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Optical drives becoming obsolete?
GoGeTa006:
I was watching the keynote WWDC 2012 (Apple event), now DONT START HATING ON APPLE.
But the new MacBook Pro, with new retina display. . .TBH it looks pretty amazing, but what caught my attention was what he said:
--- Quote from: not a real quote but something like this: ---If we want to truly be innovative, we have to discard the past and look at the future
--- End quote ---
now, if you remember Apple dropped support for the floppy 3 1/2 disk drives and Zip drives like 5 years earlier than Microsoft, cause apple knew it was a decaying technology. . .
Now they dropped the optical drives out of their top-notch laptop. . .
but I was thinking, blu-rays are relatively new so they would be the "new technology". . .but Apple is heading in a new direction where optical drives arent "crucial" anymore. . .
what do you think?
DONT HATE ON APPLE
LOVE & TOLERANCE!
vuzedome:
Optical discs will still be here for a very long time, as long as the music industry is still selling CDs, it's still in.
When they go, only then will DVDs go as well.
BD on the other hand, is niche.
But I don't see how CDs will disappear any time soon, it's like playing records, or reading physical books, people still enjoy doing it at home where they have the time and space to do all the hassle.
Hey, I bet plenty of you still play tabletop board games instead of over the internet on your PC against friends.
(click to show/hide)Even I still buy CDs and also still have an old Sony CD player hooked up to my system, that plus a vintage record player and with all this near a bookshelf with quite the collection of "OLD SHIT THAT EVEN HIPSTERS DON'T READ".
Saras:
Obsolete? No. Not usefull enough to justify the space in a notebook? Yes.
Manufacturers have a dilema to face, for 14-15 inch laptops. You either get one HDD/SSD and an ODD or two HDD's-HDD/SSD.
The latter option is gradually becoming quite a bit more favourable due to the existence of cheap USB3.0 16gb+ thumb drives. As optical discs can't really compete as a personal storage solution in either space, speed or convenience. The only thing it has for itself is cheap distribution of x and sadly, that's not enough.
Think about it, what would you yourself prefer today? An extra 120gig SSD, a 1TB HDD or an ODD? I know what I wouldn't pick. As the only time a disc was in this laptop was when I installed windows.
FlyinPenguin:
I agree with Vuzedome. Discs will be around for a long time. There are still people who prefer to have a physical copy (like me). Not to mention all the people who still only have cd players in their cars or older cd players in their home and don't have a way to use digital content without spending money and/or learning a new technology. The music, gaming, movie, software, etc industries would be turning their backs on far too large of a group of consumers who still use discs. They aren't gonna pass up on all that money anytime soon.
I really don't see why this is big news that Apple has dropped the optical drive on one of their laptops. It's not like they have dropped support from the OS. You can still plug in an external drive. Not to mention that laptops have been sold for years without optical drives. My last four laptops haven't had optical drives. I'm an ultrabook guy though so I view optical drives as unneeded extra weight and specifically avoid them.
Personally still buy discs but then I convert most of software/game discs into ISO format and rip all my movies/music to my server.
I just hate the notion of "Apple just did something so it is going to become the standard of the future".
rostheferret:
When was the last time you saw a notebook with a disc drive? :/ There's an increasingly smaller need for disc drives on small portable computers; computers designed for light use rather than anything more extensive, and increasingly as a secondary computer to a main. It has nothing to do with whether disc drives are becoming obsolete and everything to do with 'do you need one in a laptop.' Who carries around dozens of DVDs anymore? Yet who doesn't own a DVD player? It also has to do with apple's marketing strategy; iTunes is already out, how long before a film version is created? Download your films for a price straight to your HDD! Sell a product without a disc drive and the morons - err... people - who buy it will find downloading to their HDD is far more convenient. Double win for apple.
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