When will be a superdriveless macbook?

[knucles]

So the other day i've seen a unibody macbook disassembly and i was amazed, the computer itself it's 1/4 of the entire laptop (without the monitor of course), in fact the piece that i use the least (superdrive) was almost half of the space long.

This could be mean more battery - can you imagine a 14 hour long battery? or simple a thinner lighter cheaper notebook.

I'm an architect so i was stunned by the waste of some much (needed) space.
So the question is simple- Do you that it's going to happen any time soon?

Assuming that is inevitable...

[ss957916]

It already exists - it's called a MacBook Air.

[Paul B]

or simple a thinner lighter cheaper notebook.


It already exists - it's called a MacBook Air.

Apple is always one step ahead.

[macuserx86]

Apple is always one step ahead.

uh, the MacBook Air isn't cheap at all. It's the antithesis of cheap.

[miles01110]

uh, the MacBook Air isn't cheap at all. It's the antithesis of cheap.

So? That's not the question here.

[knucles]

really? there's a macbook air? wow...

can you imagine a 14 hour long battery? or simple a thinner lighter cheaper notebook.

It already exists - it's called a MacBook Air.

yeah, i know. The macbook air has a 14 hour long battery and it's cheaper. like 0,6x cheaper.....

forget the lighteness and thiness and cheapness. one day or another macbook is going to lose the superdrive, and maybe keep the same design with more juice.

i was trying to talk about that.....what is apple doing with so much more space?

[copykris]

*you* don't use the superdrive so apple needs to make macbooks without one?

right

[Mactagonist]

The day that optical discs die cant come soon enough. Many people are already at the point where it is superfluous technology, unfortunately the mass market is not there yet. If you want to make more productive use of that space you can remove the ODD and install a second hard drive in its place.

[knucles]

copykris

*you* don't use the superdrive so apple needs to make macbooks without one?

right

i am just saying that it doesn't worth 40% of the space....

and if want to do a poll asking people if they would prefer superdrive or 6 more hours of battery in the next macbook revision i am pretty sure about the results.....

Do you conceive a macbook with blu-ray following the path of optical drives? i don't....

with 64gb pen drives now available optical drives(specially in this size) got to have their day counted at least in the laptop business where everyday you see new 10+ battery laptops

[alphaod]

Problem is that the market for people who need a MacBook-size computer and a 14 hour battery if quite small because in most places you can plug in these days; if you need a battery, 4-5 hours is enough for most people.

Finally if you really need an external battery consider a refurbished MacBook Air and an external battery.

[cube]

Yes, that's the MBA, also known as Apple's netbook.

[alphaod]

Yes, that's the MBA, also known as Apple's netbook.

No it's not a netbook. A netbook is cheap and low powered; the MacBook Air is neither. It's an ultraportable in line with existing computer like a Thinkpad X200.

[cube]

A netbook is a crippled laptop. That's what the MBA is.

[NewMacbookPlz]

A netbook is a crippled laptop. That's what the MBA is.

IMO, the fact that it has a Core2Duo instead of an Atom chip means it's not "crippled" like a netbook.

[cube]

IMO, the fact that it has a Core2Duo instead of an Atom chip means it's not "crippled" like a netbook.

It doesn't have an optical drive, it doesn't have FireWire, it doesn't have gigabit ethernet, it has a bad USB port. It is crippled.

[dbwie]

It doesn't have an optical drive, it doesn't have FireWire, it doesn't have gigabit ethernet, it has a bad USB port. It is crippled.

It has a displayport connector that can drive an Apple Cinema Display, it can run a full, not watered down, version of OS X Snow Leopard, the USB port is a USB 2.0 port, which can be plugged into a USB hub (how is it bad?), ethernet and optical drive can be had via attached dongles. It also has a built-in iSight for videoconferencing. It only lacks firewire. Big whoop. Not crippled, IMO.

[js81]

It already exists - it's called a MacBook Air.

Dang, I'm way too slow today...

And I was even gonna say that I already had one - its called the old white Macbook with the COMBO drive. (Hey you did say "superdriveless" right?)

[andalusia]

cube, less people use optical drives than one might think. The Unibody Macbook didn't have Firewire, yet nobody ever considered it a low-powered laptop. It has a powerful wireless card, which is much more popular than an ethernet port. And I just don't understand how the USB can be a 'bad' USB port. It's still USB 2.0, it works just as well as all the other Macs being sold with USB 2.0. You don't like the Macbook Air, we get that - seriously - but for others it is extremely useful for it's portability, even if it is a bit slower yet more expensive than the other Macbooks.

[Eddyisgreat]

When hard drives/flash drives are cheap enough to replace an OS X install disk (like buying a "10.7 install kit" which comes with a bootable flash drive)

Good luck with ripping/backing that up (like I do with all my disks). It'll have encryption up the yams and sell for a premium.

Common folk (non haxor) still need another computer to reinstall OS X on an MBA, and most aren't savvy enough to make a disk image on an external drive.

[iMacmatician]

When hard drives/flash drives are cheap enough to replace an OS X install disk (like buying a "10.7 install kit" which comes with a bootable flash drive)

Good luck with ripping/backing that up (like I do with all my disks). It'll have encryption up the yams and sell for a premium.

Common folk (non haxor) still need another computer to reinstall OS X on an MBA, and most aren't savvy enough to make a disk image on an external drive.I'll use an external SuperDrive for that.

[xizar]

Is it so uncommon for people to want to watch DVDs on their laptop?

The main shortcoming of my iPhone as a supplement to using the computers at the library is that I can't watch movies on it on the spur of the moment.

The main reason why I "need" a laptop is so I can rent or borrow movies and have somewhere to watch them.

Yes, I'm aware of TVs, but those are distinctly less easily stuffed into my backpack or car.

[Eric S.]

The day that optical discs die cant come soon enough. Many people are already at the point where it is superfluous technology, unfortunately the mass market is not there yet.

So, many people are at that point but more are not?

If you want to make more productive use of that space you can remove the ODD and install a second hard drive in its place.

I don't see that as more productive. My HD is not nearly full; I have no use for a second drive (and I've used laptops for many years and have never felt the need for RAID in one). Even if I only use my optical drive once in a while that's still more often than I would use a second HD.

[iMacmatician]

*you* don't use the superdrive so apple needs to make macbooks without one?

rightI hope you're not implying there shouldn't be an option of a MacBook (Pro) without an optical drive. I'm hoping for something like the Mac mini Server, a MacBook Pro with a second hard drive, a bigger battery, and/or faster components in the place of the optical drive.

i am just saying that it doesn't worth 40% of the space....Let me put it this way… the optical drive is the only part with any significant size in my MacBook Pro that I use rarely.

And I'll put it another way… certain parts of my MBP are "maxed out" frequently (or will be sometime soon) and could have been "higher performing" without the optical drive.

Is it so uncommon for people to want to watch DVDs on their laptop?Probably not but at least for me I would be fine with taking an external optical drive for these situations. I would have to take the disc with me anyway.

[knucles]

Let me put it this way… the optical drive is the only part with any significant size in my MacBook Pro that I use rarely.

And I'll put it another way… certain parts of my MBP are "maxed out" frequently (or will be sometime soon) and could have been "higher performing" without the optical drive.


i would buy that.

So from those of you who believe in the optical drive death, any predictions about the timing?

ps. how can i wide this talk to the macbook pro forum without duplicating the thread?

[andalusia]

ps. how can i wide this talk to the macbook pro forum without duplicating the treath?

You cannot.

[Eric S.]

I hope you're not implying there shouldn't be an option of a MacBook (Pro) without an optical drive.

But Apple (read: Steve Jobs) is not big on peripheral device options. My guess is that when Apple decides the day of the integrated optical is over, it will be as gone as the floppy was.

[iLog.Genius]

I think it'll be here for awhile. Reality is, majority of people (average joe) only know CD/DVD's and don't really know about downloading drivers from websites so not to include an optical drive would be taking away from all those users.

[copykris]

i buy cd's.

[knucles]

Even if the next osx is sold in a pen drive? i've heard something about it and really makes sense, must be so hard for them to design a really smal computer eith so much possibly free space so near...

they actually sit down and design a mac around a optical drive, i bet those designers hate the optical drive as much as i do.

[iMacmatician]

Hopefully soon.

[Ploki]

Hopefully soon.

+1

im thinking of getting one of them optibay mods. seriously, i want a RAID in my machine. :)

[lionheartednyhc]

wednesday? :D

one can dream...

[miles01110]

When they stop offering OS X on optical media.

[opinioncircle]

I think it'll be here for awhile. Reality is, majority of people (average joe) only know CD/DVD's and don't really know about downloading drivers from websites so not to include an optical drive would be taking away from all those users.

I hardly doubt that an Apple buying a uMBP is an average joe...

I would love to see the option of having the MBP without the drive, but in the same sense, it allows users like myself to burn DVDs for their DVD drives for parents or friends with outdated technology...

[Gabriel GR]

I'd love it if apple offered the mbp with an external bus powered superdrive like the air. I too think that it's too much wasted internal space that could be used for cooling and extra battery.

[knucles]

Please move to macbook pro forum...

[Stetrain]

When they stop offering OS X on optical media.

Just like how they waited before releasing the Macbook Air?

[Fox11]

To be honest with you, I don't think Apple is going to drop a disc drive any time soon- people, in general, still use it way too much. Without one, you can't watch movies, install/troubleshoot an OS, share files with people who use CDs and DVDs, import CDs, etc. etc.

Obviously discs aren't exactly the "media of the future", since they've been around awhile, and there's such a push in all media industries to switch to a download-based system of distribution, but companies are still working to create higher and higher capacity discs due to their portability and low cost to manufacture- you could carry a couple hundred gigs around on a handful of the high-capacity discs they're working on right now.

I can see, maybe 5-10 years in the future, POSSIBLY running everything off of small flash drives instead, as these get higher in capacity and cheaper in price, but I don't know... it's more likely we'll just see a blu-ray player or other high-capacity disc format instead of a superdrive :P

[Fox11]

Oh, and may I also relate that there are some of us (like me) who rarely use our Macbook/MBPs on battery, and when we do, don't need more than 3-6 hours of battery life? And who use the superdrive on a regular basis to watch DVDs and burn projects to distribute to others? Who then need a disc drive to read them? If you don't like the space it's taking up, you can remove the drive- it'll make things lighter, and cooler, I guess. And some have installed a solid state drive in its' place, finding more storage and a faster drive speed to be more important to them than an internal disc drive.

[mosx]

The day that optical discs die cant come soon enough. Many people are already at the point where it is superfluous technology, unfortunately the mass market is not there yet. If you want to make more productive use of that space you can remove the ODD and install a second hard drive in its place.

For many of us who care about quality, the death of optical discs is very far off. Why? Video.

Standard definition video downloads still don't even come close to DVD, and they can't be upscaled to higher resolutions the same way DVD can.

High definition video downloads can't even really be called "high definition" when compared to blu-ray disc. iTunes downloads don't even contain half the amount of pixels compared to what blu-ray offers, and they're generally encoded at 4.5Mbps (compared to blu-ray's ability to handle video bitrates up to 45Mbps). Plus you get sub-DVD quality audio out of "HD" movie downloads, if it even has 5.1 sound, compared to blu-ray's sometimes lossless and sometimes uncompressed audio. Even when blu-ray has only a lossy audio track, its still encoded at twice the bitrate of iTunes download, if it's Dolby Digital, or uses the same 1.5Mbps DTS track that was used in theaters.

Theres also the issue of bandwidth. Even if you have Charter or Verizon's fastest connections (60Mbps Charter, 50Mbps Verizon), it would still take about the length of the movie to download it, if it was blu-ray quality. When you consider the fact that the average US broadband connection is only 3.9Mbps, its going to take longer than the movie is to download just an iTunes "HD" film.

And don't bring up "better video codecs" or any of that. Blu-ray already uses H.264 (same as iTunes) and VC-1. It's just encoded at a substantially higher bitrate. I mean, let's be honest here, iTunes "HD" downloads don't even compete with properly upscaled DVDs because of the low bit-rate and poor encoder used. Even x264 (open source H.264 encoder) looks better at the same bit-rates compared to iTunes HD films. And don't forget the audio quality. 384Kbps AC-3 doesn't cut it any more when DVDs use 448Kbps AC3 and 768Kbps and 1.5Mbps DTS, while blu-ray discs tend to have lossless Dolby True HD or DTS Master HD or just uncompressed PCM.

[Jammerx2]

I completely agree with removing the drive.

I think everything could be run off of a usb drive, considering out of the casing they're like a 10th of the size of a disc and can hold 10 times more.

[mosx]

I completely agree with removing the drive.

I think everything could be run off of a usb drive, considering out of the casing they're like a 10th of the size of a disc and can hold 10 times more.

Not really. A 4GB flash drive is still around $15 for a good reliable one. A good reliable DVD-R is only about 20 cents. You can get about 438GB of storage in the form of DVD-Rs for around $20. Good discs too.

DVD-Rs are still the most cost effective form of storage out there.

And, again, optical discs offer much higher quality video than any other medium right now.

[knucles]

At least i am almost sure that apple is going to be the first to do it .

Just like in the macbook air, that or macbook air will replace the macbook line.......

[iMacmatician]

To be honest with you, I don't think Apple is going to drop a disc drive any time soon- people, in general, still use it way too much. Without one, you can't watch movies, install/troubleshoot an OS, share files with people who use CDs and DVDs, import CDs, etc. etc. I can do all that with an external.

[Eric S.]

I can do all that with an external.

Of course, but the utility of a laptop is that everything's integrated. The disk could be external too, and the monitor, and the pointing device, and the power supply. But who wants to lug external equipment around with them? I want everything in one small package, including an optical drive.

[macgeek18]

it's called a Macbook Air,and the hardware in the Air is horrible,I can't believe they sell.I would never buy a Mac with any less of a processor than a Macbook as your starting to get what Window's people get,cheasy processors.I mean 2K for a 1.83Ghz C2D?????Come on a Macbook even has a 2.26Ghz and the Macbook's processor doesn't take up anymore space than the air.Unless the air doesn't have a fan,then that explains it.I wonder when the Air will be upgraded.

[iMacmatician]

Of course, but the utility of a laptop is that everything's integrated. The disk could be external too, and the monitor, and the pointing device, and the power supply. But who wants to lug external equipment around with them? I want everything in one small package, including an optical drive.And I want a second hard drive and a bigger battery without having to carry around an external hard drive and be tethered to a power supply more often. ;)

[Eric S.]

And I want a second hard drive and a bigger battery without having to carry around an external hard drive and be tethered to a power supply more often. ;)

Too bad this would violate the Steve Jobs Doctrine: Don't Confuse Your Customers With Too Many Choices.
:rolleyes:

[iMacmatician]

Too bad this would violate the Steve Jobs Doctrine: Don't Confuse Your Customers With Too Many Choices.
:rolleyes:Exactly. So there won't be a choice then—just no optical drive.

Of course they could go the route of the Mac mini Server but without Mac OS X Server…that doesn't seem to be too many choices, does it?

[Eric S.]

Exactly. So there won't be a choice then—just no optical drive.

Right; I already said the same back here:

But Apple (read: Steve Jobs) is not big on peripheral device options. My guess is that when Apple decides the day of the integrated optical is over, it will be as gone as the floppy was.

Sometimes being a Mac fan is frustrating. :(

[BeachChair]

The death of the optical drives can't come soon enough, it's delayed because too many people got their panties in a bunch when apple tried with the macbook air two years ago.

[Eric S.]

The death of the optical drives can't come soon enough, it's delayed because too many people got their panties in a bunch when apple tried with the macbook air two years ago.

Well if "too many people" complained, then it sounds like the death of the optical drive would be too soon.

[knucles]

Feb 1, 2010, 05:04 PM #6
twl130
macrumors member

Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Farther North than I wish to be.
my dream 13" uMBP...
I'd like to see a 13" uMBP with these specs as the step-up model:

Intel Core i5
ATI Mobility M5800 series discrete graphics
Display Port WITH audio support
higher resolution screen... say, 1440x900
matte screen option!

And though I know this is a pipe-dream...

NO OPTICAL DRIVE WHATSOEVER... perhaps another HDD option or a double battery pack?!
__________________

saw this at the macbook forum...

[mstrze]

Let us not forget that the iMac was originally derrided for not coming with a floppy drive. Folks cried about about needing it to reload the OS and software and being able to store and transfer files between computers.

There is little stopping Apple or any software company from issuing software on memory sticks.

I think that optical drives are going to be the next thing to go... and very soon, you'll have a computer with essentially no moving parts since SDDs should replace HDDs. :cool:

[knucles]

, you'll have a computer with essentially no moving parts since SDDs should replace HDDs. :cool:

music to my ears.....

an 250sdd and a 14 hour long battery.......sweet..

any predictions? 2012?

[knucles]

i mean....come on...

just loose the damm thing off...

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/3927/32558622316aecdce955.jpg (http://img168.imageshack.us/i/32558622316aecdce955.jpg/)

[knucles]

ok, hp envy did it, sony did it aswell

lets's go apple - i3 plus ditch the optical

i know it's crazy but one guy in the other forum had a great idea- put the power adaptor in. i know heat issues but can you imagine. powercord going direct to magsafe? that would be cool....