The Plight of the Macbook Pro Fan

I’m a huge Apple product connoisseur. Currently in my Apple product arsenal I own a Mac Pro, deceased 17″ Macbook Pro, Mac Mini, iPod Shuffle, iPod Touch, iPod Nano and most recently a new 15″ Macbook Pro that I’m involved in a love/hate relationship with right now.

Two weeks ago I bought a new Macbook Pro to use in the interim while my laptop is in repair. Initially I loved the laptop–its smooth high-contrast glass display, slim profile, long battery life– it was all great in my eyes. Just when I started to believe that Apple achieved “laptop utopia” I realized two deal-breaking flaws for me:

• No firewire port Since I’m involved in media production, a lot of my equipment uses firewire to connect to the computer. No firewire = NO NO
• Less-than-genius placement of the screen brightness sensor There is a sensor on the top of the screen which senses the brightness of the room and adjusts the screen accordingly. The biggest problem is that the sensor is aimed at your face, this measuring the brightness reading based on the amount of light that is being reflected on your face by the screen. If you’re in a dark room, as the screen gets brighter your face gets brighter, which makes the screen get brighter, which makes your face get brighter, which makes the screen get brighter. When you suddenly move your head out of the way to protect your corneas, the screen quickly becomes dark again.

Though fixable, these things are annoying flaws that I can’t bring myself to live with. As I began to appreciate my laptop and its perfect design I got a message from my local “Mac Genius” stating that my laptop is truly dead and I’d have to choose a new laptop. Which leaves two choices–the laptop that I have now and the downgraded Macbook that suffers from the same problem. Woe to me!

What’s a Geremy to do?!