Dear Santa, er Steve

As it is getting closer and closer to that special day, I figured I had better write Santa Claus a letter and tell him what I would like for Christmas.

Though contrary to popular belief, Santa does not live at the north pole. He lives in Cupertino, California. And his first name isn't Santa. It's Steve.

Dear Steve:

It's MC Fro, and I have been especially good this year. I have never strayed from the fruit company, and continue to believe in the wondrous Macs and iPods you produce. I would like to tell you what I would like to see announced at the MacWorld Expo in San Fransisco this January: An ultra-thin 12" Widescreen MacBook Pro.

I would like to to have Intel Core 2 Duo processors, hopefully with a speed bump. If not, I would be very pleased with 2.16 or 2.33 GHz clock speeds. Even though the screen is 1" smaller than the Original MacBook, I would hope to see the same 1280 x 800 resolution, with support for monitor spanning, thus I could greatly expand my work surface by attaching a large flat-screen montior. I am going to need a lot of workspace on my screen while I finish up DH's solo album.

I require a minimum of 1 Gigabyte of RAM installed, because I will need to run Rosetta, and all the plugins I run while recording under Logic takes up a lot of RAM, so I would hope that RAM can be expanded to a high-capacity like 3-4 Gigs. I would like a high-capacity hard drive, perhaps 160 Gigabytes might be a good starting point. A dual-layer Superdrive would be acceptable to my needs.

A graphics card will absolutely be necessary, and I won't settle for the Intel-GMA 950 processor that steals my RAM. The ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 128MB of RAM is the absolute minimum for my needs, but if you can fit 256 megabytes of RAM on it, I would be very pleased.

The built-in iSight camera is not necessary, but welcome. It is already included in all other MacBook models, so I would expect you would include one in this model as well.

Built-in Wireless technology is already included in all other MacBook models. I am looking forward to using Bluetooth 2.0 with an Apple Wireless Keyboard, and a wireless Mighty Mouse, then I wouldn't have to worry about using the 2 or 3 available USB 2.0 ports for my input peripherals. As for Airport-Extreme, I certainly hope it has the technology to support the 802.11n draft spec. The infra-red Front-Row remote is a cool gadget, and I would probably use it more than I think I normally would.

I know you will include at least Gigabit-Ethernet. I wouldn't expect any less, but it will certainly suit my needs when I need to hook up multiple computers to do all the heavy computer processing when I am mixing DH's album. This goes without saying, but I need firewire on this model. I know it might be a tall order, but if you can spare 2 firewire ports, It would make my life much easier.

The Magsafe power adapter is the coolest invention you have made for portable computers. Furthermore, I would hope all new form factors for your notebook computers will include a magnetic lid, which is present in your current MacBook. It's so much cleaner than having the hooks and release buttons. Furthermore, you do not have to worry about moving parts getting worn or breaking.

I would like to see a thin form factor, and an aluminum enclosure, a 3-speaker built-in sound system as which was present in the old 12" G4 Powerbooks. To keep things straight across the MacBook board, I would be ecstatic if it had that funky blue backlit keyboard.

I hope you can cram as much juice as possible into that thin battery, I sincerely hope I can get 6 hours of battery life out of this model. Weight is also an issue with me, as is portability. If this book could weight less than 5 pounds, I would be ecstatic.

A price point of about $1749 US.

I know I am being rather demanding about my specifications of this small, ultra-thin MacBook Pro. But I think if it were produced, everybody would drool over it. Anyone who had this book in a coffee shop would be the envy of everyone around. I know you and your elves are fantastic engineers, and I know you and your crew can produce something as wonderful as this. If I hear about this product this January at Macworld San Fransisco, my credit card will leap out of my wallet onto my desk like a spawning Salmon. I, of course, would have no objection to finding a pre-release model underneath the tree this Christmas morning.

Respectfully yours,

MC Fro