Thunderbolt & the MacBook

[jwolf6589]

I do not understand why Apple is doing this, but it appears that they have dropped FireWire from all their new MacBooks, as well as dropped the hard drive. So I pay $1000 for a MacBook air (no Macbooks being sold anymore) and I get a smaller hard drive then I did when I bought a Macbook in 2010? This makes no sense to me at all. Also what of the DVD drive? Has Apple dropped that as well?

 

[angelsguardian]

I do not understand why Apple is doing this, but it appears that they have dropped FireWire from all their new MacBooks, as well as dropped the hard drive. So I pay $1000 for a MacBook air (no Macbooks being sold anymore) and I get a smaller hard drive then I did when I bought a Macbook in 2010? This makes no sense to me at all. Also what of the DVD drive? Has Apple dropped that as well?

Because they are marking a step change and removing as many legacy interfaces as possibly, hence the lack of ethernet port on many. Whilst Firewire is great it is also very old (in IT terms) so they have moved onto USB3 and Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt peripheral are very expensive just now but so were Firewire when they arrived.

 

[emoore]

I do not understand why Apple is doing this, but it appears that they have dropped FireWire from all their new MacBooks, as well as dropped the hard drive. So I pay $1000 for a MacBook air (no Macbooks being sold anymore) and I get a smaller hard drive then I did when I bought a Macbook in 2010? This makes no sense to me at all. Also what of the DVD drive? Has Apple dropped that as well?

No they haven't. There is still the 13" and 15" Macbook Pros that have firewire and a platter hard drive. These may eventually go away but they were just updated with the latest Intel processors and graphics. I'm guessing they will be around for at least a few more years before all the laptops are thunderbolt and SSD.

 

[Stetrain]

They haven't sold a "Macbook" for quite a while now. The 13" Macbook Pro takes its place, with a DVD drive, 500GB convetional hard drive, Ethernet, Firewire 800, a backlit keyboard and Thunderbolt:

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/features/13-and-15-inch/

Also, while the SSD in the Macbook Air is small, it makes up for it by being extremely fast. A 13" Macbook Air will actually feel faster than a 13" MBP for many day to day tasks because of the SSD speed.