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Am I the only one who think Apple shot themselves in the foot?
- Thread starter HIMAN1998
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The funny thing is I've had one of each of those. I got a Mac because of quality. Build quality of the MacBook i have is a lot better than any PC you can get out there for less than what this retailed for new. If you drop a PC, it will have a higher chance of failure. I see a lot of people with dented up macbooks and they work fine. Mine took a fall onto the corner where the hard drive is and survived with no issues. It's all about what your usage is. I use Mac only software daily. For my Windows only software, I have Bootcamp.
My G3 had a zip drive? Where's the zip drive on my Macbook Pro!
They make a perfectly reasonable Ethernet adaptor for $30. You can keep it at your desk.
For your first thing, ZIP drives were never the mainstream thing. That's a place where Apple went in and put something that wasn't used as much to begin with into their computers. For the second thing, I don't use Ethernet at home only, I actually use it at school whenever possible because of throttling to wireless that my school does. I'm not gonna pay $60 for me to have one to leave at home and one to bring with me, and I'm not gonna pay $30 for something that is included on most Ultrabooks. Seems like a waste of money. I could also buy a cheap one off of eBay or Amazon.
Well, I apologize. I certainly didn't mean any offending arrogance. I just mean that the world is changing and in the next decade there may not be optical media at all. Im just saying that you have to evolve with technology. Even car stereos are starting to come without CD's but have Bluetooth for ipod/iphone/android connection and have usb for imedia products instead.
Optical media is becoming out dated. It is far cheaper for companies to distribute though digital means and they still charge the same amount. It pretty much lasts forever, unlike optical media. This is no different then moving from vinyl records, to cassette, to cds, to dvds, to blu ray. Hell even TVs stream digital, so I doubt there will be a next gen beta/vhs/dvd/blu ray. That will move to digital as well. Everything is going digital.
You may hate Apple for it now, but you will be thanking them later. Apple is a little bit ahead of the curve. You will be used to going digital before everyone else when they get slammed with not having optical anywhere anymore.
It's no biggie, I just know that out in the real world where people are not so tech driven there is more of a broad view in terms of options. I have a 100GB Dropbox account that serves clients too.
And talk about "going digital", as a professional photographer for the past 24 years, I went digital 19 years ago. I now use very little digital in my work, built a high end fine art darkroom and shoot mostly black and white film.....and boy is it paying off.
As a long time user of technology, I have to say that the worst part of it now is the hype. And the worst part of that hype is that the engine of hype sets out to sell more products and makes people think that if they do not join the crowd, well then they are inferior, missing out.
Thankfully people I know who are well educated, have great careers and have balance in their life have never even heard of this site.....they find balance in their lives and will never feel left behind because they chart their course in this life, not Apple, not technology and certainly not the hype.
I have 3 macs currently (4 if you want to count my hackintosh). Only one does not have an optical drive - my rMBP. I can't tell you the last time any of the others ever used the optical drive. I haven't missed it in my rMBP and I haven't used it in my other macs. Dropping the optical drive is a natural progression just as Apple dropping the 3 inch floppy drive was in the bondi blue iMac
You are definitely NOT alone my friend.
I'm a recording artist / producer and I still use my super drive to produce demos, EPs and radio friendly material as promotion, many independent artists are still required to send in beautifully created/packaged CD packages to gain air time on radio. Well, I am a huge supporter of college / indie radio period. I never owned an MP3 play and will NEVER - like many hundreds of thousands of us out there, we don't think carrying around thousands of artists and their millions of songs means any good taste in music (period).
I love to discover artists out live one at a time, there are fewer and fewer gems out there, so it is fun to go out and be surprised!
I wouldn't say this red-fruity company shot itself in the foot though, they are just very focused on a self-based goal and couldn't care less about anything else but their own bottom-line. When you accept this, you will vote accordingly with your cash.
I still own my hugely productive 17"MBP from late 2006 my gosh and also have a pristine late 2011 17" MAXED out monster Goddess machine. These machines were made to last for ever. Not so much the case (at all) with their recent trends.
I will continue to upgrade and refresh my existing 17"MBPs because I can. There are definite choices out there people, you don't have to be stuck.
Thank you ^_^
I'm a recording artist / producer and I still use my super drive to produce demos, EPs and radio friendly material as promotion, many independent artists are still required to send in beautifully created/packaged CD packages to gain air time on radio. Well, I am a huge supporter of college / indie radio period. I never owned an MP3 play and will NEVER - like many hundreds of thousands of us out there, we don't think carrying around thousands of artists and their millions of songs means any good taste in music (period).
I love to discover artists out live one at a time, there are fewer and fewer gems out there, so it is fun to go out and be surprised!
I wouldn't say this red-fruity company shot itself in the foot though, they are just very focused on a self-based goal and couldn't care less about anything else but their own bottom-line. When you accept this, you will vote accordingly with your cash.
I still own my hugely productive 17"MBP from late 2006 my gosh and also have a pristine late 2011 17" MAXED out monster Goddess machine. These machines were made to last for ever. Not so much the case (at all) with their recent trends.
I will continue to upgrade and refresh my existing 17"MBPs because I can. There are definite choices out there people, you don't have to be stuck.
Thank you ^_^
Many here simply justify their own positions and don't see the point.
Quite confusing, those who are all digital may get slammed when systems fail in the "cloud", so often I hear people cry to me about losing thousands of volumes of digital books, movies, music, art, photography, videos etc etc etc on all levels from family, pro and others. Many regret selling their entire music collection at a garage sale, only to lose it all again because their mp3 player and computer both crashed during syncing...
Please don't bash each other. Respect choice and just because you might be ready to jump on every brand's "trend-wagon" doesn't make you right one bit my friends.
Most artists release their free demos and singles digitally and it all sucks rotten eggs, for realz. Their best and edited work is mastered on to, yes, you guessed it, CDs and DVDs, box sets are still readily produced and rare to find gems of their unreleased amazing works even on vinyl STILL so please reserve your bashing of these media platforms, they still have a valid place in the industry. Some of you are talking about a HUGE HUGE industry producing these media formats going out of business? Never.
If anything the industry of CDs etc are taking this as a challenge to further innovate and improve the technology, so there!
Heck I still use laser etching (light scribe) for heaven sakes and those albums are selling like hot cakes since late 2007. These are not obsolete. There is indeed planned obsolescence though in these "slim & thins" oh definitely !
There are musicians who are still building amazing music on floppies, look it up.
Don't bash if you and a few of you out there are trend followers, and wouldn't have a single clue anyways how to use the optical drive, truth be told, there are also many people who really still have no idea how to or they are frightened of the drives. Food for thought.
Thank you ^_^
Quite confusing, those who are all digital may get slammed when systems fail in the "cloud", so often I hear people cry to me about losing thousands of volumes of digital books, movies, music, art, photography, videos etc etc etc on all levels from family, pro and others. Many regret selling their entire music collection at a garage sale, only to lose it all again because their mp3 player and computer both crashed during syncing...
Please don't bash each other. Respect choice and just because you might be ready to jump on every brand's "trend-wagon" doesn't make you right one bit my friends.
Most artists release their free demos and singles digitally and it all sucks rotten eggs, for realz. Their best and edited work is mastered on to, yes, you guessed it, CDs and DVDs, box sets are still readily produced and rare to find gems of their unreleased amazing works even on vinyl STILL so please reserve your bashing of these media platforms, they still have a valid place in the industry. Some of you are talking about a HUGE HUGE industry producing these media formats going out of business? Never.
If anything the industry of CDs etc are taking this as a challenge to further innovate and improve the technology, so there!
Heck I still use laser etching (light scribe) for heaven sakes and those albums are selling like hot cakes since late 2007. These are not obsolete. There is indeed planned obsolescence though in these "slim & thins" oh definitely !
There are musicians who are still building amazing music on floppies, look it up.
Don't bash if you and a few of you out there are trend followers, and wouldn't have a single clue anyways how to use the optical drive, truth be told, there are also many people who really still have no idea how to or they are frightened of the drives. Food for thought.
Thank you ^_^
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Optical drives are horribly slow and make a lot of noise and even make a laptop vibrate when reading a disk and consumes precious space that can be used for other devices (e.g. battery).
I rarely use DVD's nowadays, if you need a portable media then you have cheap UBS drives with huge capacity and with the size of a finger nail, you can even boot from a USB drive, I have one of those with a capacity of 32G for portable info, people who miss an optical drive are attached to the past and not even see or are reluctant to what technology offers nowadays to replace the old methods...
I rarely use DVD's nowadays, if you need a portable media then you have cheap UBS drives with huge capacity and with the size of a finger nail, you can even boot from a USB drive, I have one of those with a capacity of 32G for portable info, people who miss an optical drive are attached to the past and not even see or are reluctant to what technology offers nowadays to replace the old methods...
Zip drives were a source of loss of data for me, I hated this technology, for whatever reason a lot of times the zip cartridge was reluctant to be read and had to be reformatted one and once again until the cartridge becomes unusable, the drivers and the cartridges were expensive and they were as unreliable as floppy disks were, after that I never bought IOMega stuff again that were that ones that popularise this technology.
As hardly anyone use optical drives nowadays I would think that Apple would make a major insane misstake to put an obsolete CD/DVD in a computer 2013. That would be like adding a floppy disk and a parallel port because a few would like it!
For those who still want/need a CD/DVD it is still easy to get an external drive.
So I can't think what is the problem?
For those who still want/need a CD/DVD it is still easy to get an external drive.
So I can't think what is the problem?
I have been very conservative about a CD drive aswell, especially for installing operating systems. Though lately I've been using USB drives for everything.
I'm starting to realise that it truely is a lot faster, easier and cheaper than using CDs.
What I'm trying to say is that people who think they really need cd drives may want to try using flash drives, you might be surprised.
There are cases where you absolutely need a cd drive ofcourse, but I doubt that that is even 1% of the laptop owners nowadays. People are just used to CDs and are afraid to try something new. "Never change a winning team" is a good principle, but sometimes u have make room for evolution
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I'm starting to realise that it truely is a lot faster, easier and cheaper than using CDs.
What I'm trying to say is that people who think they really need cd drives may want to try using flash drives, you might be surprised.
There are cases where you absolutely need a cd drive ofcourse, but I doubt that that is even 1% of the laptop owners nowadays. People are just used to CDs and are afraid to try something new. "Never change a winning team" is a good principle, but sometimes u have make room for evolution
.Remember when Apple took away our floppy drives? Plenty of people still depended on those.
It seems to me that most time people use optical media is to burn a Linux/Windows installer disk. I started using a cheap USB stick for that years ago - not only its much more faster, but also more flexible. And as for exchanging information... again, we live in age of cheap external drives and usb keys, which are both much better suited for these tasks.
P.S. USB3 to Ethernet adapter costs around $20.
P.S. USB3 to Ethernet adapter costs around $20.
I can only imagine one thing optical drives can do better than its counterparts: backing up info, while a hard drive or flash drive will eventually die causing data loss in the other hand a DVD properly stored won't never loose its data, but this depends on the quality of the disk as I have seen DVD's that get discoloured over time and then they're difficult to read.
I think Apple knows their sales and customer base far better than you do.
And no one should buy a SuperDrive with so many superior drives on the market.
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Won't matter if it wears out or not if there's no way to read it.
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You think there's a market for it.
Apple does not.
Apple is in the computer selling business.
You are not.
Apple has access to their sales figures.
You do not.
I can't help thinking that they have a way better idea than you of whether there's a market for it or not.
Personally I've had many more issues trying to back up to DVD than hard drives. The cost in time and reliability is huge. Now thinking about moving backups online to things like low access Amazon. It's not immediately available, but might be cheaper and even more reliable than HDDs.
Wow. What an arrogant and hateful statement. And what on earth makes you think that education is inversely correlated with interest in technology? I've been on this site for over a decade. I'm also Ivy League educated. There's a little university in the heart of Silicon Valley called "Stanford" that you may have heard of, too.
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Uhm, you just described pretty much every company out there, too. The reason other companies offer more options isn't some magnanimous desire to help you. They've just developed a different market strategy.
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No, the OP really is in the minority. There's a reason why Apple market share continues to compete very well in the dwindling PC space. I'm not sure what makes you think that 50.1% of people in the US truly need optical drives, but it's kind of a silly statement. Everyone is moving toward digital delivery.
Come on really? It's 2013. Cut the cord from these compact discs already.
USB 2.0 sticks with 32GB storage are cheap (< £10 in UK) and offer 7x the storage of a burned standard DVD.
Relax, this happens to every kind of subset of thinkers that get too caught up in their own brand, it's human nature. You should be glad that people are different and not only buck the trend of the hype on a Yahoo! home page but "think different" like one innovator used to say.
I like the resources here, I read and post like a banshee for the week that I am in upgrade mode which is around once every four years. Other than that, I use my faster hardware to get my work done faster and to spend as little time on these devices as possible.
It's called balance....you don't eat Cheerios for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sadly, many people on this site obviously live for these devices, don't have balance and are very defensive about it....it's a pretty big social problem that is being addressed by Ivy League think tanks too sir...