Apple always has to be different. But today, everyone cheered as the company brought out a version of their pretty laptop, the MacBook, in matt black (yes, that's the same finish as your boring old PC). Our sister site, Engadget, took the MacBook for a spin and declared it "a pretty freaking great value" (but they're not doing black, for the record). The Apple Insider hails the removable (by an actual user!) hard disks. No more purely cosmetic screws!

It wasn't all black hearts and roses, though; MacWorld UK today mourned the locking down of OS X. Thanks to concerns of piracy, Apple closed down its open source code so that developers can no longer tinker with its operating system. Bad for pirates is also bad for very advanced users; says Tom Yager, "there are ways to address the piracy issue without stripping the critical and defining quality of openness from OS X."

AAPL stock responded by ticking up 25 cents to $65.26 on lower-than-average volume. Evidently the market, while intrigued, isn't ready to jump unreservedly on board for black is the new MacBook.

[Photo redjar]

Apple after the bell 05-17-06: black is the new MacBook originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 17 May 2006 18:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.