YET AGAIN, the latest Apple product is incredibly innovative while at the same time daringly suicidal. They are bound to make some enemies on this one…

The new 17″ Macbook Pro is out, and the biggest RAVE surrounds the 8 hour battery life. Apple gurus go on and on about how they engineered the battery to set new standards and rock the world…

…Then they artfully slip in the fact that, like the iPhone etc, this new laptop’s battery is sealed inside the notebook shell. Gotta take it in to get it replaced!

I’m at a loss for words. Do you jump for joy because this new battery lasts 8 hours, and can be charged up to 1000 cycles, thus being capable of living ~5 years? Or did Apple just shoot themselves in the foot again? Is their brilliant technology just an evil ploy to force you back into their store every time your battery has a problem, not to mention putting you completely out of luck as the battery life starts to decay around year 4 or 5?

I can’t decide how I feel just yet. I hardly even need a $2800, 17″ laptop anyway… I think I’m still pissed that Apple left firewire out of the new 13″ macbook altogether instead of ADVANCING to FW 800 like they should have. At this point I’m really left with no option other than to get a 15″ macbook pro. And I don’t have $2200 in my business budget for equipment this year, so I guess I’m going to continue plugging away on my 1st-gen Intel Macbook that badly needs a new optical drive… 2.0 GHZ and 2.0 GB RAM ain’t bad, but the 64 MB shared graphics is laughable…

Oh, how I love and hate Apple!
=Matt=