“In its new product announcement last week, Apple rolled out a lot of new features – including significantly faster processers and greater expandability for its Macbook Air and Mac Mini lineups,” Jeff Ward-Bailey reports for The Christian Science Monitor. “But Cupertino also quietly took something out of its lineup (besides the vanilla Macbook, that is): the Mac Mini is now missing its DVD drive.”
“The Macbook Air has never had an optical drive, and now that the Mini’s has disappeared as well, it likely indicates that the company is eyeing a future in which media doesn’t come on a DVD – or a CD-ROM or Blu-Ray disc, for that matter,” Ward-Bailey reports. “This isn’t the first time Apple’s been in this position, either. Back in 1998, the company introduced the original iMac without a floppy drive, pulling the plug on a technology that was still considered standard. (In hindsight, that was probably a good call, though Apple’s move caused quite an outcry at the time.)”
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Ward-Bailey reports, “For a lot of people, though, it really is too soon to ditch the discs. Let’s assume that Apple will continue to remove optical drives throughout its laptop and desktop lines, as it did with the floppy drive: this is probably an unwelcome scenario to anyone hoping to watch a DVD on an airplane.”
MacDailyNews Take: Get it from iTunes Store.
Ward-Bailey reports, “It’s worth pointing out that when Lion, the [latest] iteration of the Mac OS X operating system, arrives in a physical format in August (it’s download-only for now) it’ll be on a USB stick, not a disc.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple leads. The rest of the world follows. As usual.
If you don’t want anything to change and can’t accept new ideas and/or methods of doing things, then you are not cut out to be a Mac user. Go get yourself an HP or a Dell or some other dime-a-dozen piece of crap and run Microsoft’s shiteous Windows on it and you’ll be comfortably at least 5 years behind us Mac users as always.
You can use your Premiere, you can scroll backwards because “that’s how we’ve always done it,” and you can feed antiquated, unnecessary plastic discs into your horrid PC until you end up, years later, doing things the way we Mac users are doing things today anyway. Better late than never, but just barely.
The status quo is shit and we have no patience for those who cling to it.
Spinning plastic physical media has been EOL’ed by Apple Inc. That means it is dead – sooner for the leading edge Mac users and later for the rest of the world’s PC followers.
This is not an ad, it’s a mission statement for Apple and Apple product users alike:
As someone who videotapes the plays at the local theater, the dance recitals and creates moves for people for any number of reasons, I ask you: what are the alternative distribution methods to a DVD? Not one person has ever asked for an AppleTV version or even a downloadable version for that matter. Nobody has asked for a copy of the movie on a SD card. I’d love to utilize those alternatives, but people would laugh at me. Everyone has a DVD player hooked up to their tv and knows how to use it. The DVD may be dead in Apples’ eyes, but i think it’s extremely premature.
MDN says: ” Get it from iTunes Store ”
I say when all Americans have access to broadband you can kill physical media. I am among many, many persons who is unserved by broadband and I live in a well populated area of East TX.
I think that Apple is looking at how a consumer uses media. Those that purchase vinyl of their favorite band isn’t doing so in order that they may rip it to iTunes and then store the LP in a closet for safe keeping. They purchase it for the better range of highs and lows that vinyl can provide and listen to them on a high quality sound system. Those that spend the money on a Blu-ray movie and high quality home theater system is not typically going to rip the movie so they can view it over their Apple TV. If they do, they don’t usually understand why they have Blu-ray. Even when it comes to books, there is a huge turn that is being made. Borders has declared bankruptcy and is closing all their stores. Amazon announced that digital formats of books are outselling physical paper books. Textbooks are beginning to make a huge push towards digital. Physical books will probably never go away but that will be for people that like to throw a book in their bag without needing to worry about breaking the screen or getting sand in the components at the beach. Digital will be the way that a majority of literature will be read including classics read in schools.
Apple sees that digital downloads are available for convenience. They know that the quality isn’t at the highest levels for music or movies and I don’t think they are trying to be. Most music is now listened to through an MP3 player or iPod of some sort. The push is for digital downloads. I don’t know many people that buy CDs and actually listen to them anymore. They rip it to their computer and then the CD sits on the shelf or goes in a box in storage. You may as well just get the downloadable version in the first place.
Now I will agree that when I get it gets to the point that a majority of computers don’t cone with optical drives, I do hope that purchasing a Blu-ray disc will provide a free (or very low priced) digital download for movies on the go. I may want that super high quality version of a movie for my home theater system but I may also want to take it with me on vacation or to watch at work on a lunch break. However, I will probably only buy Blu-ray for blockbuster movies with stunning visuals and sound (e.g. Avatar) and not the latest Adam Sandler or Vince Vaughn movies. Those I’d be perfectly happy with a digital only version.
Dear MDN,
1. I can accept change that’s no problem but change is not always for the better.
2.”The status quo is shit and we have no patience for those who cling to it.” It would be better if MDN did not insult people who have no realistic alternative to writing CD/DVD’s. I need to give large numbers of medical images to patients and referring doctors.
3. iDisk, Dropbox and the fashion for the Cloud are all very well but they can’t do everything.
“That’s the point, right there. LP vinyl record went from mainstream medium to practically non-existent niche with extremely limited use. No mainstream musical artist or label issues new releases on vinyl anymore (and haven’t for a long while). Just like floppy discs can still be bought in some stores, there are still places that sell vinyl records, although vast majority of those are old, second-hand LPs of various quality.”
Rubbish. Plenty of mainstream artists here in the UK release vinyl singles and albums along with CD and MP3/FLAC downloads. You’re just not paying attention. They also may not be the sort of artists played on the crappy top30 format commercial stations you listen to. You can go into any one of probably a dozen audio dealers on London’s Tottenham Court Road and see shelves full of turntables.
FWIW, I was looking at a new computer this afternoon, a Mac Mini. Not a new model, the previous one, £90 off list. I will probably get the optical drive removed and have a 500Gb HDD installed in the empty bay, with an external SuperDrive, because I actually still buy physical media, CD’s, because I often get them signed at gigs, and I can’t bring myself to walk up to a favourite singer and give them a cheap CD-R with their latest album burned to it and ask them to sign it. Plus I still like to use my Cambridge DVD-A/SACD player. The Mini will get used for streaming audio more and more, but a physical CD is still preferable for ripping to 320Kb instead of a lower bitrate download.
I don’t doubt that the shelves are well stocked with turntables on Tottenham Court Road. It is also true that over the past ten years, vinyl has been witnessing a surprising resurgence, with quite a healthy growth in sales volume (over 35%, compared to prior year). My point still stands, though: even with all that resurgence, of all the music sales in 2010, only 1% of revenue came from vinyl (and let’s not forget; an LP now costs almost three times as much as a CD of the same album!). It is a marginal medium. It is not that I’m just not paying attention: apparently, very few people are.
I echo most of the commentary. DVD’s and CD’s have been yesterday’s tech for a long time, though broadband has yet to permeate the country adequately to not inconvenience some users. Myself, I am lucky to maintain a 500K connection in a city of 50,000. Downloading Lion will take a drive to a fairly fast cybercafe (there’s a dated word!). For this reason, I hope the reworking of the Airport Base Stations/Time Machines includes a flash buffer to allow use of the cloud for slow connections. Even a 32Gig card could be quite useful and your iTunes, data and photos could upload while away at work or overnight.
Funny the article mentions watching a DVD on an airplane. I travel a lot more than the average person, and usually on overseas trips… I see less and less laptops being pulled out now days, especially to watch a DVD.
Not only is the laptop itself becoming too big a deal to handle in an airplane seat, carrying DVDs around just adds to it.
A few years ago I’d see people carrying a portable Radio Shack on the airplane. Cell phone, BlackBerry, Laptop, Portable DVD player, MP3 Player… Then I’d sit down next to them and do it all on my iPhone (now an iPad most of the time).
iTunes’ movie library is tiny compared to what is available on disc right now. Until iTunes has every movie out on disc in its library I can’t see ditching the optical drive just yet.
While I applaud Apple’s decision to remove optical drives; MDN:s take that people should turn to the iTunes Store is borderline absurd. You can neither purchase nor rent movies from Apple in most of the civilized world. Everyone does not live in the United States, you know…
A disc just got stuck in my Mac Mini last night. Usually play video from my HUGE digital collection but had an old DVD of Pet Semetery.. have relegated the disc to Drive Semetery since that is where it will stay until the Mac Mini goes to Mac Semetery etc. Oh … And before you all start commenting on the spelling of “cemetery”… That’s the spelling King used.
Stakes have been driven into the heart of video professionals by Apples moves over the past few years. Two examples:
* Lack of support for Blu-Ray authoring and playback.
* Release of Final Cut Pro X without feature parity with previous version
* Elimination of DVD Studio Pro
Stakes have been driven into the heart of video professionals by Apples moves over the past few years. Three examples:
* Lack of support for Blu-Ray authoring and playback.
* Release of Final Cut Pro X without feature parity with previous version
* Elimination of DVD Studio Pro
This is just the latest of many stakes that have been driven into the heart of video professionals by Apples moves over the past few years. Three examples:
* Lack of support for Blu-Ray authoring and playback.
* Release of Final Cut Pro X without feature parity with previous version
* Elimination of DVD Studio Pro