The future still requires duping a [movie] digital master onto physical drives and postal mailing or sneaker-netting them to clients, networks, and sat uplink providers because it is an easy way to guarantee more security over your product submission.
wmikulic said:When the new iMac won't boot off the internal system, what are you supposed to boot off of?
You boot from the Recovery Partition
And it's also an edge case involving very large amounts of data, harking back to the old saw "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with magnetic tapes."
Typically troll misdirection. Apple isn't primarily driving the trend away from optical. Most users are taking this trend all by themselves.
An inexpensive $5-8 Flash drive is cheaper than a large bulk (50-100 ) package of blank CDROMs. USB Flash drives are very widely used to implement sneaker-net data transfer tasks these days. 10's of millions of people do it every day. To claim otherwise is to be some kind of ODD fanboy.
What I mean by commercial content is NOT just programs and/or data, but also music (CDs), TV and Movies (DVDs).Why put it on USB sticks when practically the first thing any copy on physical media is going to do is download the latest version via Internet?
Only* purpose of computer-oriented physical media for distribution today is really massive data capacity needs (rare) and to give customers the base sense they bought something.
I haven't purchased software on physical media for years. While anecdote != data, that's where most of the customer base either is now or will be soon (and could use the nudge).
(* - it's one sentence, not an encyclopedic tome on the subject.)
Or because of "all content must be bought from iTunes and be non-resellable".Apple didn't drop the SuperDrive because it was obsolete. They dropped it because it got in the way of their "everything must be wafer-thin" paradigm.
Are also RAM, large + fast + affordable storages or any kind of upgradeability or repairability "way down"? Or even better question: should they be "way down"? Should Apple think more about how things should be than what they are?Usage of optical drives is WAY down.
For desktop, bigger volume means better and quieter cooling and therefore longer lifespan. Well, not Apple's take on products, eh?Thinner and 20% smaller footprint. It's less materials and a better design. Period.
Some of us still want to obtain and use commercial content on optical media - CDs, DVDs.
There is ZERO commerical content on USB sticks, whereas there is still a thriving CD and DVD business. Optical drives are NOT obsolete.
Just becaue YOU (in the general sense) don't use one doesn't mean that others don't need one.
Since they've been announced for so long....I sure hope unlike the rMBP that Apple will actually have a descent amount of supply on launch day...
Agreed. I do photo and video work and I give all my clients DVDs after the shoot. Sure, I could zip it and put it on my server but most clients dont want to sit there and download 10+GBs of media. I am also not keen on the idea of paying for and giving away flash drives for each shoot I do. There are a TON of professionals who work in photo/video/media who still use optical drives daily. Taking them out and making customers pay an extra $80 for one is just cheap and bad business.
Goody for you. I've received commercial content on USB stick. 16GB flash drives can be had for less than $10. Are you saying that $10 is a significant expense compared to what you charge for your photo and video work? Hack, raise your price by $10 and your clients won't even notice. Speaking of being cheap
My son has been using a first generation Mac mini and needed a new computer. As soon as the "new" iMac was announced with no optical, we went to the nearest Apple store and bought the current iMac. There's just too many school assignments where the product has to be turned in on CD or DVD and I'm a believer the optical should be part of the computer. I've owned iMacs since the original tube screened one, and not once has a desktop's thickness been an issue for me. What a great business model, remove features so people have to buy add-ons. Maybe they should remove the hard drive/SSD so they can charge extra for that too?
.....I just wish they used that space for something better instead of just making it thinner.....
My son has been using a first generation Mac mini and needed a new computer. As soon as the "new" iMac was announced with no optical, we went to the nearest Apple store and bought the current iMac. There's just too many school assignments where the product has to be turned in on CD or DVD and I'm a believer the optical should be part of the computer. I've owned iMacs since the original tube screened one, and not once has a desktop's thickness been an issue for me.....
My son has been using a first generation Mac mini and needed a new computer. As soon as the "new" iMac was announced with no optical, we went to the nearest Apple store and bought the current iMac. There's just too many school assignments where the product has to be turned in on CD or DVD and I'm a believer the optical should be part of the computer. I've owned iMacs since the original tube screened one, and not once has a desktop's thickness been an issue for me. What a great business model, remove features so people have to buy add-ons. Maybe they should remove the hard drive/SSD so they can charge extra for that too?