Apple trading SD cards for DVDs in MacBooks?

[Virtuo]

Quite an interesting proposal suggesting that Apple may be doing away with DVDs in favor of SD cards -- and it makes perfect sense.
http://bit.ly/RWjeG

[rdowns]

I don't see this happening for quite some time, if at all. People have way too many DVDs and CDs that they need and want to use. What about software? While a lot of s/w can be downloaded, people still go to stores and buy the media. I don't see them including a CD/DVD and a SD, which they would have to do due to legacy system users. Not to mention all the existing s/w on disc.

The only way I can see Apple doing this is to include an external optical with each system but we all know Apple would never do that.

[cube]

That would totally suck, like the MacBook Air.

[chstr]

makes perfect sense to me. let the loud, archaic superdrive go the way of tape media. 8-track anyone????

[Virtuo]

Just finished saying on Twitter, "...this is something they should have added to the macbook air from the start." I hardly ever use the optical drive on my laptop. SD cards hold much more information than CD/DVDs, and with the advent of iTunes, Online Movies/Rentals, and HD, the demand for optical media IS dwindling. This 'switch', I believe, is highly plausible.

[OutThere]

I burn plenty of CDs and DVDs on my MBP. In a hard case they're considerably safer than a SD card or hard drive. Any time I'm working on something important I throw a copy of it on a CD at important junctures. I also have my entire iTunes library backed up on DVD. Too many iPods, laptop hard drives and external drives have failed for me to trust them all that much.

[djellison]

and it makes perfect sense.
http://bit.ly/RWjeG

It makes no sense whatsoever. None.

[talkingfuture]

It seems like one of those ideas where the argument in the original article makes so much sense an yet you still can't see it happening. I think Apple will be the first to banish the optical drive from their line up, but not for a while yet.

[clevin]

so what?

is an ancient technology that exist in almost all pc laptops suddenly becomes a new invention of apple?

replace DVD? not in another 5 years. While pc laptops getting blu-ray drive, and play HD movies, macs do away disks? insane or crazy, your pick.

[mysterytramp]

The columnist is right on the money. The comparison to Apple jettisoning floppies with the iMac is apt. And the Mac's jettisoning 5.25-inch floppies is apt, too. Every Kaypro, PC and Apple ][ user made the same arguments as you folks did on this thread.

I've owned several Macs since 1985. The only hardware problems I've had are the power supplies on the toaster Macs (everybody did), a couple of bad keyboards (no big deal), and the slot driven CD/DVD drives go flaky. Remove some moving parts, and eliminate potential repair issue, and drive down costs.

Sorry guys, it makes lots of sense.

mt

[NT1440]

so what?

is an ancient technology that exist in almost all pc laptops suddenly becomes a new invention of apple?
.

Where in the hell has anyone said that?

[yg17]

This is a horrible idea, the cost per gigabyte for a DVD is a hell of a lot lower than it is for an SD card.

[NT1440]

This is a horrible idea, the cost per gigabyte for a DVD is a hell of a lot lower than it is for an SD card.

Currently yes, give it 5 years and i bet people will be asking who uses DVD's anymore.

[sn00pie]

Optical drives are definitely on their way as far as notebooks go. Look at the netbooks, sure their cheap, buts its their portability that is driving one of the most successful segments in the notebook market.

I've only used my drive in my notebook a handful of times. I could easily manage with a external if necessary.

I can buy a 16GB SD card for $40 bucks. Sure you can buy a 50-pack of DVD-R for $30 but I'd much rather have the SD card, much more portable and its reusable.

[cube]

Currently yes, give it 5 years and i bet people will be asking who uses DVD's anymore.

There are no legal uncompressed music downloads.

[instaxgirl]

I'm one of the people on here that's holding onto their optical drive. I have too much stuff on disc.

I burn plenty of CDs and DVDs on my MBP. In a hard case they're considerably safer than a SD card or hard drive. Any time I'm working on something important I throw a copy of it on a CD at important junctures. I also have my entire iTunes library backed up on DVD. Too many iPods, laptop hard drives and external drives have failed for me to trust them all that much.

I use them for backup too. I've had 2 external HDs fail on me in only a year (both bought within those 12 months too) and my internal HD failed once too. In the 4 years I've had this laptop I've had one burned CD that later couldn't be read.

And when the most recent hard drive crashed, I pulled most of what was lost back off CDs.

There are no legal uncompressed music downloads.

This too.

[jzuena]

Quite an interesting proposal suggesting that Apple may be doing away with DVDs in favor of SD cards -- and it makes perfect sense.
http://bit.ly/RWjeG

We all know the real reason Apple added the SD slot was to not draw attention to the fact that they removed the ExpressCard slot by leaving that space empty. :(

[SeanAppleDude]

I burn plenty of CDs and DVDs on my MBP. In a hard case they're considerably safer than a SD card or hard drive. Any time I'm working on something important I throw a copy of it on a CD at important junctures. I also have my entire iTunes library backed up on DVD. Too many iPods, laptop hard drives and external drives have failed for me to trust them all that much.

lol if you want to back stuff up to something you should use an SD if you don't trust a HDD

[NT1440]

There are no legal uncompressed music downloads.

Meaning?

I'm saying optical media is dying and soon to be replaced with the likes of things like SD cards. What does that have to do with downloads?

[FX120]

Optical media has several big things going for it.

Very, very, very cheap to produce. Some estimates put the cost-per stamp in a large run CD/DVD production at under $0.10 per disk. Flash memory is still pretty expensive to produce, especially at the capacities that would be needed for HD movies of comparable quality to that of the equal optial media solution.

Easier to manufacture, with very little dependence on outside manufacturers. With flash memory, you are tied to a supply chain which historically hasn't been the most reliable. With optical media there is very little that can't be brought in as raw materials, and made into the end product on site.

Very high data density. DVD's are still pretty high capacity compared, and still very competitive with flash memory. Other forms of optical media (BluRay), increase this even further.

All and all, while flash has advantages, I just can't quite imagine this happening in the next few years, if at all. If it did, it probably wouldn't be with what we traditionally think of as SD media, it would likely be write once media that couldn't be re-written, and tons of DRM and copy protection built in.

[dotdotdot]

Apple wouldn't replace the optical drive with the SD card slot. They function together just fine.

Optical media is still important today, even if it's not to the degree that it was a few years ago. Software still comes on DVDs, DVD movies, CD audio, and newer optical formats like Blu-Ray are still thriving. If anything, Apple would implement a Blu-Ray drive to finally get those people who are buying PCs because Macs can not play the latest HD movie standard to switch.

Also, most people need optical drives for their every day lives, from burning CDs to listen to in the car to burning DVDs filled with data for businesses.

[puffnstuff]

I have been thinking for a while that they are going to nix the drive and I think it's going to happen sooner then later

While SD cards are still expensive USB drives today are super cheap. I haven't burned a CD in years because of the USB.

Music, movies, and software can all be easily downloaded. No need for the disc.

The masses aren't using the drive any more as they were years ago.

[Virtuo]

It makes no sense whatsoever. None.
You disagree with me, great! Thanks for your immense contribution to this thread. [/sarcasm]

ADDITION: Also, this particular strategy seems very similar to that of MS with the xbox; Downloadable content (demos, xbox titles, xobx 360 titles, movies, trailers, etc...) onto HDD's and larger *flash mem.* rather than optical media. Another large company that never invested much into Blu-ray or even HD-DVD in favor of online distro..

[cube]

I'm saying optical media is dying and soon to be replaced with the likes of things like SD cards. What does that have to do with downloads?

It's not dead -> Blu Ray

[7on]

lol if you want to back stuff up to something you should use an SD if you don't trust a HDD

True. CDRs usually have a shelf life of around 10 years if that. I've seen many CDRs fail after less than 4 too.

Not to mention 1GB SD Cards are less than $2.50 at a lot of places. I'm considering getting a handful of those incase I need to give anyone some files where I'd normally burn a CD.

And I'm considering moving my optical disk backups to SD Card. I have a bunch of CD-Rs that would all fit on one 4GB Card.

[OutThere]

lol if you want to back stuff up to something you should use an SD if you don't trust a HDD

A DVD is like a printed copy of a text file. You can file it away and that's it. Why use a portable, rewritable format that could potentially lose your data when you don't need the extra features?

Either way, I'd rather use a USB flash drive that I can plug into any other computer than an SD card that I can only plug into some computers.

[WickedRabbit]

Disk media isn't going away for quite some time and Apple of all companies wouldn't be the first to make the move. Given that they all ready take heat for adopting storage/media formats last (SD cards, blu-ray, etc.) I'm sure they don't want to be the first to just axe it out altogether.

Plus, more importantly, in order for any company to make the move to axe out optical disks there would all ready need to be a very large portion of the market using another format. In other words, if everything was going to go to SD Cards, companies would have all ready had to start shipping movies, music, software, etc. on SD cards and the market would have had to have been buying those for a few years. That way, by the time a company axes out optical altogether it's not as big of a deal since the majority of consumers would all ready have a majority of their library on SD.

You also run into security issues. I'm not quite sure how high SD card security is and I'm sure movie studios don't want you to be able to easily copy their movies or software. Finally, I suppose, not everyone has an SD card reader. Granted, I'd say by now a majority of older machines (other than Apple's) all have SD card readers, but there's still a huge population I'm sure that doesn't have them and probably an entire generation (elderly) of people who wouldn't even understand it. Everyone has a DVD drive and everyone knows how to use it.

I wouldn't be against the idea. In fact, I like the idea of buying SD cards for everything instead of disks. Easier to carry things around and it'd be cool to walk up to a vending machine and buy a movie and the movie is just an SD card that you can put into your PS3 for 1080P viewing or your phone. Obviously, wishful thinking.

But, don't expect this happening for another 10+ years, if ever. There are simply too many DVD's for everything in the world to make this happen any time soon. Don't expect a change in optical until companies start shipping products/software on something other than optical. You have to get the software out there before you can make change to the hardware.

Lastly, no one going to just stop making DVD software because Apple (an 11% market share worldwide) stops supporting it and thinking otherwise is just delusional.

[kitenski]

the only time I've used DVDs is to put home made video onto it for others to watch, and when I first installed Mac OS, until they start releasing OS images on SD card, it ain't going away!

[Dagless]

Not in this decade, chuck.

[MorphingDragon]

Maybe Apple is pushing the death of another format... The way of the Floppy Disk anyone?

[DELLsFan]

It's not dead -> Blu Ray

It may as well be. Speaking for myself, there is no compelling reason for me to invest in a player or any Blu Ray media. I have seen and am aware of the improvements, of the difference in quality, but DVD quality is good enough for me. I don't think I'm alone in the opinion. Are consumers fighting and tripping over each other to pay extra for the higher definition disks ever since the format war was "won"? I don't think so. :cool: