Comparing the new and original MacBook Pro

I just received my new 15-inch MacBook Pro Wednesday, the one Steve Jobs unveiled earlier this month. Above is a photo of the new model (left) and the original MacBook Pro I purchased in 2006. (Photo taken with my loaner Nokia N96 cellphone.)

What I like about the 2008 MacBook Pro:

• Bright, brilliant screen is worth the upgrade all by itself.

• The battery no longer burns my lap.

• 232 GB hard drive on the new model vs. 93 GB on the original.

• The new MacBook Pro (Mac OS 10.5.5) connects to my Apple Extreme home network 10 times faster than my 2-year-old MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.4.11.

• The mousepad incorporates the iPhone’s image enlargement/reduction/rotation software, though not as elegantly as in the iPhone.

What I don’t like:

• The mousepad. The cursor goes all over the place (or sometimes doesn’t move at all), and it’s out of the box only for 24 hours now.

• No FireWire jack. Are they friggin’ kidding me??? Couldn’t transfer anything from my old laptop to this one out of the box. (Update: see below.)

• Clunky hideaway stash on the bottom of the computer. Took me 10 minutes to close it, and it didn’t close snugly.

• So far, I still the keyboard better on the original MacBook Pro over the new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

The previous MacBook Pro batteries don’t work on this one.

Still trying to figure out what the Function (fn) key is for.

David Pogue in today’s New York Times: The MacBook Makeover.

It’s a thing of beauty, clad in aluminum like its more expensive Pro
siblings. It’s slightly lighter than the previous black or white
plastic models (and, at $1,300, more expensive), but feels sturdier and
more sculpted, thanks to the tapered edges. …

With a flick of two, three or even four fingers, you can rotate a
photo, scroll a document, zoom in or out, hide all windows, or flick
into a different program. …

FireWire is how you connect tape camcorders to the Mac. This is the part that kills me.

I’m big into home movies. I’ve got 100 MiniDV tapes carefully
stored–of my children growing up, of my TV appearances, of our trips
and memorable moments. The video quality is amazing. And because
they’re digital, I sleep easy, knowing that I can make fresh copies of
those tapes at any time, without any quality loss. For 15 years, I’ve
intended, someday, to edit those tapes down into a series of cherished
DVDs. Maybe when the kids get married.

But not if FireWire goes away. If that happens, my tapes will be stranded and uneditable….

Agree with Pogue wholeheartedly on the wrongheaded move to eliminate FireWire. MiniDV tapes may be on the way out, but for serious shooters (like me), there’s no way we’re going to go to all hard drive/memory card storage, when moving video from computer to computer over the years is a nightmare. I intend to keep shooting on my Canon HV20 and other hi-def MiniDV camcorders for years to come. (Update: see below.)

Other than that terrible business decision, the new MacBook Pro is a delight.

The new MacBook Pro costs $2,000 for the 2.4 GHz model; $2,500 for the 2.53GHz model.

Update:

Andrew, in the comments, points out that the new MacBook Pro has the latest version of FireWire: FireWire 800. All the previous FireWire 400 cables won’t work. So today I’m ordering this FireWire 9-pin to 4-pin DV cable here at Belkin ($27).
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.