As I’ve noted, unlike the new MacBook, the MacBook Pro revision retains FireWire, in the form of a FireWire 800 port. This does represent a switch to an NVIDIA chipset, so there may be new performance wrinkles with some interfaces. But it’s not the FW800 port per se you have to worry about. It gives you one less physical connector (previous MBPs had both a FW800 and FW400 port), but even the earlier models had just one bus for FireWire, shared between those two ports. There is a little bit of inconvenience there in that you need an adapter cable and have one less port free, but it’s much less of the deal-breaker the MacBook’s lack of FireWire or expansion is.

MOTU had already published a support note out about supporting FW800 ports — executive summary: don’t worry about it. Now Apogee, makers of the Mac-only Duet, weigh in:

Connection between a “late-2008″ MacBook Pro and Ensemble or Duet is made with a commonly available FW800 to FW400 adaptor or cable. The connection of Ensemble or Duet to a FW800 port is fully supported and in no way alters the performance of the interface.

Ensemble and Duet Compatible with New MacBook Pro [Apogee Digital]

Via MacMusic; thanks to USO Project

By now, you likely already know that Apple came out with new laptops today. I could talk about the new features at the existing price points or about how the new machines are very pretty, but you can easily find that elsewhere. Instead, I want to address some unfortunate details on the new laptops in terms of ports. After all, small details can make a big difference for audio users.

For connecting drives, audio interfaces, MIDI devices, and the like, you get:

• MacBook Pro: Two USB 2.0 port, one FireWire800 port, one ExpressCard/34 slot
• MacBook: Two USB 2.0 ports
• MacBook Air: One USB 2.0 port

Those are Pro specs for laptop ports, really?

So FireWire is gone from non-Pro models. FW400 is gone from the Pros, though that turns out not to be entirely a deal-breaker (you can use FW800). And eSATA is still missing, which I personally think is too bad given the increasing availability of great external drives. (eSATA is an external SATA connector. In the real world, it blows away USB2. In theory, it also blows away FW800, but in practice, they’re typically neck and neck and both pretty great. Problem is, having just one FW800 limits flexibility.)

Note: A holdout from the previous generation, the white polycarbonate MacBook and 17″ MacBook Pro live on — at least for now. The US$999 white MacBook is a good buy if you don’t need the NVIDIA 3D graphics, with a FireWire 400 port and (now) a SuperDrive. The US$2799, 17″ MacBook Pro has a third USB port and a FireWire 400 port the “improved” models lack. I would guess both models will be phased out soon, however.

With Apple leaving their price points more or less in place, that means now could be a great time to snap up some deals on used or refurb models if you’re thinking of upgrading and want to save some cash versus a new model. And it means the MacBook, for at least some users, just got less appealing, not more.