I seriously wonder if Apple is out of their minds. It´s one thing to not include bluray, but leaving out an optical drive altogether on a desktop machine? Come on, motha******. I´m seriosly upset about this. Here´s why:
1) I´m a professional photographer, thus handling large amounts of data. Some clients ask for tiff files, which, at 20MP+, tend to be large. So we´re talking about 2 GB of files or more with tight deadlines on a regular basis. I usually burn a DVD for the client, send/hand it over and everything´s fine - now try doing the same via the Cloud. Hopeless when you´re on location in the middle of nowhere. If I had a dollar for every night we spent sending files on a crappy line from a remote village in the alps or wherever, I´d be a rich man.
And there are still "white spots" on the map when it comes to broadband connections. I know a few villages, slap-bang in the middle of germany, where people make their connections via
satellite. Or ISDN, if they don´t want to spend 50 per month. Oh and there´s a 6GB/month limit on it, which translates to roughly two movies in 720p from the iTunes store. Facetime, Skype, voip? Not with a 700ms ping. These folks are big fans of optical drives, I tells ya. I don´t know how the situation is, say, in the US midwest, Australia or the UK. Or any other part of the first world, but it certainly isn´t how phil seems to imagine it.
2) The presentation of the iMac made clear that Jony Ive (and most probably Phil Schiller, too) likes thin edges. Would an optical drive fit in that concept? Nope, it doesn´t. And so they turned that old mantra of "form follows function" (once a big selling point of their products) on its head. People
work with these things, folks. It´s not all just watching movies, 'making beautiful cards in iPhoto' or Facebook.
3) I want to backup my data how, when and where I want. Timemachine is all nice and fancy, but I don´t feel comfortable with just that. I have backups in various forms and in various places that will survive even if my house is hit by a bomb. Because they´re not
in my house - try doing that with timemachine. Blurays would´ve made that easier.
4) I don´t like the iTunes Store. It is quite comfortable, sure, and it looks nice. And it´s cheaper than Blurays, too. The quality is okay aswell, at least in HD. But there´s so, so many things wrong with it. I live in Germany and thus I am bound to the german store. I do have an account for the US store, too, because some apps or movies I want aren´t available in Germany. But I always have to buy iTunes codes from shady sources in order to buy something. Not cool.
Not to speak of the horrible german synchronisation most movies suffer from. There are bi-lingual versions, yes, but it´s just a handful and not really worth mentioning. And some movies are missing completely.
I have a few other points, but let´s leave it where we are for now.
Sure, you say, the iMac isn´t for me. Go buy a mac pro, you´ll say. But you know the answer to that: The current one is preposterous and the next one isn´t announced before sometime in 2013. And if I had to guess, I´d say it won´t have bluray either.
It would´ve been a consolation if they spec´d their external optical drive (for those stuck in 2005, yes, phil) with BR - but no. All these fancy things like unibody retina macbooks, fusion drives and what have you aren´t worth a penny if you forget who these things are made for and what their actual needs are.
I´d like Apple to go and ask some of their professional customers what they need. And then go and improve
on top of that without leaving things out.
Sorry for the long-ish rant, but I had to vent that somewhere.
/e:
Bluray does 1080p from the start. You can scale it down, though, so it gets even better.
