If Apple phases out the optical drive on this new release they will loose a lot of sales. Many, many, many people still need and use optical drives.
I said move to an external setup since they aren't often used, not completely drop the format and forget about it. But the argument that Apple will loose sales from dropping a dying format like DVD is untrue. They dropped floppies, serial and parallel ports before others and they did okay with that. They like to trim the fat. They also like to keep the costs down, which means they aren't coming out with a new model with a cryptic name with every industry change or trying to make a a machine for every possible person out there. They have the MB and MBP. The MB is one size with two different processor speeds. The MBP is 15" or 17" and has 3 different processor speeds. They are the four best Intel has to offer, without being power sucking Extreme chips.
You also have to remember that Apple will keep the same design for the next 3 years. So they need to think ahead when deciding what to keep in their systems. You say they need to bring the mac "up to date" but you're saying this with the originally designed Intel Macs, which haven't been updated since the first part of the year. But that is getting off track, the point is the comments that "Apple/Jobs can do anything because they are Apple/Jobs" and "[
Insert OEM] has this [
insert buzzword] so Apple should have had [
insert previous buzzword]" makes no sense if you aren't looking at the whole picture. You need to ask yourself: Is this a good move for Apple? How does this benefit the majority of Apple's customers? Is this price prohibitive? Does this fit into Apple's philosophy? I think you'll find that turning a Mac notebook into a Dell and does not work for Apple.
Besides you make it out like they will destroy your precious laptop aesthetics? This is just not true. I think that the Sony Vaio Z is an excellent example of portability and functionality.
They [Apple] won't destroy the aesthetics, and i never said they would. In fact I said they won't use a tray-loading drive and thicken up their designs in the process preciously because of the aesthetics. You are the one who is claiming that Apple will do this simply because you want it. You mention 'aesthetics' and then use the Vaio's 'portabilty and funcionlaity' as an example. Does not compute!
All I want is for Apple to release a new line to bring it up to date with what other notebook manufacturers are now offering.
New Macs are in the pipeline. Apple has no choice but to be behind the other OEMs for the majority of its offerings. That is not going to change because there are supply issues involved. Apple dominates the consumer side of higher0end PCs. Where Sony, Dell and HP only need a few of these new Intel chips to accommodate their new BTO systems, Apple needs only a handful of these higher-end Intel chips, but needs a great deal of them and they need to have many thousands in their stores (or on their way) the day they announce these new Macs. This puts Apple at a disadvantage for in the time when other OEMs have the new chips and Apple is waiting for the new chips in bulk. This issue is just cmpounded as they grow.
For your information I have been working with computers probably before you were born. I started working with computers in the early seventies. I made the honest mistake on the Macbook drive because I didn't realize that Apple had changed them since the ibook. It didn't matter anyway because it was not the point of the argument.
They changed to slot-loading in the iBook when they introduced the G4s. They were the last bastion of tray-loading drives in Macs but hat was still a half decade ago.
If you don't want to have the choice of a BTO blu-ray drive in the next MBP thats fine. I do want the choice as do many others. I have a large blu-ray collection, I live in an area with poor internet speeds. My nearest video rental store is 25 miles away. I have a 60" pioneer kuro plasma TV. I use a 8 core MacPro with dual 30" cinema displays for work and play.
If you have a 60" plasma why would you not want a Blu-ray appliance for your playback? The Mac Pro would get a desktop-grade tray-loading BRD. This should be an option because the price is more reasonable and Mac Pros are more likely to be used by professionals that could utilize the drive. But that doesn't explain why Apple would all of a sudden stop being Apple just to offer something that relatively few people use at a price that is considered too expensive for most and that Apple is trying to compete against. It just doesn't make sense.
I have tried Apple's HD itunes service and it stunk. I am not a fan of cloud computing in general because it means I have to rely on someone else's service to access my data. So far I have not been impressed with any of the offerings.
Nothing looks good after Blu-ray and Apple and others had to make concessions with bitrate and HD for the internet. But you need remember that iTS quickly beat out CD sales and is still beating out Amazon despite it's higher bitrate and no DRM. Convenience and 'good enough' is what matters to most people and having a $1000 BRD in a notebook that dies on battery before I can finish a 2 hour movie is not good enough or convenient.
I'm not sure why you haven't stripped the DRM from your BR movies and stored them on a HDD. This way can travel with them much easier and aren't using the originals which can get scratched.
