Optical drives....this is a poor-dying media but it will be part of the new mini. I'm sure apple wants to phase out optical drives but will not be the first. Look at the backlash that they got from axing firewire from the macbook. The sooner people abandon optical media the sooner companies stop making billions of a dying tech. Not only are cd/dvds a horrible media type, the are also wasteful-Flash is the future.
Optical media is definitely not dying.
If you hadn't noticed, CDs still greatly outsell digital music. Rightly so. I used to buy music from the iTunes Store then I realized what a fool I had been for buying DRM'ed 128kbps files when, most of the time, a much better sounding CD cost around the same amount and sometimes cheaper. You look through the Sunday ads and you'll always find a ton of CDs for less than $10.
Plus there was an article recently explaining why movies had been disappearing or replaced on iTunes. Digital downloads only represent 0.06% of movie studios revenue stream. DVDs outsell downloads by a margin thats about as wide as the Earth is far from the Sun.
And for the most part, people can't abandon optical media.
As people already discussed in this thread, internet connections outside of Japan and South Korea just aren't up to the task. Why would people wait an hour or two or three to download a movie, that they paid for, that isn't even CLOSE to DVD quality? Have you seen the iTunes stuff? Sure it looks good on a small notebook screen. But it doesn't even come close to an upscaled DVD on a decent HD set. Plus you don't get Dolby Digital or DTS sound. Even the "HD" stuff from Apple TV doesn't scale very well to 1080p, plus those movies that DO have DD sound don't have as high of an audio bitrate as the DVD of the movie. So while the picture might or might not be better than an upscaled DVD, it still doesn't sound as good and, unless you have a 10Mbps connection (most people don't) that 4Mbps "HD" movie on your Apple TV is going to take hours to download.
And there are other problems with downloadable movies. If I buy a movie on iTunes I can play it on my computers, but only in Apple's software, and on an iPod or iPhone. I can't play it on an Xbox, I can't play it on a PS3, I can't stream it using another media set top box, and I can't convert it to DVD Video and play it on my DVD player. Likewise with Amazon and other downloadable video from other online stores.
So basically, if I buy a movie from iTunes and I want to watch it on my Xbox360.. oh guess what? I can't. I have to buy the version from Xbox Live Marketplace. Now what if I want to watch that one on my PS3? Can't. I have to buy it from the PSN store. Now if I want to watch any of those on my DVD player? Can't. Have to go buy the DVD.
But if I buy the DVD I can watch it anywhere. I can watch it on my computer, I can watch it on a portable DVD player, an upscaling DVD player, a PS3, a PS2, an Xbox360, that DVD player I bought half a decade ago that still works.
People may be willing to abandon CDs in favor of downloads. But thats far different. Most music these days is DRM free and can be played on anything. Plus you can burn it to CD and legally strip that DRM away without any hassles by reripping the song back into the format you want, just with a loss of quality.
And even high quality DRM free songs are only a few MB in size that can be downloaded in a matter of seconds even on a 768Kbps DSL connection.
Video is an entirely different beast though. "DVD quality" is several GB in size and has ridiculously restrictive DRM that essentially requires you to obtain a different copy for each device you want to play it on. And there is currently NO download service that offers anything even remotely near the quality you get with current blu-ray discs.
And flash memory may be the future, but its not yet. And not for a long time for most people.
A QUALITY 4GB flash chip that will not corrupt or die easily still costs around $30.
A high quality Taiyo Yuden 4.38GB DVD-R is about 20 cents. I can go get 438GB worth of DVD-R storage for about $20. Not even HDDs are that cheap.
And even though blu-ray discs are expensive for optical media, they're still cheaper than flash. Around $15 gets you 25GB worth of storage.
Downloads may be the "future" as well as flash memory. But that is a very DISTANT future. We have to see downloads finally reach the TRUE quality of DVD and blu-ray, we have to see ISPs finally offer necessary bandwidth to at least deliver that media in real-time with no hiccups, and we have to see content providers finally agree on a format standard and usage "rights" that are as flexible as current DRM free music rights and a format that will play on anything without conversion and the resulting loss of quality.
I then went on to state that it was larger than music biz, then it came out and NO FIREWIRE impounded my "AFRAID OF PRO MARKET, even though less than 1%, only no FIREWIRE hurt not only PROS but MOM AND DAD CAM CORDER, millions of musicians, IT who used target mode, and many more
Uh oh. Here we go with this nonsense again.
M-Audio, E-Mu and others sell USB versions of all of their recording equipment.
Nearly all camcorders and HD cameras from the last several years have been USB capable or USB only.
Target Disk Mode is a non-issue considering, if theres an issue with the drive or file system, it'd be better to boot from an OPTICAL disc and do things that way.
however with the LACK OF FIREWIRE, (NEW MB) you are limited to crappy USB devices
M-Audio and E-MU are regarded as two of the best in the business. They make USB versions of every product they have, or in some cases, they don't support Firewire at all.
USB is hardly crappy. It's just that you and others here can't accept the fact that USB devices caught up to and surpassed Firewire years ago and that Firewire is no longer relevant.
USB takes CPU cycles and DOES NOT have the throughput to play 192k/24 bit audio, 30+ tracks. You COULD do this with FIREWIRE.
How do you know USB 2.0 doesn't? Real world bandwidth is EVERY bit as good as Firewire. It's only on the Macs that USB 2.0 wasn't as good as Firewire, but on the PC side, USB 2.0 has ALWAYS performed as well as Firewire. And benchmarks show that the new MacBooks and MBPs have USB 2.0 performing nearly as well as PCs.
And, again, M-Audio and E-MU have been making USB 2.0 versions of everything for years that perform just as well.
LACK of 1394 on new macbook but realize that mom/pop cam corder,
Again, nearly every camcorder and HD camera from the last few years has either been USB capable or USB only. Firewire for video IS A NON ISSUE.
I.T. users and target disk
Because they can't boot off of a DVD? Or take the drive out and put it in an external enclosure?
Another example, iMacs are strong machines but no MATTE = no PRO GRAPHIC work, gotta get a MAC PRO if you want MATTE.
Why is that?
Matte screens distort color and blur text. Some people MISTAKENLY believe that matte is more like print. But thats not true. You can't compare the two mediums at all. That is a true apple to oranges comparison. Print is not only using an entirely different technology than LCD to get the text and colors to you, but it also relies on ambient lighting to be seen, where LCDs generate their own light.
Arstechnica had a good article/discussion on this issue and it pretty much mopped the floor with all of the pro matte arguments.
Glossy is more realistic and outperforms matte in every way. Plus, didn't you notice? Apple is moving their cinema displays to glossy as well.
