Hypernate
McGeek
I found this on a site about constructive critism about Apple:
It's true
Powerbook blues
Another thing we just love about Apple under Steve Jobs is that in each new hardware release, they restore an old feature which was removed for no apparent reason in previous releases and they simultaneously remove a current feature. One example we have mentioned before is the first full-sized Apple USB keyboard -which is used in all current Mac desktop models- and which is the first Apple keyboard in history that does not have a power button.
Another case in point is the latest revision of the Powerbook G4, which is still flawed in our mind because it has no expandability (no drive bays, no upgradable CPU) and has a slot-loading drive, which we hate. At least the drive is now a DVD/CD-RW combo, which was added about a year after the first combo iBook was introduced.
In the last Powerbook/iBook releases, Apple decided to remove the analog sound input jack, apparently on the assumption that hey, they don't have any voice recognition software available, so why bother including a port that can only be utilized by third-party applications? (this is one of the "advantages" of having Apple produce both the hardware and the OS.)
For some reason this did not go down very well with Powerbook owners, so Apple restored the sound input jack in the new Powerbook. But it was impossible for Apple to actually add a useful feature without taking another feature out, so the new powerbooks don't have an infrared port anymore. Of course one reason for this decision may be that the current version of Mac OS X apparently does not fully support the infrared port, so why bother adding one to the configuration? Don't you just love it when Apple is keeping its products "compatible" by making sure that the capabilities of the hardware do not exceed the capabilities of the OS? The only tiny little flaw in Apple's logic is that while you can upgrade your OS for very little cost, to get the missing hardware features you have to either give money to buy external hardware add-ons, or buy another Powerbook in a few month's time with an infrared port (you can bet it will be restored in future models, while they will probably remove some other "useless" feature - the keyboard for example.)
It's true