I gotta admit, that caught my eye, too.

Not necessarily. Industries and governments are famous for two-faced policies.

If the insurance company says that they were manmade, the government can say, "No, they weren't, but this is a civil matter and we can't interfere." And nothing will happen. Worst case, it will be tied up in courts for the next 20 years. By then, those people currently in charge will have made a ton of money and be retired somewhere outside the US.

It's kind of like the music industry claiming that a 30-second ringtone is enough the song that consumers must pay royalties while, at the same time, claiming that they weren't so they didn't have to pay the artists royalties.

I'll admit, whenever stuff like this comes up, I always think of this...

Hey! I like Miss Piggy!

Fine. "Business Owners."

Besides, it would seem that Gynecologists have no problem helping male patients...

I'll ignore the first one as being ridiculous.

The second one, though, is an exception to the rule. "Clubs" can choose members based on pretty much any reason. There can be a club that is only for women, meaning you can't become a member. They are not claiming to serve everyone--only women.

This is somewhat different than a bakery that refuses to provide a service for certain people. Conversely, if they became a "Christian Bakery Club" and charged a membership fee which you had to pay in order to join the club, they would be within their rights to deny membership in the club to homosexuals, divorcees, muslims, jews, and any other people they deem as sinners. And they wouldn't have to make cakes for those people.

Actually, as I understand it (and, no, I don't own a Tesla, but I keep checking their website in the desperate hope that there'll be a roadster there), they don't have "dealerships." Instead, they have "showrooms" where you can go look at the car and get a test drive. But, as I understand it, you can't go to one and drive away in a brand new Tesla.

Remember the old Gateway Stores? It's kind of like that.

...or you'll end up singing folk music.

Maybe if we put down a giant monolith...

But that's sort of my argument.

The MacBook is slower and requires extra money for port extenders than the high-end MacBook Air. You're not getting extra battery life. You're basically getting an $899 MacBook Air with a retina display. Now, again, I won't short change the retina display, but that's pretty much the only thing that is "better" about the MacBook. Everything else is either worse or equal.

Again, going back to the dark ol' days, you ran into the problem about the difference between a high-end Macintosh Performa and a low-end Power Macintosh. Really the only difference was that the Power Mac had a faster hard-drive (7200 RPM SCSI drives versus 5400 RPM ATA). Pretty much everything else was the same.

The MacBook is for those people who want an ultra-light portable with a retina display and care about nothing else. It feels a bit like the PowerMac Cube--you're trading in too much to get too little.

The theory is that by excluding the ports, the laptop can be made thinner and lighter. While "thinner" may be for the aesthete, "lighter" certainly has real world advantages.

Now, that said, I tend to agree that there is a happy medium between 1 port and 356 ports. In theory, Apple is supposed to be good at finding this happy medium.

Assuming it's battery lasts that long.

Because, little by little, Apple has stopped making machines that I want. And this truly sucks when I've spent the last 25 years of my life developing Macintosh software.

I'm typing this on a 17" MacBook Pro from 2010. It's not like I have a choice of buying another 17" laptop because Apple stopped making them. And having to set up a rube-goldberg arrangement of adapters to adapters (at ridiculous prices) is certainly not what I would call an elegant solution. And, yes, I'm a long-time Apple customer. My first "Mac" was a Macintosh.

As I said in a post above, I'm seeing the product line turning into a mess. Consider the new MacBook for a moment. It's thin, it's light, it's sexy. Okay, fine. Why isn't it a MacBook Air?

Contrast it with an $1149 MacBook Air. 8GB of RAM and a Dual Core i7. Same memory, same storage. Same battery life. Faster CPU. And a tenth of an inch thicker at the highest point and an extra 5 ounces. It also has 2 USB 3 ports and 2 Thunderbolt ports. And it's $50 cheaper.

What does the new MacBook give me? A tenth of an inch thinner at the highest point (it's actually thicker at the lowest point) and a larger (by 0.4 inch) Retina display. Of course, if you run the Retina display at retina quality, it's actually an 1152 x 720 display--smaller than the MacBook Air's 1366 x 768. The Retina display is gorgeous, I'll agree, but is it worth giving up CPU performance and connectivity? Why can't Apple give me a retina display on a MacBook Air? Why do I have to give up my Thunderbolt ports to get a retina display?

When Steve Jobs came to Apple, it's product line was a mess. I agree wholeheartedly. He cleaned it up into something that made sense. Consumer and Pro. Good, Better, and Best. Little by little, it's being turned back into a mess again. Why would I buy a MacBook over a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro?

A piece of paper is considerably thinner and lighter than a MacBook. But it doesn't do nearly as much. I'd be fine with a laptop that's an extra 4 ounces but has all of those things included rather than having to buy them separately and carry them around with the laptop, which negates any weight-loss that I got.

Apple is anorexic. They're more than willing to remove useful features in order to shave off millimeters and pounds. Then they stand up in front of the crowd and say, "Ooh! Look at me! I'm so pretty and thin!"

Fair enough. Add that cost--and weight--to your analysis of the laptop.