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Would you like Apple to get rid of the CD drive?

Would you like Apple to get rid of the CD drive?

  • Yes

    Votes: 39 37.1%

  • No

    Votes: 66 62.9%
  • Total voters
    105
  • Poll closed .
W

wankey

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 24, 2005
601
296
Of all the laptops I've owned, I've used the CD ROM for 2 purposes. To burn a friend a hard copy of something (when I don't have a usb key) or when I need to reinstall my OS.

99.9999999% of the time, it has sat there dormat, like a tumor, except not drawing any power. I call forth to anyone and everyone that agrees with me that the CD/DVD/BD ROM is a thing of the past. In its place has risen USB 2.0 (soon to be USB 3.0), eSATA, Firewire 800 SD Cards.. etc etc. There is no point in relying in these disks that really don't hold a lot of information.

Imagine a MacBook Pro without a internal CD ROM, just look at this picture:
6-10-09mbp.jpg


That's twice the space of a notebook hard drive there. You can put entire coolers there to make your computer never run hotter than your palm, add completely new sets of hardware, anything but a pointlessly silly mechanical device for inserting large disks that should've gone out decades ago.

They can sell OS X on a 5 gig Apple styled USB key. And if you already have the USB key, you can just download it from their site like the current digital downloaders work now and load it onto your USB. They can even have an app store in the future where you don't need ot go to the store to get applications (heck they have an app store now in the sense of illegal torrenting)

The future is CD-less laptops with vastly superior cooling solutions and the like, or vastly miniaturized form factors with a plethora of connectors of BOTH sides of the Mac.

Anyone with me?
 
Not everyone likes to download all of their music, I enjoy having a hard copy and being able to import it at 320kbs.
 
Considering the switch to Intel did bring USB booting, it is feasible for OSX to install off a USB pen drive, however, DVD discs cost mere pence to create, where as a pen drive costs much much more (relatively speaking), it'll be sometime before DVD drives are eliminated from all notebooks entirely, imagine the outcry if Apple did this across all their notebooks, sure we'd get better specs, but the amount of fuss the "community" (I swear most of you here complain just for the sake of it...) would throw up would be deafening... Regardless of if external superdrives were shipped (and included in the price)
 
I would welcome this change. I think for the next year or so, every notebook needs an external optical drive, like the one for the Air. Would get people through the stuff they need for a while and let them realize how little they actually use their optical drive.
 
I'm personally a huge fan of having optical drive less notebooks. I never use my optical drive, but yeah, sure their are a couple of times in a year where you make use of it, but thats a good reason to keep an external drive which are dirt cheap now anyway.
 
jmann said:
The optical drive needs to go down in flames. ;) I am replacing my optical drive with a hard drive from Optibay. :) I can always use extra storage space.
Click to expand...

Its amazing you mentioned that Optibay link, I was just thinking about how cool it would be if those existed earlier today!
 
I actually agree, Id love to have another hard drive built in there, i rarely use discs, and with everything becoming so much more digital, discs will only become obsolete. Although the downside is, some people cant download everything, on the count of they have there internet capped at a certain point, or their connection is just not fast enough....Especially with 1080P movies being as large as they are, downloading them will take quite awhile, while a drive to blockbuster and back may take less than 20 minutes. While I do agree with you, I think were a couple years away yet until our internet connections can support downloading 1080P movies in less than half hour or so. Until than, discs are the way to go for some people. Personally it makes no difference to me, as even today I still dont use my disc drive that much. But for the majority of people, were still a cpl years away until we can attain appropriate and reasonable timeframes from downloading all of our media/software.
 
You're correct in saying that the hardware is outdated.

But ISPs are behind the hardware. To download all your software would be cripplingly slow and/or expensive for the majority of consumers. Same goes for DVD/Blu-ray video.

For example, here in AUS I only get 30GB of data (upload and download) per month, after that i am throttled to near dial-up speed. This is a $129 a month (bundled) plan. I can't afford to waste downloads on software/movies.
 
sn00pie said:
I'm personally a huge fan of having optical drive less notebooks. I never use my optical drive, but yeah, sure their are a couple of times in a year where you make use of it, but thats a good reason to keep an external drive which are dirt cheap now anyway.
Click to expand...
Yup, I would much prefer to have a cooler or another hard drive in place of it and if I necessitate an optical drive I will use an external.

ChrisN
 
it maybe true. USB flash drives are cheaper and faster, more versatile and just better.

Maybe all rotational media are slotted for extension.

don't know.

I use the space for another HD but if the space was optimized I could fit in plenty of other stuff

Huge waste of space.
 
Hot Snowboarder said:
You're correct in saying that the hardware is outdated.

But ISPs are behind the hardware. To download all your software would be cripplingly slow and/or expensive for the majority of consumers. Same goes for DVD/Blu-ray video.

For example, here in AUS I only get 30GB of data (upload and download) per month, after that i am throttled to near dial-up speed. This is a $129 a month (bundled) plan. I can't afford to waste downloads on software/movies.
Click to expand...

Really? For less than 70 a month canadian, I get download speeds of about 10MBPS, although they are not always that high, and unlimited amounts of data
 
LOL i wonder how much the forum would whine if this were to really happen anytime soon
 
cd drives are slowly but surely losing their purpose and if anyone needs it there will always be a add-on solution for when the need rises. physical media is fading out whether anyone likes it or not. digital media and the increase capacity of smaller formats are steadily taking its place. it will still be several years before more mainstream products phase out the cd drive alltogether. but, with all the companies discussing their future roadmap plans - its going to happen.
 
Since you never use an Optical Drive then YES! Let's get rid of it... forget if the rest of the world still needs them. Dude, you have a very poor argument here.
 
I agree, the CD drive could go, BUT I would still want a USB CD drive. Also, $100 for the MBA superdrive is too much for an accessory a lot of people would need. $50 would be much more reasonable.

I only use the CD drive for ripping CDs/DVDs, burning stuff, and reinstalling the OS. I basically only use it when I'm at my desk, where a USB CD drive would be fine. A USB CD drive would even work on the go (assuming there is a nonstandard USB port to supply enough power), and it would only be slightly inconvenient to carry around and use.
 
I'm in full agreement.

I think that Apple should make the optical drive optional particularly on notebooks.

Then they could sell an external DVD Recorder and Blu-ray drive and they wouldn't be encumbered w/the need to find a slot loading 9.5mm drive.

As a consumer you'd be able to take this drive from computer to computer (assuming each had a HDCP display connection for HD playback) and get max value.

As the OP said the optical drive takes up the space of TWO 2.5" drives. Who doesn't want another drive bay? Whether it be for mirrored data, time machine backups or tiered storage (SSD, HDD) your options for data are multiplied nicely.

In fact I can really see Apple going this route.

Would you rather have an optical drive taking space up or room to adequately cool a mobile quad core processor?
 
I don't know why people are complaining. Who really needs a thinner laptop? I can understand wanting more storage, but that seems to be the most used argument on the forums here.

There's a number of features on my Macs I never have, nor will ever use. But I understand there are people out there who use them every day. Why do I have the right to complain if there are people who need it?

External drives are a pain in the rear, I'd rather have my optical drive built in.
 
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