So Apple has dropped Firewire from the MacBook and don't expect to ever see it againon the consumer-level laptop from Apple. This is too bad, especially since Apple really boosted the performance of the new MacBook--it would have made a decent computer for editors if it had had Firewire.
The lack of Firewire raises two big issues for video folks. First, the performance of hard drives over USB has traditionally been really poor on Mac's--usually half the speed of Firewire 400. Second, there are all kinds of other gear that uses Firewire--decks, cameras, Firestore, video monitoring/digitizing equipment. We layoff to DVCam at Link and get most of our footage from DV and HDV tapes.
One good bit of news about peripherals with the new laptops is that Apple has finally raised the performance of USB. Check out this article at Bare Feats to see the results of a comparison of hard drive performance of USB, FW400, FW800, and Sata drives on the new laptops. USB is almost as fast as Firewire 400 on the new MacBook Pro.
I still wouldn't recommend doing any serious editing with USB drives on these new laptops. I guess it could work, but Firewire was supposed to be a better standard. My guess is that you would run into problems with capturing and laying off if your media was on USB drives. But these are educated guesses at this point. This may change if Apple does a better job of implementing USB on their Mac's.
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