I like the look of the white or black plastic macbooks, it's also what helps to separate them from the pro models. The aluminum sucks in my opinion, yes I bought the original coolermaster praetorian aluminum case for my pc, which is thick aluminum and actually quite heavy and I am pleased with it. However, I am also not rubbing against it all day and scratching it up... that case doesn't dent easily though... Point is, I think aluminum is a bad choice for laptops. for it to be light enough it has to be thin, but when its thin it dents and scratches. Even if it was thick it would scratch. Using the right type of plastic however, especially when colored black, allows it to keep it's 'new' look much longer.
Anyway I hope the material doesn't change. The LED's are probably a good thing and put a damn superdrive in all of the models. I don't get how people say they don't need an optical drive. What if you want to watch a movie? I don't want to carry around a bag full of accessories, it's annoying. If you hate optical drives buy a macbook air, but allow the rest of us to have an optical drive, many of us need them. Here is a list of things I do regularly on mine: Watch DVDs, play music cds, compile music cds to listen to in my car, create photo disks to send to friends and family, back up photo and video clips on disks, play games, install new software etc. I don't want to be forced to be connected to a network which has all my stuff on it (which is pretty much impossible) or to have to carry around portable drives for things i do on a weekly basis. Yes I also use those little usb drives and they are useful for a lot of things but optical drives still have a lot of uses and they are certainly not a dead technology.
As it stands I won't even think about paying $1100 for an entry level apple laptop. I mean come on, that is DOUBLE the price of a pc laptop... and for what, just to have an apple brand and use osx? Yeah I do think osx has some great features and i like a lot of things about macs or i wouldnt be on this forum but geez, get with the times. I understand charging more for higher models but what's wrong with having at least one or two REASONABLY priced models?
This is what I think the macbook upgrade should look like: 2GB RAM on ALL models, LED backlit screens and a superdrive on all models. Eliminate one of the three macbooks and just have one with a faster cpu and larger hard drive. A price point of $799 for the low end and $999 for the high end I think is reasonable. it is STILL high when compared against a comparable pc laptop (minus the led backlit screen) which you can get for about $500 but I know apple like to charge a premium like mercedes and bmw and rip people off.
To me, higher price should = higher quality componants, reliability and support in addition to innovative designs and exclusive features. Not using average or below average quality parts and charging a premium for support all while making people up the ass just so they can feel like they are thinking outside the box and they are just so cool and awesome and not boring like the old pc with microsoft... the same microsoft that has made it possible for the average guy to buy a computer on his low wage paycheck instead of sucking the people dry with outrageous prices... I am glad microsoft has a much greater market share than apple... you think microsoft is bad, imagine if jobs had his way. Oh, and as many others have pointed out apples hardware and software has many flaws, and even though vista was not all it could be, its not worth paying $500-$600 more just to be able to say I use OSX.
My point is this, I think apple does come up with some good ideas and osx does have a lot of interesting features and is pretty easy to learn to use. However, apple does need to make some serious changes if they ever expect people like me to own a mac again.
By the way, for those of you still using vista... I suggest you try
http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/ if you have not recently. There is a free and a plus version. I have been using the free version and it has not crashed even once in the 2 months I have been using it, you can make your dock look very similar to OSX and it really works great, i've been using it a lot. Go check it out and download and configure it the way you like. It's one of the best free programs I have come across and makes me feel I need OSX just a little bit less
