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Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

engadget.com

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Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#21

Post by jinushaun »

People always bring up the floppy drive example, but I didn't remember the huge outcry over the lack of a floppy drive that everyone mentions. By the time Apple dropped support for it, I hadn't used a floppy disk in years. Sure, PC tech pundits and journalists were up in arms, but that's their job.

As for optical drives, I have probably used it maybe half a dozen times over the past few years if you don't count an XBox. What's so crazy about dropping support for it in PCs? If anything, I'm glad. It'll lead to lighter and thinner laptops.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#22

Post by microtonal »

jamesteow wrote: post #2

"Over the past few years, Apple's been slyly but deliberately severing ties with a piece of hardware that most rational humans still view as essential on a full-scale computer." I can count the number of times on one hand I've needed an optical drive in the last year. In the last five years? Probably twenty times or so. I backup on the internet and use external hard drives. I stream content or view it off of an exter…

Well, there are people who still buy and rip CDs as a means of obtaining lossless music :).

I will not claim to hear a difference, but like lossless music for archival purposes (to avoid future lossy to lossy conversion). Besides that, some music is still not available legally online.

Still, I would like to see optical drives axed across all Mac models. I can use an external drive for this purpose, and I do not want to carry around the extra weight if not necessary.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#23

Post by sunspeck »

PSA: There's still a ton of excellent, obscure music on CD that hasn't reached the cloud. Get ripping your local libraries and dollar bins while you still can.

(Incidentally, the optical drive in my last machine, a Macbook, was as good as useless. It failed multiple times because of the flex in the plastic case. So much for impeccable Apple design standards.)

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#24

Post by 9999 »

dkokelley wrote: post #9
garyrichardson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I found this article whiney. The last time I had to use a DVD was upgrading to Snow Leopard. When I went to do the upgrade I had to take my 1 year old laptop in to get fixed because the DVD drive wasn't working on it -- it in fact probably never worked. I remember when BluRay 'beat' HD-DVD. By the time HD-DVD was dropped by Toshiba I was already thinking "who cares? no one is going to buy bluray anyway." I susp…

I think you address an interesting market that will still need disks. The home-theater geek. It's not yet practical to stream the amounts of data necessary to play a full 1080p movie for 2+ hours without any noticeable degradation or stuttering. For now, if you want the best, you need a Blu-Ray drive.

So the Blu-Ray market will pretty much be just slightly larger than the Laserdisc market was. I say it will be slightly larger because in the case of LDs, only highly affluent home theater geeks could afford to buy the players and the discs, whereas BD is priced much more competitively.

EDIT: We can also include everyone that doesn't have access to high speed broadband as candidates for BD, so the potential market isn't quite as grim as I originally surmised. Given the woeful state of broadband expansion in the U.S., there's probably a pretty good market for optical discs for the next 15 years at least.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#25

Post by ZoFreX »

microtonal wrote: post #22
jamesteow wrote: post #2

"Over the past few years, Apple's been slyly but deliberately severing ties with a piece of hardware that most rational humans still view as essential on a full-scale computer." I can count the number of times on one hand I've needed an optical drive in the last year. In the last five years? Probably twenty times or so. I backup on the internet and use external hard drives. I stream content or view it off of an exter…

Well, there are people who still buy and rip CDs as a means of obtaining lossless music :). I will not claim to hear a difference, but like lossless music for archival purposes (to avoid future lossy to lossy conversion). Besides that, some music is still not available legally online. Still, I would like to see optical drives axed across all Mac models. I can use an external drive for this purpose, and I do not want…

I own a couple of Plextor IDE drives still for this purpose. When it comes to ripping music, older is often better!

For any other uses though, I haven't needed a CD drive in the last year. It would have been useful when I installed Windows, merely because it's harder to lose than a USB memory stick!

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#26

Post by ugh »

fpgeek wrote: post #16

Even for Apple's hardware customers, Apple's opinion on whether or not to deprecate the optical drive isn't entirely trustworthy. Given that CSS has been comprehensively cracked, ripped DVDs are the most widespread and reliable source of DRM-free commercial video in the world. Apple sells DRMed video that competes with (among other things) ripped DVDs. Beyond the financial incentive, Apple wants people to buy their D…

So, you need an internal drive for ripping? External drives are where it’s at and Apple will gladly allow you to use them. (You can get one for the low, low price of $20 if you really want to.)

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#27

Post by bbgm »

jamesteow wrote: post #2

"Over the past few years, Apple's been slyly but deliberately severing ties with a piece of hardware that most rational humans still view as essential on a full-scale computer." I can count the number of times on one hand I've needed an optical drive in the last year. In the last five years? Probably twenty times or so. I backup on the internet and use external hard drives. I stream content or view it off of an exter…

Last year, my optical drive had gone bad, but I never realized until I had to rip a CD. Apple gave me a new Macbook Pro cause of the bad drive, but that is one of only three times in the last 2 years that I have tried using an optical drive (the other two were to load sample libraries)

I doubt I am going to miss one if they get rid of it, but I know others who would.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#28

Post by ZoFreX »

9999 wrote: post #24
dkokelley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you address an interesting market that will still need disks. The home-theater geek. It's not yet practical to stream the amounts of data necessary to play a full 1080p movie for 2+ hours without any noticeable degradation or stuttering. For now, if you want the best, you need a Blu-Ray drive.

So the Blu-Ray market will pretty much be just slightly larger than the Laserdisc market was. I say it will be slightly larger because in the case of LDs, only highly affluent home theater geeks could afford to buy the players and the discs, whereas BD is priced much more competitively. EDIT: We can also include everyone that doesn't have access to high speed broadband as candidates for BD, so the potential market is…

One point frequently missed by people mocking blu-ray is that a lot of people are using it now pretty much by accident. I have a PS3 for playing games, and at a later date I got a LoveFilm subscription (it's like Netflix but British and rubbish). Now, if I want to watch a movie, it doesn't cost me a penny extra to watch the blu-ray. Do I want high def /for free/? Hell yes, I do! So I think Blu Ray will be sticking around.

However, on the "will the PC crowd miss it?" front - do I need a Bluray player? Yup! Do I need a Bluray player in my netbook, laptop, or desktop computer? Nope!

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#29

Post by speckledjim »

jamesteow wrote: post #2

"Over the past few years, Apple's been slyly but deliberately severing ties with a piece of hardware that most rational humans still view as essential on a full-scale computer." I can count the number of times on one hand I've needed an optical drive in the last year. In the last five years? Probably twenty times or so. I backup on the internet and use external hard drives. I stream content or view it off of an exter…

The only time I've ever used an optical drive is to re-install the OS.

You can pick up a USB DVD drive for next to nothing for those rare times you need it.

Re: Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

#30

Post by ZoFreX »

dkokelley wrote: post #9
garyrichardson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I found this article whiney. The last time I had to use a DVD was upgrading to Snow Leopard. When I went to do the upgrade I had to take my 1 year old laptop in to get fixed because the DVD drive wasn't working on it -- it in fact probably never worked. I remember when BluRay 'beat' HD-DVD. By the time HD-DVD was dropped by Toshiba I was already thinking "who cares? no one is going to buy bluray anyway." I susp…

I think you address an interesting market that will still need disks. The home-theater geek. It's not yet practical to stream the amounts of data necessary to play a full 1080p movie for 2+ hours without any noticeable degradation or stuttering. For now, if you want the best, you need a Blu-Ray drive.

If I had a place to stream it from, I could easily stream an HD movie with my connection. It's not like in the future /less/ people are going to have fast internet!
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