Apple are loosing the plot with the new MacBook Pros, the 13″ and 15″ have gone from express card slots to SD card slots a retrograde step in my opinion. With the express card slot you could use Sony’s SxS cards directly but no more. In my opinion Apple have teamed up with JVC giving them direct access to their SDHC Quicktime recording systems, surly you can’t design a laptop with one camcorder manufacturer in mind. This is ludicrous most of us can and buy multi card readers so their is no need for an SD card slot in any MacBook Pro.

Another backwards step is the inclusion of the so called 7 hour internal battery, fine if you get at least 6 hours running time but you are gubbed when your battery runs out. I use my MacBook Pro for Autocue work and will not buy a laptop with an internal battery. 7 hours becomes 6 becomes 5 becomes a disaster.

I have seen Apple go from bad to worse over the last 3 MacBook Pro designs with the exclusion of firewire 400 port, no external video adapter after the MacAir, no express card slot and now no external battery.

Who are Apple talking to…certainly not video professionals, I only hope Steve Jobbs gets better soon and kicks ass back at Apple HQ…Apple are not usually associated with the word retrograde. Once again we see no availability for Blu-ray drives in the MacBook Pro.

This kind of stupidity does not bode well for the next version of DVD Studio Pro… there are a lot of us waiting in the wings for Apple to include Blu-ray authoring but nothing so far suggests that Apple will go down this road and if that is the case they leave a rather wide door open for Adobe’s CS4 Encore.