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Apple External Optical Drive and PCI Chassis

Originally posted by mustang_dvs
Firewire pushes data at ~800 or 400 Megabits per second (depending on standard), and Serial ATA at ~150 Mbit/second. AirPort Extreme transfers data at ~20 Megabits per second, max (there is a lot of overhead in that "54Mbps" figure).
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Actually, SATA is 150 MegaBYTES/s, about 50% faster than Firewire 800, which is 100 Megabytes/s.

Of course, I think the optical drives are still attached by ATA/33, which operates at 33 Megabytes/s, which is actually slower than Firewire 400.

However, you are correct about AE CD burners. USB 1.1 cd burners capped at 4x, AE could maybe pull 6x, which is really slow these days. I can't see any utility in a wireless CD, since it would need to be plugged in anyway.
 
you know, i hate to sound like a dick or rain on anyones parade, but an external wireless dvd burner is by far the dumbest idea ever.

the purpose of wireless is so you can be away from the unit in question, ie. a powerbook from a base or two computers on the other side of the hosue. who the hell wants to get up and walk 50 feet to insert a dvd, walk back to the computer, start burning, and then go pick it up?

also... completely unfeasable from a technological standpoint. the network is not an ide controller, and never will be. you would need some basic processor to decode the information and burn the dvd, which would make it too big and too expensive.

edit: oh and while firewire may be faster then ata 33 or firewire 800 may be faster then ata 66, it doesnt change the fact that there are no external firewire drives (or internal) all those "firewire" drives are just ata / ide drives with a firewire bridge.
 
Optical expansion - apple blew it on the G5.

While external optical storage units may have a place in certain situation and might well be a good product for Apple, having just one slot in a G5 was a mistake.

So if they do have something up their sleeves as far as a optical drive server, I do not see it as a reasonable correction for the mistakes made on the G5. Now that doesn't mean that a optical drive server is a bad thing by any means. I would imagine that such a server would be setup as a network device, can't imagine such a device connected directly to anyone Mac.

Thanks
dave
 
Re: Optical expansion - apple blew it on the G5.

Originally posted by wizard
While external optical storage units may have a place in certain situation and might well be a good product for Apple, having just one slot in a G5 was a mistake.
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Why? They only introduced two optical drives on the MDD G4s. It never really impacted sales before or after. Most people are fine with one - for the odd users which needs two then an external drive isn't a huge disadvantage. Yeah, its an extra $50-75US for a case but the convenience of an external drive is actually very useful.

FWIW the dual 1.4ghz I'm writing this own will be getting a second DVD burner at some point in the near future. The only reason the DVD burner *isn't* going firewire is all our macs have superdrives.

I'm speccing out some Dell's and Comaq's for work and the product lines make no sense to me. All these slightly differnet lines with different uninformative names that make me go wtf? I need computers that do this and this. Dells pro workstation line has two optical bays in their twoers but their home office line doesn't.

Apple doesn't have the sales volume to make a whole range of cases for different uses, so they compromise between what can be added externally and what needs to be done internally. Rather than it being 'an error' its extremely good business sense. But most people are incapable of seeing beyond their own needs and presume that everyone needs what they do.

A quieter, cooler machine is far more useful to far more people than having two optical bays. I would have liked them to keep four drive bays - but thats because in my line of work (video) being able to set up an internal RAID is very neat :) But again, its a niche market thing, and most video pros go for firewire or SCSI raids anyway.

So if they do have something up their sleeves as far as a optical drive server, I do not see it as a reasonable correction for the mistakes made on the G5. Now that doesn't mean that a optical drive server is a bad thing by any means. I would imagine that such a server would be setup as a network device, can't imagine such a device connected directly to anyone Mac.
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I'm not sure if I buy this at all. Both external optical drives and external PCI chassis are provided by 3rd party manufacturers - and Apple has been very good about encouraging a strong range of third parties to support the mac. IMNSHO Apple not only helped kickstart the USB thing, it helped kickstart the external firewire drive thing (which followed into USB2).
 
Originally posted by tazo
I think to only have 3 pci slots will really throw off the switcher who comes from a pc world with normally 5 or 6 pci slots.
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Some could make that conclusion, but they might be mislead because many PCs use several of those 5 or 6 PCI slots to provide their base functionality. So, a number of those slots may be filled with multi-channel sound cards, Firewire, serial ATA, modem, or even ethernet PCI cards. So they state 5 or 6 PCI slots but when you open the case you may only find 3 empty slots.

This is becoming less common today than it was a few years ago (unless you get a cheap or bargin PC), but it is still possible to find PCs that really have 3 or fewer open PCI slots when the product spec says 6 PCI slots.
 
Will ATI 9800 Pro block one PCI slot?

Is anyone else concerned (or wondering) about the possibility that when you install the ATI 9800 graphics card in a new G5 that you will block one of the PCI expansion slots. It looks like there is very little space between the AGP slot and the PCI slots. The pictures of the G5 that I've seen always show a video card without a fan (only contains a small heat sink). So, I wonder if you go with the ATI 9800 Pro upgrade do you lose access to one of the PCI slots (reducing the available count to only two)?
 
Concerning open slots I have a funny story. One of friends bought a Dell(Die hard PC addict) He noticed it had 5 slots on the back for expansion but the manuel said it had 6. So he opens it up and discovers 6 slots, BUT A PCI AND AN ISA SHARE THE SAME BAY!!!
What a dirty trick, but hey its a Dell!

In my opinion I would love to see Apple offer external Superdrives for us users without them:(
Besides I can easily take my drive to another computer I find that much more convient.
Our TV room has 4 HD which we constantly share between our 5 computers, the convience of the extrenal is clear.
 
Re: Re: Optical expansion - apple blew it on the G5.

I think it is difficult to say that it doesn't impact sales. This is especially the case when the sales of towers in the PC world still outstrip the sales of more limited housings.

By your own admmission people are not fine with one. Most people have at one time or another updgraded their machines by installing a new drive in the PC world. It is a matter of keeping up with technology or capacity needs.

Originally posted by h'biki
Why? They only introduced two optical drives on the MDD G4s. It never really impacted sales before or after. Most people are fine with one - for the odd users which needs two then an external drive isn't a huge disadvantage. Yeah, its an extra $50-75US for a case but the convenience of an external drive is actually very useful.

FWIW the dual 1.4ghz I'm writing this own will be getting a second DVD burner at some point in the near future. The only reason the DVD burner *isn't* going firewire is all our macs have superdrives.

I'm speccing out some Dell's and Comaq's for work and the product lines make no sense to me. All these slightly differnet lines with different uninformative names that make me go wtf? I need computers that do this and this. Dells pro workstation line has two optical bays in their twoers but their home office line doesn't.
Click to expand...

Look at it this way a machine confiugred for a specific use at work will be more flexible in the future with an extra bay available. But really it isn't that difficult ot fit a PC to a specific need.

Apple doesn't have the sales volume to make a whole range of cases for different uses, so they compromise between what can be added externally and what needs to be done internally. Rather than it being 'an error' its extremely good business sense. But most people are incapable of seeing beyond their own needs and presume that everyone needs what they do.
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No it isn't good business sense it show a very limited understanding of the pro market. Lets face it if you want a machine from Apple with limited expansion they have excellent machines in the iMac and the like. These are fine for the market they are directed at. The Power Macs where at one time directed at 'power' users, it is difficult to say for whom they are being built now.

A quieter, cooler machine is far more useful to far more people than having two optical bays. I would have liked them to keep four drive bays - but thats because in my line of work (video) being able to set up an internal RAID is very neat :) But again, its a niche market thing, and most video pros go for firewire or SCSI raids anyway.
Click to expand...
Again you are proving my point, the machines have not been designed to meet the needs of the average professional.

I'm not sure if I buy this at all. Both external optical drives and external PCI chassis are provided by 3rd party manufacturers - and Apple has been very good about encouraging a strong range of third parties to support the mac. IMNSHO Apple not only helped kickstart the USB thing, it helped kickstart the external firewire drive thing (which followed into USB2).
Click to expand...

I understand the need for third party support, especially with repect to disk arrays and drive servers. The things I'm talking about are wholely unrelated to such products.

Dave
 
Re: cool, but...

Originally posted by copperpipe
iThink that the Pal thingy harddrive that makes transfering everything to the next computer sounds way cool, and using the firewire 800 would be awesome of course. But what I can't understand is why people feel the need for another optical drive. It seems like something that less than 1% of all users would even want (much less would justify the expense). IMHO, if you're in that percentile, then heck yeah you have to put up with and external drive!
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The only reason why you need a second optical drive is to copy a CD or DVD without writing it to your hard drive first.
 
Originally posted by Freg3000
Ok, a FireWire 800 Optical Drive is cool, presumably faster than all others on the market. But come on! This is Apple!!!

What I am thinking, is more along the lines of an Airport Extreme Superdrive, with support for iDVD 3. So, now a 800 MHz Combo iMac, and a 12" Combo PowerBook, and a 1 Ghz Power mac G4, can all burn DVDs! Wirelessly.

Don't know if it is possible, but how is THAT for innovative?
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Firewire 800 is overkill for an external Optical drive. Optical drives use the ATA/33 standard, which is only 33 megabytes a second, max. Firewire 400 keeps up with this nicely, so there's no need whatsoever to get Firewire 800. It's not like it would make your DVD burner burn at 8x instead of 4x.
 
Originally posted by XForge
I don't want a bloody external optical drive; I don't even want a Superdrive inside my Mac. I just want the fastest possible CD burner I can get. But that's not provided as an option dang it. And the Superdrive has GOT to be driving up the cost of the system a little bit... no??
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Chill out man! :D You can get a combo drive in your Powermac (DVD/CDRW). It actually reduces the cost by $200.
 
Re: Will ATI 9800 Pro block one PCI slot?

Originally posted by fpnc
Is anyone else concerned (or wondering) about the possibility that when you install the ATI 9800 graphics card in a new G5 that you will block one of the PCI expansion slots. It looks like there is very little space between the AGP slot and the PCI slots. The pictures of the G5 that I've seen always show a video card without a fan (only contains a small heat sink). So, I wonder if you go with the ATI 9800 Pro upgrade do you lose access to one of the PCI slots (reducing the available count to only two)?
Click to expand...
Nope, the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro only takes the AGP slot, and nothing more. The newer Geforce FX series cards does take an extra slot for the huge fan/blower attachment. I'm not sure if Apple has worked around this issue by spreading things out a bit or what.

ATI makes a great card, but Nvidia's new offerings really blow chunks.
 
If Apple was working on an external expansion option for their G5 Powermac, wouldn't it have been more logical for them (and cheaper for the consumer) to just make the Powermac G5 two inches taller, thus adding room for another optical drive, another PCI slot, and at least one more (if not two) internal Hard Drives?

We've heard this rumor about the external expansion box a couple years ago too, and it never came to life. We also heard the rumor about Apple's own external optical drive, and that never happened either. I dunno. It seems silly to me. I think this is stuff Apple should leave up to 3rd parties. They can't be making EVERYTHING. They've got core products to focus on.
 
you can already buy an aftermarket superdrive and kinda... "convert" it to an external drive. so it doesn't really seem worth the R&D, time, or money to produce such an item. they NEED to focus on getting their XServe up to a G5 because people are NOT going to buy those now that the desktops are much faster. they have to have that as one of tehir top priorities. also, they need to get the PowerBook up to G5 to shut us up too. :D

but hey, I dont run apple.
 
Originally posted by Cory Bauer
If Apple was working on an external expansion option for their G5 Powermac, wouldn't it have been more logical for them (and cheaper for the consumer) to just make the Powermac G5 two inches taller, thus adding room for another optical drive, another PCI slot, and at least one more (if not two) internal Hard Drives?
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Not for the 98% of prosumers who don't need them.

It goes like this. Many people (a large marjority) are happy with one optical drive. Some professionals who are doing large scale mastering, etc, want more -- these people are much better served with a nice integrated bulk disc mastering/printing system (most of the time). A very small minority is best served with two conventional user-loaded drives. Apple is servicing that market by providing an external connector and recommending an external drive. THis is good business sense.

Internal hard drives are the same way. The new G5 can come with 512gb from the factory. People who need more than that, or who need faster access than they can get over dedicated SATA busses, will generally need much more than that, and will go for either a FC card hooked to an XServe RAID or use some form of network attached storage (using the ethernet port, which doesn't even take up a card slot) -- another XServe RAID or an EMC system or whatever. Again, the market in between these two extremes turns out to be fairly small, and much of it can be addressed with Firewire drives, et cetera.

Also with PCI cards -- what percentage of the market needs more than three cards but less than, say, six? Adding one slot only gets you a small incremental gain as you're bridging from a generic professional to a very targetted market.

The G5 case offers a lot of compromises. It looks like it should be very reliable -- lots of dedicated cooling for things like the hard drives, dedicated airspace for the PCI cards (again with cooling), et cetera. Its also very quiet, addressing one of the most common complaints of workstation users everywhere (but especially in the music industry). To get these features, they sacrificed a lot of cubic inches that could have been used for expansion. Its a pretty reasonable compromise IMO, and one that will sit well with the majority of their target audience.

-Richard
 
Originally posted by shawnjackson
you know, i hate to sound like a dick or rain on anyones parade, but an external wireless dvd burner is by far the dumbest idea ever.

the purpose of wireless is so you can be away from the unit in question, ie. a powerbook from a base or two computers on the other side of the hosue. who the hell wants to get up and walk 50 feet to insert a dvd, walk back to the computer, start burning, and then go pick it up?
Click to expand...

Chill out Man, a Airport Superdrive might not be around the corner but a CD/RW might be cool. Say you have a old blueberry
iBook or and old Bondi iMac neither have FW but the do have Airport. If Apple put a really powerfull Airport antenna inside the
burner so all you had to do was set the burner next to the iBook
and walla, it would be kinda slow but just as slow as USB 1.1. and you could still use the iBook on your lap without feeling like its a heat pad with a short.
 
probably wouldn't have any use for another optical drive but i would love to see a standalone network HD using ethernet and airport rather than firewire. we're building a massive music collection here and it would be great to have some big storage that we could both stream from and grab files. sort of like a mini server without the computer attached. is this sort of thing even possible? hd space becomes very precious when your only machines are laptops.
 
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