink, f ibre channel, etc.
There is a reason why most workstations have 5-6 pci slots.
Then you can always say that these are for the pro and pro can pay whatever is needed. If you need more pci slots, buy another MP, etc.
This is not a problem with high profit areas, but it is a matter of life and death for certain business or project in smaller economic areas.
There (here) are countries that makes whole movies with sum of money that ILM charges for one second of footage.
And to get a feeling, if you come from high profit area, take away 30% from your salary, add 30% taxes and add 30% for Apple's prices.
(People from Down Under knows this very well...)
For example, think of indie RED camera assistant, that should also offer backup service. Option for tape drive is scsi card to MP or much more expensive, bulkier networked tape drive/robot. If there is no more free slots in MP, both options are very expensive. And the costs multiply. You need bigger car for location shooting. You need bigger silent generator for electricity and both uses more gas.
This contradicts the image Apple has had towards "the creative people".
Apple's message was "power to the people" when they brought software like FCP to the market. For the first time individuals could own their tools and be free from "corprative leach". No it feels like Apple has turned to a one...
Of course there's hope that things change, but I don't think that pros are waiting for many years anymore. If you don't happen to have love relation to Apple brand, you choose the best option. But thse things happen slowly, because usually you have to replace lots of tools. So pros who switch from mac won't come back any time soon. And if this happens at massive scale, people who still use macs are in trouble. No new products, upgrades, support, etc. This is why indie pros are so nervous about what's going to happen. When your work depends on tools that you can replace only every 5 years, you want to be sure that those tools are comptent for that time.
Right now it just doesn't look good. In fact for indie video, it hasn't look this bad since the intel switch. Think about ACDs. Pros want matte. Are we going to get them? It took few years for Apple to re-offer them in MBPs. Or are "pro" ACDs going the way of Xraid? Uncertainity is the worst.
MPs have now their memory problems and bigger price tags, MBPs loose ports on every revision, FCS development seems to be nonexistent and still 32-bit, Shake is gone, SL haven't still given anything to boost FCS. Still no GPUs with good price-power ratio for Color, no blu-ray authoring, new 64-bit CS5 around the corner...
