+1
Syn, you are ignoring these features. Sure many of those features are available on many laptops. But how many laptops come with ALL of those features at that price point. For 1400 bucks, those are fairly decent features. Heck, I still find laptops without built in netcams. iLife too is worth a fair bit. Windows Movie Maker hardly compares. And I actually find the $79 iWorks bundle to be far more capable than MS Office priced at twice that amount.
I'm not ignoring these features at all. The fact is they're pretty common with the new generation of Centrino 2 laptops. Actually, I'd say they're the norm (though DDR3 isn't common yet).
As for the price point, you can find a lot of comparable laptops that are a lot cheaper. For example:
The Asus G50V-A1 is a 15.4" laptop with (among other things) a 1680x1050 screen resolution, 4GB of RAM (DDR2), a Nvidia 9700M GT videocard, a 2 MP webcam (which is pretty standard in most laptops these days), two hard drives (250 GB, 5400 RPM each) a Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz with 6 MB of L2 Cache, an 8-in-1 media card reader, 4 USB ports and and HDMI output and the best warranty in the business. It doesn't quite match up to the new Macbook Pro in some areas and exceeds it in others...but it's exactly $1000 less.
A new 16.4" Sony FW, configured on sonystyle.ca, comes with the same processor as the new Macbook Pro, 4 GB of RAM, a 1600 x 900 screen resolution, a Blu Ray drive, an ATI Mobility Radeon 3470 graphics card, 3 USB ports, a webcam, a media card reader, a 320 GB hard drive, Firewire and HDMI output for $700 less than the Macbook Pro. Add $150 and you can get it with a Blu Ray burner. Keep in mind, this is just one configuration; you can customize it and still get a good system in the $1000 range.
A configured HP Pavillion dv7t came at about $250 more than the 15.4" Macbook Pro - except it's 17", has a fingerprint reader, 8 GB of RAM, Firewire and Ethernet ports, a TV Tuner, 320 GB of HD space, the same processor, the same video card, a Blu Ray drive with Lightscribe, media card reader, webcam and fingerprint reader (among other things).
If you just install 4 GB of RAM and modify some of the other features so it's on par with the Macbook Pro 15.4", it's about $700 - $800 less.
Keep in mind all of these examples have the almost all the same things as the Macbook Pro - a 1066 MHz FSB, 4 GB of RAM, discrete graphics, etc. They are missing some features, but also have quite a few features the MBP lacks. In addition, they're a lot more customizable. Configured similiarly to the MBP, they're all considerably less.
This doesn't even cover Centrino 2 offerings from Lenovo, Acer, etc.
It also doesn't address one of the other points I was trying to make - you can find quite a few sub $1000 with useful features you still can't get on a MBP...which costs about $2000 more. At this point, I would've expected Apple to finally include them.
What I am disappointed on was the decision to leave out the keyboard lighting at that price point. Having to pay an extra 300 bucks to get 0.4 GHz faster processor and 90 GB more hard drive space just to be able to get keyboard back lighting is rather unfair.
Are you sure about that? I could swear that was a standard feature on any model.
Anyway, I could not find anything comparable to my iMac when I purchased that last year. And my brother could not find any laptop at the same performance/price point as his macbook pro when he purchased that in late 2006. And he really looked.
The Imac is also overpriced compared to it's desktop PC equivalents. You can find a lot of PCs that are a lot more powerful than an Imac for the same price.
If you price out other OEMs to the same features and performance as a Mac, the Apple usually wins.
From a hardware perspective, Apple usually doesn't win (as I tried to illustrate above).
Lastly, student pricing has worked well for Apple. Few people actually pay full price for their Apples. This says it all:
http://www.macdailynews.com/gfx/article_gfx/071002_missouri_macs.jpg
Student pricing doesn't give you much of a discount. Apple may be doing well with it, but there are many more students buying sub-$1000 Sonys, HPs, etc.
I also don't really see how it relates to this being a good upgrade for the MBP. As I said, there are some nice new features added, but it's still lacking considering the price you're paying.