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Steve Jobs on Lack of Firewire in MacBooks

Yes, see my new sig below. Seriously. We have the budget for more alubooks in the next few months but without firewire, it's just no sale.

A white macbook with 4GB RAM from Crucial and a speedy 320GB drive from Western Digital is cheaper and more powerful than the base alubook, and it does more, far more of what we want as it has FIREWIRE.

I'm the nerd technology officer for the company I work in, and it's Apple's loss.
 
RedTomato said:
Yes, see my new sig below. Seriously. We have the budget for more alubooks in the next few months but without firewire, it's just no sale.

A white macbook with 4GB RAM from Crucial and a speedy 320GB drive from Western Digital is cheaper and more powerful than the base alubook, and it does more, far more of what we want as it has FIREWIRE.

I'm the nerd technology officer for the company I work in, and it's Apple's loss.
Click to expand...
But if you are still buying from Apple then it's not there loss. Quite possibly they make more on the while macbooks that you bought than the new models, so they aren't being hurt at all.
 
danny_w said:
But if you are still buying from Apple then it's not there loss. Quite possibly they make more on the while macbooks that you bought than the new models, so they aren't being hurt at all.
Click to expand...

Well, this may not be exactly true. Assume for a second that they have sales projections for both the white and the Alu MacBooks. Many people making this decision may show that the white MBs outpace expectations, where Al MBs are beneath expectations. Assuming that they have accounted for price differences in their projections, then further differences may be explained by decisions based on FW. Clearly the Al MBs are the "future," so they would want to know what drives such poor sales.
 
darwinian said:
Well, this may not be exactly true. Assume for a second that they have sales projections for both the white and the Alu MacBooks. Many people making this decision may show that the white MBs outpace expectations, where Al MBs are beneath expectations. Assuming that they have accounted for price differences in their projections, then further differences may be explained by decisions based on FW. Clearly the Al MBs are the "future," so they would want to know what drives such poor sales.
Click to expand...

It's all about the roadmaps and I agree with you. If the beginning of a new model/roadmap doesn't do well or shall we say a trend appears, it forces the maker to rethink the line. This has been seen with multiple vendors on the PC side. Also, - let's not foget the OS as MS has maintained XP far longer than their roadmap. Simply stated, the customer base had far more control over it than MS had figured.

I am examining getting an older model macbook refurb instead of a Mac Mini simply for media play. They have better specs and offer a bit more options. Again - APPLE could have simply put in an express card slot and that would have met everyone's needs for configuration. As long as Jobs keeps telling us what we want, he'll be sadly surprised at some of the response.

This is very frustrating for some of us who have had the challenge of the Windows world, Apple's IBM approach to OS and BOX control, Blu Ray having 3 different forms VC1,Mpeg2 and H.264, everyone throwing blocks in the way to gaining full compatibility of file play back etc. Let's add in Sat, Cable and Tivo for being leeches. So where are we in this equation? Just another wallet to be picked.

- Phrehdd
 
What's the issue?

phrehdd said:
Blu-ray having 3 different forms VC1,Mpeg2 and H.264
Click to expand...

I don't understand the relevance of this statement - it certainly doesn't seem to be a problem for the BD player makers nor for Windows and the other computer makers who ship systems with BD movie playback.
 
parapup said:
So he thinks it is OK to expect people to throw away their perfectly fine FireWire camcorders and spend money on a USB 2
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If they're going to throw away a perfectly fine Mac and spend money on a new Macbook, then yes.
 
darwinian said:
Well, this may not be exactly true. Assume for a second that they have sales projections for both the white and the Alu MacBooks. Many people making this decision may show that the white MBs outpace expectations, where Al MBs are beneath expectations. Assuming that they have accounted for price differences in their projections, then further differences may be explained by decisions based on FW. Clearly the Al MBs are the "future," so they would want to know what drives such poor sales.
Click to expand...

They'll also be looking at how many were up-sold to Pros, and there were a lot of them. They could well decide that is good enough.

They've provided a firewire MacBook, 'previous technology' though it might be. That appears to be the plan, and if the figures bear it out, that's how things will stay.

"There isn't anything but the Firewire to distinguish the Al Mac Books from the Pros" is often thrown up, but I think that's BS, because there's the screen size, RAM and hard drive...

The issue becomes - is it a Mac Book or a 13" Pro? And frankly - I don't see that there needs to be any meaningful difference. It's got a smaller screen etc, the price is lower - put in the Firewire port and be done with it!

We can only hope that the up-sell fails. Performance-wise, there's no real reason to upgrade to a Unibody, it's looks alone & frankly, in the current economic environment, LOOKS don't count.

Let's hope their research fails (and they will have researched it extensively before they picked the strategy) and when the $ is tight - people don't buy a Unibody. They hold out until there's better value, and hopefully Apple's learnt that everyone needs Firewire.
 
Lame!

I just cant think of a dumber way to distinguish the lines. If we all agree that Apple did this to stop the macbook cutting into MBP sales- why the hell make the macbook look, and perform almost THE EXACT SAME for $800 LESS??

If we then consider that, as many suggest, those who needed the firewire are a minority, then the upsale potential is insignificant anyways!

All theyve got now, is for all intents and purposes a 13 in Macbook Pro-minus firewire they dont care about-for $1299, versus a slightly bigger heavier macbook for almost twice the price. Great strategy if you want to shift a ton of Macbooks but stupid if youre trying to protect MBP sales.

Its hilarious going n the Apple site and comparing the two: theres no difference! Theres barely any features that justify the price hike: " Solid Aluminium and glass, precision engineering bla bla". Its the same for both pretty much, they just stretch out the blurb more for the MBP. The graphics cards now are so close. and a few ports and a bit more screen-yeah Apple, heres an extra $1000 bucks LOL.

Their range is just too narrow: what if youre a consumer who doesnt want the 'pro' features but wants a screen bigger than 13"?? Then theres the obv lack of distinguishing features to define the 'pro'.
Sorry Apple but Firewire is not one of them! Been the dumbest upgrade ever for the MBP. Should have given the damn thing MORE FEATURES. $2000 laptops are doing much better stuff specs wise e.g. they could:

-Offer bluray
-ship 4GB Ram standard
-ship 7200RPM standard, these dont cost that much these days and should be on a 'pro' machine.
-stick a 9800m GT(X) thats actually a leap ahead, not the 9600M which is pretty much the same as 8600M, and probably underclocked cause the shell is so thin.
-allow that Hybrid SLI Geforce Boost so you can use both cards at the same time.
-offer silver-painted keys as an option.
-Some other cool ish that isnt on the macbook/maybe a slightly different design?

These are features that would make the purchase seem worth it and compelling, and a bit more exciting than a freaking port and screen size:rolleyes:

Theyd take a hit to their profit-per-unit but the total sales would go up beyond this and more than compensate, while clearly defining markets.
 
John Dillinger said:
Its hilarious going n the Apple site and comparing the two: theres no difference! Theres barely any features that justify the price hike: " Solid Aluminium and glass, precision engineering bla bla". Its the same for both pretty much, they just stretch out the blurb more for the MBP. The graphics cards now are so close. and a few ports and a bit more screen-yeah Apple, heres an extra $1000 bucks LOL.
Click to expand...

You know John, I was just about to rip into your diatribe and pull it to shreds and then I went and had a quick look at the store. You are so right it's scary!

I really can't see where Steve is going with this but I tell you one thing. I've had a 3 MBP's and loved every one but now I really don't need firewire and I went out and bought a USB camera and in all the time I've had the MBP's I've never used the express slot.

So while I can't get all worked up like the the other boys and girls on here about the lack of FW. (Come on guys, get over it!) I have to agree 100% with you. I think your statement says far more than the lack of FW.
 
abernathymusic said:
I've been so obsessed with the lack of Firewire on the new MB, that I hadn't really noticed the other problems with Apple's direction. Apple has gone completely overboard with form over function. Here's a rant I just posted:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=6658905#post6658905
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The same here. I was so pissed about the Firewire omission, I didn't even bother check out the new Macbooks until recently.
Oh boy, am I glad they didn't include FW. Otherwise I would have ended up with this horrible cheap display!!!
The vertical viewing angle is the worst I have seen in years. With its super gloss forcing you to change angle to get reflexions out of your way, the problem gets even worse.

What were they thinking? Acer quality at Apple prices????
Without firewire and such an awful display, this crapbook is certainly not worth more than 800 dollars.
:mad::mad::mad:
 
cheesymogul said:
The same here. I was so pissed about the Firewire omission, I didn't even bother check out the new Macbooks until recently.
Oh boy, am I glad they didn't include FW. Otherwise I would have ended up with this horrible cheap display!!!
The vertical viewing angle is the worst I have seen in years. With its super gloss forcing you to change angle to get reflexions out of your way, the problem gets even worse.

What were they thinking? Acer quality at Apple prices????
Without firewire and such an awful display, this crapbook is certainly not worth more than 800 dollars.
:mad::mad::mad:
Click to expand...


I could not disagree more. I have both the new MB and the last gen MBP with its amazingly nice matte screen. The MB is glossy yes, and it is not as nice as a matte screen, but all in all it is still a very nice looking display. Considerably better than the old MB, as a matter of fact they had it sitting next to a whitebook and the difference was noticeable.
 
Not having firewire stinks, but there are reasons

I use firewire. A lot. Printer, optical drive, and several hard drives.

I bought a new aluminum MacBook for my girlfriend. It is really really nice.

But it doesn't have firewire. There are reasons for this.

A few of them, I think:

- This thing uses a completely new chipset (Nvidia 9400M). Though unlikely, there may have been issues squeezing all the chips into the motherboard design. There obviously wasn't a compatibility issue as the Pro books have firewire.

- The sides on this thing are really thin. Not as thin as on the Air, but thin, and bezeled. There may not have been enough space to house the connector. The row of ports on the side finishes flush with the end of the keyboard, and I believe the hard drive is directly below the palmrest, meaning that there just wasn't room for the big 1394 connector in the edge of the case. This view is supported by the fact that they switched to the new smaller displayport connector instead of miniDVI.

- AFAIK firewire chips don't have too much power management ability built into them (aka turn off when not in use). Could be wrong on that one, but might have been a factor.

- the most obvious one: cost, or specifically, profit margin. Firewire chips are not cheap compared to USB2 chips (which is one reason why 1394 doesn't suck for mass storage and USB does).

I think they took a look at all these issues and reasoned that most MacBook sales are to students, the vast majority of whom never use the firewire port on previous entry-level laptops.

In my opinion, though, they really could have squeezed a 4 pin mini firewire connector into this thing. They already dumped miniDVI for displayport; I don't think anyone would have had a problem getting some new cables for a 4 pin plug. Sony's been doing it on Vaio laptops a lot smaller than the AlMacbook for many many years...

In other news, it's a great machine. The build quality is a step up from my aluminum PB 1.33, and two steps up from the plastic Macbook. I hate glossy displays, but the backlight can be set more than blindingly bright enough to defeat most reflections. It calibrates up really nicely with my eye one. Full gesture ability on the oversize whole-thing-is-a-button trackpad is eye-opening when working with creative applications.
 
funkboy said:
I bought a new aluminum MacBook for my girlfriend. It is really really nice.

But it doesn't have firewire. There are reasons for this.

<snip>
Click to expand...

The fact that Apple hasn't stated any of these justifications publicly (and in fact hasn't said anything beyond Jobs' lame excuse that cameras all have USB now anyway), leads me to believe that the real reason is both simpler and more embarrassing: it's really nothing more than product differentiation between the MB and MBP.

But if it had been a design criterion to include Firewire, then Apple would have found a way to include it. Since it was not a design criterion to include it, then any number of justifications can be proposed for leaving it out.
 
funkboy said:
I think they took a look at all these issues and reasoned that most MacBook sales are to students, the vast majority of whom never use the firewire port on previous entry-level laptops.
Click to expand...

The cynical thing is, the entry level notebook, the white plastic one, DOES have Firewire (or nobody would buy it at all). That's (apparently) for 'students' who do heavy work - real-time video, audio, with heavy data requirements (tens of GBs). They need it both for input devices and storage. (You don't do real recording to your internal hard disk, you use an external drive, 500GB or so.)

These customers are however, denied even minimal access to the new GPU capabilities, forcing them to move to the Pro once their 'rendering' needs exceed the 2 year old technology in the plastic MacBook.
 
albusseverus said:
The cynical thing is, the entry level notebook, the white plastic one, DOES have Firewire (or nobody would buy it at all). That's (apparently) for 'students' who do heavy work - real-time video, audio, with heavy data requirements (tens of GBs). They need it both for input devices and storage. (You don't do real recording to your internal hard disk, you use an external drive, 500GB or so.)

These customers are however, denied even minimal access to the new GPU capabilities, forcing them to move to the Pro once their 'rendering' needs exceed the 2 year old technology in the plastic MacBook.
Click to expand...

Exactly. More like 5 year old technology in the GMA stuff. We'll see what happens when Larabee comes out. I think, though, that for every macbook user actually using their machine for real A/V work (like I did on my PB667 for a very long time) there are 20 college kids that just use them to surf, listen to iTunes, and type papers.

I agree that it seems that Apple probably sees Firewire as a "pro" feature now though, similar to the way the PPC iBooks couldn't extend their desktop onto a second monitor (only mirror). I'd say that the bellwether for this is whether it's included on the forthcoming expected Mac Mini update.

What I find annoying is that they didn't replace it with something. An eSATA port, for example, would have cost nothing & used no extra power (and not even any mobo real estate beyond the connector), and could have been yet another trademark "you saw it here first" feature (like expresscard). I suppose the same argument applies: "if you want eSATA, get a pro book & stick a SATA expresscard in it".

I'd be very interested to see an (pardon the pun) apples-to-oranges comparison of USB2 storage vs. same drive in a good NAS, a.k.a. do you get better performance with AFP/SMB/NFS over the GigE or direct attach via USB2?
 
USB 3.0 is going to make firewire obsolete anyway. That's why they dropped it on the MacBooks. Apple is usually ahead of the curve on things like this, and I bet they are again here. ;)
 
robanga said:
I could not disagree more. I have both the new MB and the last gen MBP with its amazingly nice matte screen. The MB is glossy yes, and it is not as nice as a matte screen, but all in all it is still a very nice looking display. Considerably better than the old MB, as a matter of fact they had it sitting next to a whitebook and the difference was noticeable.
Click to expand...

I disagree. There is no way anyone with an unbiased viewpoint would think the new Macbook is way better than the older one. My friends new 2.0 screen is worse on blacks and equal on other things compared to my Blackbook. He was so pissed he went to the Apple store and compared the Whitebooks to the new Macbooks and saw no difference. I did the same comparison at Best Buy and same story. I see virtually no difference either except for the blacks IMO are better for some reason in my Blackbook and the brightness is better in the new one. It is a wash to me.
 
It is one of the main up-selling points to drive us to the MBP. Since prior to the new macbook releases one of the big differentiators were the graphics and aluminum enclosures. Now with the graphics performance being a closer race, they are running out of features to separate them.
 
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