[ZheMappel]

"To be blunt, it sounds to me like you're reading too much stuff on the Internet and letting it scare you."
That's one point of view. But to be just as blunt, consider the source is an editor whose publication has everything to gain from boosting Mac sales.
From a more consumer-centric standpoint, you'd be a fool not to read as much as you can online from early adopters before buying a Rev A model. If you're a critical thinker, you'll be able to weed the rubbish from the telling complaints.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. It may be a little or a lot. You will not find an aggregate count unless it is through, say, organization for class action litigation (cf. the iPod battery case).
In short: Rev A is often iffy. You can't wait six months for Apple to get to Rev B? Then take your chances like everyone else.

[Jason Snell]

In reply to:

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consider the source is an editor whose publication has everything to gain from boosting Mac sale

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You could also consider the source as someone who does this stuff for a living... or someone who has everything to lose if he's seen simply as a shill for Apple.

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Where there's smoke, there's fire

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Sometimes. And sometimes not. The Internet can magnify some things completely out of proportion. All consumer products have a failure rate above zero. All it takes is one person on the Internet who bought a faulty product to broadcast their bad experience, have it relayed through a network of people with an intense interest in the subject, and you've got a product with a horrible flaw -- even if only one or two units actually had the problem.
That's what warranties are for. Because some products are lemons.
This is not to say that Apple has not had real, serious quality control problems with some of their products! My point is that, if you listen to every single report of a problem posted on MacInTouch or MacFixIt, you will feel as if every product Apple makes, and every software update that's released, is broken.
You may be able to weed out the rubbish -- good for you. But sometimes it's really hard to see through all the smoke to find which direction the flames are coming from.

[griffman]

As a real-world example of this, consider one user who posted "MacBook heating problems SOLVED!" on his blog. He found a plastic shield over the vent on his MacBook, and posted about it. His post was picked up and linked by many sites; you couldn't help but read about it.
And yet, as far as I know, he's still the only one to find such a shield in place. It wasn't there on my MacBook, nor on the MB's of others who replied to the thread we have about it here. But you'd think from the amount of linking it got, it was a 100% guarantee that everyone just needed to remove this shield.
Web sites that exist to help solve problems and answer questions will, by their very nature, only draw negative submissions -- if everything works great, you don't need to send anything to MacFixIt or a Macintouch reader report (or even post here on the forums). So if you read the troubleshooting sites, keep in mind that for every one person who posts, there is some unknown multiple of folks who don't post, simply because everything works. I'm not faulting the troubleshooting sites -- they provide a good and valuable service, especially for those who may be experiencing similar issues.
Also consider failure rates against sales volume. If Apple sells a million MacBooks, and they build 99.5% of them perfectly with absolutely no issues, that still leaves 5,000 people with problems. And in the age of the Internet, 5,000 people can have a tremendous amount of impact. Heck, even if Apple has a .1% defect rate, they'd still have 1,000 customers who receive a bad product. If all 1,000 choose to write to MacFixIt, you'd then think that MacBooks had some sort of major quality crisis ... when in reality, there would be 999,000 very happy customers, and 1,000 unhappy customers.
As Jason said, we have nothing to gain by having a reputation as Apple shills. Our job is to objectively review hardware and software, and I think Jon did a great job of that. Note that after using the review units, he then spent his own money to purchase a MacBook of his own. Would he do that if he were simply trying to write a positive review for Apple? For what it's worth, I spent my own money on one as well. For $1,500, I now have a machine that rivals the speed of my monstrously huge Dual G5 2.0GHz machine, at least in CPU-intensive applications -- and things like the Finder and the Universal applications actually run faster than they do on the G5. Keep in mind the G5 cost something like 2x the cost of the MacBook. So it's portable, almost as fast as a Dual G5 in many tests, looks great, and works well. What's not to like?
(For that matter, the Core Duo mini is actually the sleeper of the product line -- it's basically a MacBook with a slightly slower CPU. It's an amazingly fast machine, given its price point.)
-rob.

[Downing]

In reply to:

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Does anyone know what percentage of Macbook Pros already shipped are afflicted with whining and overheating?

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As a Rev A MBP owner, I can tell you that I've experienced absolutely no problems with whining or overheating. I've met a couple of other MBP owners, and none of them have had problems either.
That's not to say that my MBP doesn't get toasty. I can keep it on my lap for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, and even longer if I'm just surfing the web or reading my mail, after I boot up before it gets too toasty. It's not as if the thing's on fire; it's just too warm to comfortably keep on my lap. No big deal since I prefer to keep it up my desk, not my lap, anyway. I've never mastered the art of typing on a laptop that's actually on my lap.
For example, I've been surfing the web since booting up about twenty minutes ago with the MPB on a desk the entire time. At this point, the machine is barely warmer than room temperature, which is what you would expect. But if I started to play a movie, mess around with iTunes, etc., it would heat up pretty quickly.
That firmware update was pretty wild. I had no idea my fans could run so loud.
My son doesn't know it yet, but my wife and I will be getting a MacBook for his high school graduation present. He's off to college this fall, so we look forward to lots of "Send $$" iChats. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[griffman]

"My son doesn't know it yet, but my wife and I will be getting a MacBook for his high school graduation present. "
If he knows much about the net, he knows it now /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
-rob.

[jbrooksbreeden]

I know how to transfer an old computer's data to a new one, but suppose you replace the shipping hard drive with a new drive? Does Apple ship restore CDs for the Macbook with ALL the applications and try-outs, etc. that come on the stock drive? If you replace the hard drive with a thrid-party drive, do you use Apple's CDs to format and "restore" the new drive to the configuration of the original drive?

[Downing]

Ha, ha. No worries, Rob. We're getting it today.

[Jason Snell]

In reply to:

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I know how to transfer an old computer's data to a new one, but suppose you replace the shipping hard drive with a new drive? Does Apple ship restore CDs for the Macbook with ALL the applications and try-outs, etc. that come on the stock drive? If you replace the hard drive with a thrid-party drive, do you use Apple's CDs to format and "restore" the new drive to the configuration of the original drive?

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Yes, you can restore that new drive to pristine from-the-factory condition by using the restore DVDs included with the MacBook.

[rishi]

Do you guys think we might get to see a 12" MacBook Pro or has it been replaced by the black MacBook.
A miniature MBP would have been a great thing.

[Jason Snell]

The MacBook is the official replacement for the 12" PowerBook, and that's straight from Apple. So the appearance of a 12' MBP seems very unlikely.

[montgomery_burns]

Apple's Cinema Display specs page says the 30 inch display is not compatible with the MacBook, but that may not be entirely true. The 30 inch Cinema Display is capable of running at resolutions below the native 2560x1600, and the Macbook is supposed to support up to 1920x1200 on an external display. Can you confirm what the highest available resolution is when the Macbook is connected to a 30 inch Cinema Display? Or better yet, how about when the Intel Mac Mini is connected to that display?

[Peter Cohen]

The 30-inch Cinema HD requires its host computer to have a dual-link DVI interface to operate, which the Mac mini does not have.

[spiderbat]

That's the main reason why I preferred to buy an used PB 12" for my wife. Other arguments were the increased pixel density and the glossiness of the display, that made her fear she would have reading problems.

[MBBuyer]

Someone posted in another thread that they heard an applecentre salesperson say the MB will not run an external display in portrait mode. Any chance you guys can test it - sales people sometimes make stuff up! Oh and does screen rotation work on the MBPs?
Thanks!