“It seemed like a radically dumb idea at the time, but Apple — as was its wont — struck out on its own by eliminating floppy drives from its products altogether in 1998. That marked the beginning of the end for the storage format. Although the technology stuck around far longer than it deserved, by the turn of the millennium, floppies had largely gone extinct,” Brian Fung writes The Atlantic.
“Fast forward a decade, and it’s clear Apple’s retained a fancy for killing off outgoing technologies that the rest of us think still have some life in them,” Fung writes. “In the latest update to the company’s notebook line, Apple does away with physical DVD drives and spinning hard disks, the latter being replaced by small, ultra low-power solid-state drives with no moving parts.”
Fung writes, “Apple’s mild paternalism might be defended as a good thing. By getting us to abandon technologies before we’re emotionally ready to pull the plug, Apple has effectively accelerated the rate at which we adopt new ways of doing things. It moves the ball forward, ending demand for technology that will be dead in a few years anyway, while getting Apple’s competitors to start thinking ahead, too.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Without Apple, and, more specifically, Steve Jobs, we’d all still be staring at 12-inch green phosphor CRT monitors, typing arcane DOS commands on mechanical keyboards, thinking “640K ought to be enough for anybody,” and reading magazines constructed of glossy paper in which sci-fi authors predict a worldwide computer network that will deliver the “accumulated knowledge of the world to your fingertips” within the next 50 years which, like ubiquitous flying cars, never seems to arrive.
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.Thanks again, Mr. Jobs!
Yes: Thanks again, Mr. Jobs!
I think the cloud is great but I would prefer it on my own terms and not have all my info gathered in cyberspace with everyone else so that it could be cracked be wikileaks.
Didn’t some group just crack iTunes?
Cracked certain in-app purchases abilities in certain apps. Not iTunes.
Actually, Apple’s iteration of the Cloud is the best in my opinion. Your data is not so much stored in the cloud, but is rather sent to the cloud and pushed to your devices. Therefore, all of your “cloud” data is resident on your devices and not dependent on Internet connectivity for random access of it. Sure, it won’t sync again until you get cellular or wifi data access again, but as soon as you do, your changes or new content will be pushed to your other devices.
Even with iDisk, as with other cloud systems, if you don’t have Internet, you don’t have your files. This is unacceptable. And, while I’m sure iCloud does have some stuff stored “in the cloud”, but by moving your data to your devices as the primary solution, it would seem more secure than some server that could conceivably be hacked and the data of millions of customers compromised.
Setup your own server then.
Likely you don’t have the ability of setting it up more secure than Apple can.
Yes, yes! Thank you so very much Mr S. P. Jobs!
Personally, I’m rather shocked that I don’t have an encrypted 2Tb SSD, the size of a credit card, in my wallet or slid into my iPhone by now. For me, technology is far too slow, as if they are spoon-feeding the public to squeeze out every nickel from an old idea before moving onto the next. It’s annoying to see obvious evolution being ignored in the name of a CEO’s paycheck.
Well, you could take all the CEOs paycheck and it still wouldn’t be enough money to give you 2tb ssd drives at a price that’s not prohibitive in your iPhone.
But by all means, you should start a company and make these future devices for us all. Get to work, time is of the essence!
“Obvious evolution” doesn’t always fit into the marketplace. Can a 2TB SSD the size of a credit card be made, and can a slot be put into your iPhone to dock it? Sure, but at what cost? That 2TB SSD may cost $2,000 to product. Nice, but no one’s going to buy it.
And what’s the point of docking it with your iPhone? To add thickness to the iPhone? To go backwards technologically to have to plug items together to sync them rather than syncing wirelessly? Why not just ask for your 2TB SSD that just needs to touch your iPhone or be within 3 feet to sync? Oh yeah, then you need a power source, batteries, wireless chips, etc.
If you can develop that and sell it at a reasonable price, I’m sure you’d make a lot of money. I’m also sure that many people are working on such an item, and that it isn’t on the market yet because it isn’t practical.
And I seriously doubt that some CEO is getting a paycheck instead of releasing your 2TB drive. That CEO’s paycheck would be 10X if such a drive were released and reasonably priced.
iCloud starts at 5GB. You can also have other various online storage solutions available to any computer or mobile device.
Makes a 2TB SSD obsolete to me.
Might as well say the 16, 32, and 64 GB storage in your iPhone is obsolete because an extra $100/year gets you 50 GB.
Hint: they’re not obsolete. Not at today’s carrier speed and data caps, and data/wifi availability that’s spotty in many places.
“Personally, I’m rather shocked that I don’t have…” And I am amazed at what we already have. Maybe that is because aryugaetu lives in a fantasy world powered by ignorance, and I live in the world where the fundamental research is done, for real. There are many steps between basic concept understanding and finished engineering. The fundamental knowledge has to be there before one can even begin to think about engineering solutions. There still is a lot to be found out.
aryugaetu may be too far removed from understanding the physical world to get any of this, but many MDN readers have both education and sense, so this is for them.
I still have to support a user who has files on 5.25 floppies.
You should slap him with them every time you stop by for support.
Have a heart… Or you must have too much time on your hands
Drag that person into the 21st century and transfer his data to at least a cd or DVD, but better yet to a nice compact and portable thumb drive. Then junk the 5.25 drive so he will never use it again.
Thought it was just in APP purchases. Don’t think he cracked how to steal any credit card info or other personal info….just what is sold in APP.
And even then he has to use an APPLE ID! Cracked it??? Did you say??
That’s far from being able to say “cracked iTunes “. Don’t believe every blog…they just want you to react in the manner you obviously are.
Don’t forget to add USB to this list. Apple will be trying to get rid of this hardware standard as well, to be replaced by Thunderbolt.
Not yet. The latest Mac is USB 3/2 compatible.
Thunderbolt for many things is overkill.
The original idea with Firewire/USB was that FW handled the stuff that *needed* high-speed, and USB would cover low-speed. But Apple screwed up adoption of FW when they demanded royalties of $1 *per port*, kicking development of USB2 as a crappy substitute (but all consumers saw was “480 > 400 Mbps, so USB2 must be faster”).
I thought Apple would try replacing HDMI with TB, by releasing the rumoured TV with only TB ports, and no HDMI ports, but then they put an HDMI port on the MBP Retina.
By including USB3 in the latest MB hardware, Apple probably sees USB3 co-existing with Thunderbolt (at least on Macs) for some time…. Of course it could just be that the latest Intel chipset has USB3 built-in anyway.
Nope. Thunderbolt isn’t for keyboards or camera offloading.
-jcr
Removing an optical drive from the Mini was a bad idea, in my opinion. They make great little workstations. I was going to convert our lab to all minis, but don’t like the idea of having to buy external drives too.
You probably don’t need to buy the (available) external drive for every Mini. Most people would only occasionally need to hook up one.
Apple just has the balls to pull the plug on things a few years before everyone else.
When the imac shipped without a floppy it was already obvious the medium was dying and on its way out.
It’s “annoying” and “paternalistic” to be grabbed by the ear and dragged, kicking and screaming, into the future. Adults – parents – leaders – visionaries —that’s what they do. Complaining when their security blanket is snatched away — that’s what children, followers, and vested interests do.
We learned this game in Kindergarten.
“Follow the Leader”
Apple leads, others simply follow..
As long as we don’t lose the physical keyboard, mouse, and stylus, I’m happy.
Sent from my iPad
Nicely done.
I still want a cd/DVD drive damn it. I I know I could buy a external but I want one built in. Not upgrading my mini cuz of it. And cuz I don’t have the money. Mainly the money part but whatever. Still wouldn’t get it.
I, on the other hand, and perfectly happy with the external USB DVD drive. I use it both with my Mac mini, and MacBook Air. Hah- I’m sure that’s something those EPEAT statisticians don’t take into account: sharing one external optical drive with multiple devices.
A user based look at upgrades might include a more balanced look.
I only upgrade my MBPro once every 2-3 years. Once I upgrade why should I retain “old” technology other than to have archive access?
It doesn’t look “annoying” in this scenario.
Not sure if the green-screen CRT reference is correct to be honest. Jay Miner and co. were working on the Amiga back in 1982, a machine which was all about graphics. AmigaOS when it launched obviously had some Mac influenced bits, but even without Apple we would still have had multi-colour machines and GUIs by 1985.
What a stupid article! “… MIGHT be defended as good…”! Apple hasn’t ‘killed’ anything, they simply embraced new technologies in favour of old, IMHO because Apple chose ‘better’ over the Wintel attitude of dismissive arrogance of, “screw the consumer out of choices and then flog crappy products that make us money.” The delicious irony is that the latter ultimately did neither. The author is an idiot.
Apple Inc. has not deliberately set out to kill off any technology but rather it invents and invests in the next paradigm shift in technology that brings us all kicking and screaming into the future. So be it! This phenomena is often referred to as, PROGRESS!
MDNs take makes me laugh a bit. I didn’t know apple created color monitors, or even flat panel LCDs! That’s complete news to me!
Don’t get me wrong, apple has done more for personal computing than any other company in meshing technologies into the best computing experience for users. They’re driving the adoption of new technologies. However, it’s been built on the research and technologies that been developed by non-apple companies. So to say we’d still be looking at a DOS prompt or terminal line in UNIX without apple is ridiculous.
I’m saying this as a pure apple enthusiast, just keeping it real
Mobile devices are really in high demand these days because people like to browse the internet by phone.-
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