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New thinner iMac

Sue De Nimes said:
What do you do if you have a collection of CDs - like many people actually do?

Do you pay money to buy digital copies rather than being able to rip them yourself?
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I would imagine that you would purchase an external optical drive that suits your needs. No?

My feeling is that a manufacturer would want to reduce the number of mechanical parts on their platform in order to increase reliability and longevity. When you think about it, what typically breaks on a PC/Mac? The Optical drive, the HDD, and the fans. Remove the optical drive. Replace the HDD with an SDD. Use low-power parts to reduce or eliminate the need for active cooling. The result is a completely silent and reliable platform.

In addition, interconnects (USB3 and TBolt) are now fast enough to make external peripherals work without much fuss.

Last note is that I have never really been impressed with Apple's superdrive, when compared to other manufacturers optical offerings.

F
 
russofris said:
I would imagine that you would purchase an external optical drive that suits your needs. No?

My feeling is that a manufacturer would want to reduce the number of mechanical parts on their platform in order to increase reliability and longevity. When you think about it, what typically breaks on a PC/Mac? The Optical drive, the HDD, and the fans. Remove the optical drive. Replace the HDD with an SDD. Use low-power parts to reduce or eliminate the need for active cooling. The result is a completely silent and reliable platform.

In addition, interconnects (USB3 and TBolt) are now fast enough to make external peripherals work without much fuss.

Last note is that I have never really been impressed with Apple's superdrive, when compared to other manufacturers optical offerings.

F
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I've always noticed Apple used Matshita for their optical drives. Or sometimes Toshiba. Either way...
 
Well there are other angles to consider. I mean, I think desktops should keep CDs for awhile, but someone has to get this process going. The MacBook Air caused this whole craze with ultra books and pretty much killed netbooks as a category. Apple took that risk by producing an "expensive netbook" and now it's become one of the most popular notebooks in the market.

But I think a major factor could be the environment. Less materials means less waste.

Another possibility is that people in big cities have limited space, so having a smaller desktop could make their apartments feel spacious. Unlike most of north America, big cities in Europe and Asia are quite crowded and living space is expensive. A smaller iMac could mean more desk space for people in those places.

Sure, an argument could be buy a MacBook and a display, but a thunderbolt display and a MacBook is a lot more expensive and less powerful than just an iMac and less environmentally friendly for the environmentally conscious. A cheapo display and a MacBook is not as nice.

If apple, does this, I'm sure there is another reason besides the obsession with thinness,
 
yinz said:
Well there are other angles to consider. I mean, I think desktops should keep CDs for awhile, but someone has to get this process going. The MacBook Air caused this whole craze with ultra books and pretty much killed netbooks as a category. Apple took that risk by producing an "expensive netbook" and now it's become one of the most popular notebooks in the market.

But I think a major factor could be the environment. Less materials means less waste.

Another possibility is that people in big cities have limited space, so having a smaller desktop could make their apartments feel spacious. Unlike most of north America, big cities in Europe and Asia are quite crowded and living space is expensive. A smaller iMac could mean more desk space for people in those places.

Sure, an argument could be buy a MacBook and a display, but a thunderbolt display and a MacBook is a lot more expensive and less powerful than just an iMac and less environmentally friendly for the environmentally conscious. A cheapo display and a MacBook is not as nice.

If apple, does this, I'm sure there is another reason besides the obsession with thinness,
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See, that's the thing. How long is that "a while" that Apple should keep the ODD? No one is going to be "ready" for it to be dropped until Apple actually drops it. But the thing is, once it's gone, you'll forget all about it. If Apple kept it another 20+ years, 20 years from now some people would still be saying to keep it for "a while" because they aren't used to it NOT being there. Sometimes you just have to accept change and adapt to it. That time is now. The ODD probably gets used by less and less people every single day. I've "needed" to use mine maybe 3-4 times in 3 years of having my iMac. If it weren't there, i'd find other ways to deal with it. (Like a large flash drive)
 
I would like to see them keep the drive but add Blu-ray.

I haven't once in three years thought "man if ony I had two more inches of desk space". I think if you can fit a 27" diagonal screen you can deal with the current depth. Besides I still like to burn DVDs and CDs for myself and others.
 
JayInNJ said:
I would like to see them keep the drive but add Blu-ray.
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I would like to see them drop the drive but add Blu-ray support.

That way, I could purchase a single external USB3 blue-ray drive, and use it on my iMac, 2012 Macbook Pro, my wife's 2011 macbook air, my father's mac mini, etc, etc.

As an added bonus, my iMac won't occasionally sound like a motorboat in 4 years, and has one fewer places for my 3 year old to insert Cheerios into.
 
Eliminating the optical drive in the iMac is not a convenience to the user its just more containment. I personally would rather have that drive.It comes in handy at times. An example would be putting a CD into iTunes.
 
cocky jeremy said:
See, that's the thing. How long is that "a while" that Apple should keep the ODD? No one is going to be "ready" for it to be dropped until Apple actually drops it. But the thing is, once it's gone, you'll forget all about it. If Apple kept it another 20+ years, 20 years from now some people would still be saying to keep it for "a while" because they aren't used to it NOT being there. Sometimes you just have to accept change and adapt to it. That time is now. The ODD probably gets used by less and less people every single day. I've "needed" to use mine maybe 3-4 times in 3 years of having my iMac. If it weren't there, i'd find other ways to deal with it. (Like a large flash drive)
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Agreed. I've used a netbook for nearly 4 years without needing a CD drive. Everything has soft copies, and everything is online. And if you need to purchase media, there is always iTunes.

bushman4 said:
Eliminating the optical drive in the iMac is not a convenience to the user its just more containment. I personally would rather have that drive.It comes in handy at times. An example would be putting a CD into iTunes.
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That's your prerogative, Apple sells optical drives to people who need them. I think that's fair for people who don't.

I think apple just wants you to purchase directly from iTunes...

JayInNJ said:
I would like to see them keep the drive but add Blu-ray.

I haven't once in three years thought "man if ony I had two more inches of desk space". I think if you can fit a 27" diagonal screen you can deal with the current depth. Besides I still like to burn DVDs and CDs for myself and others.
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Two inches means a lot in New York, Tokyo, London, Japan, Shanghai, etc. I have not needed to read a CD for work in over 5 years. I work in the field of Education. I haven't burned a CD since 2007. But I think all of these personal choices are moot.

The point is, can those files you burn be delivered by other means? Yes. Are they more hassle free, getting there (if not already there). Cloud computing is affecting how we view, transfer and store files. USB thumb drives are arguably less dominant than before as the Internet is everywhere.

Change is fun and exciting, embrace it.
 
Apple dropping the Optical drive in the iMac would be a "Jump the Shark" move.

Although would you say they did that with the MacMini???

Oh and your mockup is very good Very Good. Scary good.
 
rotorblade69 said:
Apple dropping the Optical drive in the iMac would be a "Jump the Shark" move.

Although would you say they did that with the MacMini???

Oh and your mockup is very good Very Good. Scary good.
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You know how many people probably said that when Apple dropped other technologies? A lot. And they were wrong. I guarantee you within two years of them dropping the ODD that no one will even mention. None. Not at all.
 
cocky jeremy said:
You know how many people probably said that when Apple dropped other technologies? A lot. And they were wrong. I guarantee you within two years of them dropping the ODD that no one will even mention. None. Not at all.
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Two years huh? Its fun to make promises no one is ever going to bother calling you on.

Quit comparing DVD drives to floppies. It's not the same. At all. No one ever went into a store and bought a movie or music to rip to a computer on a floppy. They were used for saving data, and a better option had come along. That is not the case here. iTunes movies do not go on sale and if you purchase them you are forever tied to one buying location.

It is unreasonable at this point to expect Internet media to replace it. Broadband speeds are inconsistent and prices are much higher on line. You can rent a redbox blu-ray for $1.20 or an hd apple movie for $4. And I bet the only reason it's even that low is because of DVD rental prices.

And what's more idiotic is many you want the DVD player gone to make the iMac thinner... You want a better gpu, I can understand (and I'd be willing to make that trade even though I use the DVD drive). Extra hd, that makes sense. But this stupid obsession with making this crap thinner and thinner to the point of taking away functionality, weakening the computer and creating heat problems is ridiculous. It's a desktop.
 
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No Chin...yeah!!! I hate the height level of the screen on my desk....would love to see some type adjustable level stand (like the G4's had)
 
If a couple of inches are so important to some of you, get a 20" iMac and leave the rest of us alone with our Optical Drives. The suggestion that you would force size reduction in a desktop without that component is ludicrous to me.
 
Opspin said:
Image
So here's the new iMac, much like the iPad two, the new iMac is much thinner, getting rid of the optical drive, and, you'll no doubt note, also getting rid of that unseemly chin, now covering the front with one big beautiful piece of glass.

Also, not only will the Macbook get a retina display, but the iMac will in fact get one of the following, 3840×2160 (Quad Full High Definition) which would make sense in that HD movies would just use double the pixels, or 3840×2400 which would make sense because they surely now must be removing the chin and using the Thunderbold display as a guidance but taking the chin and use it to give us some more screen real estate for a 30" iMac.
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It's got the iPad 30pin on the side (or 20 pin or whatever)
 
Stolz25 said:
Two years huh? Its fun to make promises no one is ever going to bother calling you on.

Quit comparing DVD drives to floppies. It's not the same. At all. No one ever went into a store and bought a movie or music to rip to a computer on a floppy. They were used for saving data, and a better option had come along. That is not the case here. iTunes movies do not go on sale and if you purchase them you are forever tied to one buying location.

It is unreasonable at this point to expect Internet media to replace it. Broadband speeds are inconsistent and prices are much higher on line. You can rent a redbox blu-ray for $1.20 or an hd apple movie for $4. And I bet the only reason it's even that low is because of DVD rental prices.

And what's more idiotic is many you want the DVD player gone to make the iMac thinner... You want a better gpu, I can understand (and I'd be willing to make that trade even though I use the DVD drive). Extra hd, that makes sense. But this stupid obsession with making this crap thinner and thinner to the point of taking away functionality, weakening the computer and creating heat problems is ridiculous. It's a desktop you retards.
Click to expand...
Save it, and check in with me two years after they drop the ODD. You won't though. You know why? You'll forget all about the ODD. I see no one use the ODD on a Mac, or any other PC. They're irrelevant to anyone that halfway keeps up with technology. Who wants to mess with physical disk that 1) You have to store somewhere, and 2) Can get scratched and ruined? Digital media is where it's at. Sorry if some of you are stuck in the 90's, but it's over.
 
Funnily enough, I just used my ODD on Monday. When I bought software. In a store.
 
Shaving fractions off the depth of the iMac body doesn't really make much difference to the space the machine takes because it is the base that determines the depth required.
 
Stolz25 said:
Two years huh? Its fun to make promises no one is ever going to bother calling you on.

Quit comparing DVD drives to floppies. It's not the same. At all. No one ever went into a store and bought a movie or music to rip to a computer on a floppy. They were used for saving data, and a better option had come along. That is not the case here. iTunes movies do not go on sale and if you purchase them you are forever tied to one buying location.

It is unreasonable at this point to expect Internet media to replace it. Broadband speeds are inconsistent and prices are much higher on line. You can rent a redbox blu-ray for $1.20 or an hd apple movie for $4. And I bet the only reason it's even that low is because of DVD rental prices.

And what's more idiotic is many you want the DVD player gone to make the iMac thinner... You want a better gpu, I can understand (and I'd be willing to make that trade even though I use the DVD drive). Extra hd, that makes sense. But this stupid obsession with making this crap thinner and thinner to the point of taking away functionality, weakening the computer and creating heat problems is ridiculous. It's a desktop you retards.
Click to expand...

CDs are totally comparable to floppies. You're comparison seems unfair considering video capabilities were much lower then. Floppies were used to transfer documents and held dos games. They were replaced with bigger capacity equipment that did the same thing (transfer documents and play games). This eventually moved to video like you suggested. The USB thumb drive and the cloud drives are now replacing the CDs because they have both higher capacity and are more convenient. They will also open up options for us to do other things than simply watch movies and share documents.

The reason why your rental pricing is so low is because rental stores can't compete with cloud based systems otherwise. Netflicks is so dominant right now, I hardly see any blockbusters around anymore. Why would anyone leave the comfort of their own home to rent a Cd, which you can get on your couch. It's not the rental place that's keeping the rental prices down, it's iTunes and net flicks that are forcing down the prices to make cd rentals even valid.

The trend is an obvious one when you can see so many companies willing to develop hardware with larger hardrives and opting to cut the optical drive. I don't doubt that soon game consoles will do the same.

Cloud computing is without a doubt the reason why blue rays aren't as dominating as DVDs were when they came out... 1080p video is all over the web.

Moonjumper said:
Shaving fractions off the depth of the iMac body doesn't really make much difference to the space the machine takes because it is the base that determines the depth required.
Click to expand...

True, but slimmer machine, slimmer base. It's almost logical
 
Get rid of the optical drive so the price does not increase due to the retina display. I haven't used my drive for about 2 years and when I did to install software it was available online.
 
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