• by Ryan , February 16, 2009

I don’t really know what Apple is thinking with the latest generation of MacBooks. Now don’t get me wrong – I love my MacBook. My girlfriend makes fun of me, saying we have three people living in our house: me, her, and the MacBook. But part of what makes me love MY MacBook so much is that is NOT from the latest generation.

Why am I so frustrated with Apple’s latest incarnation of the MacBook? The most recent generation of Apple laptops (released in late 2008) have frighteningly fewer ports than their predecessors. The new, sleek MacBook, carved out of solid chunk of aluminum, comes with only two USB ports for connectivity to other devices. They axed the FireWire!! If Apple is going to take away my FireWire, fine. But at least give us a couple more USB ports… maybe one on the right side of the computer to plug in a mouse.

When confronted about this, Steve Jobs supposedly said that most professional-grade cameras released in the past few years support USB 2.0 and basically implied that FireWire is a dying breed. I’m not denying that FireWire isn’t the most popular transfer medium – USB 2.0 is far more popular – but it’s certainly faster (and I know the specs say USB 2.0 is faster but specs and performance are two different things). And there are many FireWire devices that are still widely used – DV decks for using Apple’s own Final Cut Pro and external hard drives, to name two – and it’d be nice to be able to use all of those devices with the new MacBooks.

If you’re willing to spend an extra thousand dollars, you can upgrade to the MacBook Pro, which has the same two USB plus the FireWire that is missing from the MacBook. This is still less ports than what was on the previous generation of MacBook Pros. What is Apple doing to us?!?!

The only saving grace for Apple is if you want to buy the bottom-tier MacBook, which is still the ubiquitous white plastic. It comes with the same port configuration that was standard on the all of the MacBooks from the previous generation.

So in the end, I am very happy that I purchased my MacBook before Apple released the latest, light-on-the-ports version. But I’ll happily say good-bye to my FireWire ports, if USB 3.0 is as fast as it’s touted to be… but that’s a post for a different day.