No Firewire Port in New Macbooks? Really?

Wow, this sucks. I was seriously considering picking up a Macbook for my next laptop. Although I’m primarily an Ubuntu Linux user, OS X is becoming quite popular as a development platform. Plus, the hardware in the Macbooks is a big step up from what I’m currently working with. I was thinking a dual boot setup with Ubuntu and OS X on a Macbook would be perfect.

What was really making me consider picking up a Macbook was iLife, and specifically, iMovie. I’ve heard great things about iMovie. Supposedly, it just works, and it’s really easy to get it to do what you want it to do. Linux has no all-in-one video editing package. Just a bunch of stand alone applications that you can piece together to get the whole picture, but that’s too much work for yours truly. And, the Windows ones I’ve tried I usually end up fighting with to get them to do what I want. So, I was really leaning towards the Mac.

But, this is a deal breaker. My miniDV camcorder will not transfer the higher resolution video over USB. If you want the good stuff, you have to use the firewire port on the camcorder. And, I would like the videos of my kids in high resolution thank you very much. It creates a much better end result to blackmail them with when they’re older and don’t like me anymore.

Sure the Macbook Pros have a firewire port. But you know what else they have? A price tag that’s $700 more than the Macbook.

Shortly after Apple’s announcement today, I was already able to find disgruntled folks like myself on the web via Google. I can only hope that Apple fixes this mistake and puts a firewire port back on the Macbook.. Until then, no Macbook for me.