Warren Hall

I had waited expectantly for today’s announcement of new MacBook and MacBook Pro computers. They look sleek, shiny and elegant like one would expect from apple. Alas there is a hidden catch, the MacBook Pro has dropped firewire 400 in favour of firewire 800, that in itself is no particularly big deal, some different cables will pretty much take care of it for most people or there is an adapter for the express port. The MacBook now has no firewire port at all and I cannot help but wonder what that will mean for schools and for the future of the MacBook in the TELA programme. 

 

You may recall that the first TELA MacBooks were the top of the range black models, that was because they had a hard drive big enough to meet the minimum specifications for the TELA programme which the lower cost models did not. Is Firewire a requirement for a laptop to be offered under the TELA programme? If anyone knows a definitive answer on that then I would love to know.

But what about the schools (and others) that have an investment in firewire equipment? Lots of schools have firewire video cameras and hard drives. This seems like a bad step, and one that will likely annoy more than a few people.

Then one has to wonder, if they dropped firewire on the MacBook, does that mean that they will also drop it on the Mac Mini? What about the iMac range when it gets the next update?

I guess we will all get over it in the course of time, but buying gear that still works just fine but cannot be plugged into your computer always sucks.