Thanks for the advice but i believe your missing the point which is.........
Apple could have included FW 400 on the new MacBook. If they had
no one would be talking about it being an issue.

The point many users are discussing is why limit a products use
when it's clear that many of your core users require the feature.

The little white Macbook has been used with protools. That was because
it came with firewire 400 and the user could record to a fast external
hard drive using the Apogee Duet, which is firewire. Yes the track count
would have been limited but now the use of the MacBook in this regard is impossible.

It's not an issue for me in particular but it does seem strange that
Apples does this kind of stuff only to reverse itself later on.

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"What you hear in a great jazz band is the sound of democracy. “The jazz band works best when participation is shaped by intelligent communication.”
Harmony happens whenever different parts get to form a whole by means of congruity, concord, symetry, consistency, conformity, correspondence, agreement, accord, unity, consonance…….

I'm with QS on this and this is a key reason I've never been a big Apple fan. When they make stupid decision like this you don't have the alternative to go with a competitor like you do with PCs. If Apple had added an ExpressCard slot to the new Macbook, then it would not have been as much of an issue.

Another example is when their poor designs and poor application of thermal paste made their laptops substitute cooking appliances.

That's not to say that there aren't lots of good things about the design studio and OS X

I'm actually leaning towards getting the Macbook Air. I was very hesitant when it first came out due to the small hard drive, but now they have upgraded the hard drive to 120 GB and given it the same upgraded graphics card as the Macbook. As for ports, I rarely use any of them on my current PC. Once in a while I use a USB flash drive, but that's about it. So I doubt the lack of ports will bother me any. And as for the lack of a DVD/CD drive, I rarely use that too. I can always use that disc sharing mode if I want to install something from a CD.

I do have one question though for any of you who use iTunes and an iPod. I have read that I cannot use the disc-sharing mode to burn music CDs into iTunes. A family member of mine has a mac, and I could always burn the music CDs into iTunes on that computer. Does this present any problems if I want to then transfer those files to my Macbook Air? Will I run into any issues? I've heard that iTunes is very picky about letting you copy content, but do those same rules apply to files you have burned directly from a music CD? Or will it be as simple as just copying the music files to a flash drive and moving them over to the Macbook Air?

I want to make sure this is easy enough before I get a Macbook Air since I have quite a large music collection and want to be sure I can get the music onto the Macbook Air without the need for a USB CD drive.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...

All you need is this

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-IOGEAR-USB-2-0-FireWire-Combo-Hub-GUH420_W0QQitemZ320311762526QQcmdZViewItem?hash=it em320311762526&_trkparms=72%3A570|39%3A1|66%3A2|65 %3A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Firewire is practically dead with the introduction of usb 2.0...usb 2.0 is 80mbps faster than firewire 400 in the first place...I personally just bought the macbook and am very impressed with it. I previously owned the Air...which by the way works very well with the disc share utility, I never had any problems with burning music onto it using my 24" imac.

In my opinion, you cannot compare a mac to a pc on hardware alone...The main reason I switched all of the computers I own over to mac is Leopard...I would never even consider buying a Vista machine again no matter how cheap it was...The operating system alone is worth the more expensive price tag.

That IOGEAR is a combo hub, not a converter between FireWire and USB.

FireWire is nowhere near dead. If it was, there would be no outcry. You get much better throughput with disks connected by FireWire 400 even though the stated transfer rate is lower.

The Mac vs. PC debate: it's fruitless

Your call..........

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"What you hear in a great jazz band is the sound of democracy. “The jazz band works best when participation is shaped by intelligent communication.”
Harmony happens whenever different parts get to form a whole by means of congruity, concord, symetry, consistency, conformity, correspondence, agreement, accord, unity, consonance…….

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/landing_pa...308-160393626&

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Loving my BMW

I have to say that I have never used fire wire, so I would still buy a Mac

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Loving my BMW

I use FW400 on my LaCie external hard drive. I need to because all my USB ports are taken up.

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T