No Optical Drives - it's wrong!

I haven't used my optical drive (in any of my machines, including a Mac) frequently for a very very long time. In fact, I only ever use them for installing operating systems, and occasionally burning ISO's (about once a month).

Optical drives in PC's will die out soon enough with everything becoming available digitally. Soon we will all have SSD recorders under out TV's, only SSD's in our PC's, everything will connect wirelessly, operating systems will be stored on and installed from flash drives, and children will look at a disk and wonder what on earth it is for.
 
acme15 said:
I haven't used my optical drive (in any of my machines, including a Mac) frequently for a very very long time. In fact, I only ever use them for installing operating systems, and occasionally burning ISO's (about once a month).
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So when you need to burn an ISO you're going to miss it, right? Will you buy an external drive?

acme15 said:
Optical drives in PC's will die out soon enough with everything becoming available digitally. Soon we will all have SSD recorders under out TV's, only SSD's in our PC's, everything will connect wirelessly, operating systems will be stored on and installed from flash drives, and children will look at a disk and wonder what on earth it is for.
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Optical media is here for the next decade at least, believe me. It will become redundant one day but not as soon as some people think.
 
theheyes said:
So when you need to burn an ISO you're going to miss it, right? Will you buy an external drive?
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I'm sure that bootable USB sticks for Windows etc will be introduced soon (if they haven't already) so if that is the case then no, however if that is not the case, then yes. But it will spend most of its life in a drawer, and as a result, the laptop would be lighter.

theheyes said:
Optical media is here for the next decade at least, believe me. It will become redundant one day but not as soon as some people think.
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I know that optical media will still be around, heck, floppy disks are still around if you look for them, but I mean that soon enough it will be possible to phase optical media out of our lives for good and not miss it. Most people won't of course.
 
By still around I mean in mainstream use, taking up significant space on shop floors and selling consistently. Phasing out optical media will be possible for a lot of people (if they haven't done already) but not the majority and miles easier for those focused on consumption/entertainment, which is clearly Apple's primary focus these days (i.e. not professionals)
 
I use my optical drive a lot :mad:

Mainly to rip CDs for myself, and to burn stuff for clients or friends. I can see why they did it on the laptop range but it seems a tad too early for the desktop.

What's the burn speed on those USB SuperDrives? I've never used one but I'd imagine it's painfully slow in comparison to an internal drive?
 
EVH said:
I use my optical drive a lot :mad:

Mainly to rip CDs for myself, and to burn stuff for clients or friends. I can see why they did it on the laptop range but it seems a tad too early for the desktop.

What's the burn speed on those USB SuperDrives? I've never used one but I'd imagine it's painfully slow in comparison to an internal drive?
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I still use the optical drive on my MBP for the same. Any CDs I buy I rip to put on my NAS and put the CD away on a shelf.

The USB SuperDrive is just the internal SuperDrive in a USB enclosure (so same hardware). The question is, does USB bandwidth limit data transfer and read/write speeds to and from optical media. A quick google and;

No. The SuperDrive is USB 2.0. There is no difference in speed between 3.0 and 2.0 because a CD can be written at max 16x which is 2 megabytes a second or a DVD can be written at max 8x which is 11 megabytes a second. (I am assuming you are using the fastest possible CD/DVD) USB 2.0 runs at a peak speed of 60 megabytes a second which is more than enough to handle the write and read speed of a CD/DVD
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No idea how accurate that is though.
 
SixKi113r said:
Hi All,

I'm a forum noob, but thought I'd begin by expressing my annoyance at Apple removing the optical drives from their new machine. For me, this is forcing everyone to buy music, video and software through their own apple stores. What does everyone else think?
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Apple ditched the serial, parallel and PS2 ports back when the first iMac was released in favour of USB. That caused a similar outcry back then.

If Apple deem a port or device to be 'legacy' equipment they drop it.
 
But that's another accessory to buy and carry and uses up a USB port. In the MBA it makes sense to shed this sort of thing but not on a professional line of laptops (with the iMac it's less of an issue)
 
Yeah, as I tried to make in my point in a previous post, it demonstrates how Apple is now all about the consumer and less about the 'professional', given that 'Pro' machines used to be aimed at such a market.

I can see why people don't need a drive or ethernet if its your home/gaming/uni machine, but that's very different to its use in a professional environment; I'd question whether people are seeing this side of things? Even if you don't work in creative industries, while WiFi may be prevalent everywhere these days, I'm still yet to work in an office where access to a secure network is done by anything other than ethernet. WiFi is only deemed safe and useful for client connections and e-mail.

As I said before, why not just have a top of the line MacBook Pro which has all the ports and a drive, along with the existing one which doesn't, which is more of a MacBook Air.
 
mrbell1984 said:
Why ? Just get a USB to ethernet adaptor. Apple sacrifice certain technology to allow a friendly minimal build. It's not like you can't add functionality.
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I have the Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter. However that's an extra and wireless just doesn't cut the mustard for some tasks requiring high speed file access
 
Nexus said:
Yeah, as I tried to make in my point in a previous post, it demonstrates how Apple is now all about the consumer and less about the 'professional', given that 'Pro' machines used to be aimed at such a market.
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"Apple doesn't care about the professionals blah blah blah"

That line is tiresome at best. I mean, nobody who is a professional (whatever that means) would use a rMBP. I mean who can do "real work" on a machine with no built in Ethernet?

Adapters are annoying (see my post) but the machine is very suitable for pros.
 
Nobody is saying you can't do "real work" on the newer machines, but Apple are chopping off features that the working end of the market still use.
 
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