Thanksgiving Roundup: Apple Buys Land, New MacBooks in April, App Store Sales, Black Friday Prices

[Frosticus]

I agree that Apple shouldn't drop the superdrive on the MBP just yet.. although admittedly I don't use an optical drive as much as I used to, it would be inconvenient to have to buy and carry around an external one if needed it on that odd occasion.
As other posters have mentioned, surely if the superdrive was dropped and SSD was implemented, how many "pro" features would still distinguish the 13" from the MBA and persuade people to buy one?
Hmm.. gotta love speculative rambling.

 

[GollumBoy]

Anyone else think they should spend a few hundred million more and buy up the rest of the middle? They could install a monorail....

And build a themepark

 

[0098386]

Dropping optical drives in flagship systems?

More and more Apple are moving down a road where the only way to get files on your machine is through them. But nobody will complain.
I on the other hand will be buying any manufacturer that can offer me cheap, disposable storage options in the form of whatever optical (or similar) media is big at the time. I need DVDs. For 50p I have 9gb that I can give to colleagues, tutors, read-only, that can universally play on any (real) computer.

 

[jwhite878]

I don't think they would remove the optical drive just yet... unless they can get all software developers to either put it on the Mac App Store or on a USB flash drive...

 

[O and A]

Let's turn back the clock to January 27, 2010:

Apple introduces the iPad for the first time to the world.



April 3, 2010: the iPad is released in the US.


Did you already forget that buddy?

I think what he was trying to say is apple only does pre announcments on entirely new products. something like the new ipad won't be brand new. it will be an update and an annoucement will probably happen a few weeks before release at most.

 

[elppa]

I've been telling people ever since the 11.6" MacBook Air came out that they are going to remove the optical drive eventually.

It wasn't just you. Steve Jobs dropped some fairly unsubtle hints on stage. It was Apple's version of what the rest of the industry call a roadmap.

“We think this is the future of MacBooks”

It was quite smart because Apple knows how resistant a vocal minority of its customers are to change, any sort of change*. No doubt though that it won't prevent the shock/outcry when the inevitable happens. OMG! I can't believe the super drive is being deprecated. OMG! Still no Blu-Ray. OMG! I can't believe Blade-SSD are standard. OMG! Apple aren't selling proper computers anymore, just consumer toys (a charge the company has faced on multiple occasions since 1984).

Yet it will probably give Apple space to one dedicated graphics card + hybrid graphics system and bigger batteries into even the 13" models and make them thinner and lighter.

* Witness the outcry over minor UI tweaks in a new OS X release.

 

[fergusjk]

I use my mbp 8+ hours a day. I needed to use my Superdrive about twice the last 2 years. The time is right to get rid of it and use the additional space.

I'm the same. I use my MBP for work and play and have only used the optical drive about two or three times since I bought it - tis a complete waste of space - it is like having a floppy drive on my machine, it is almost embarrassing still shipping machines with them.



CD-ROMs/DVDs are 1990s technology. Streaming/downloading is the present and the future. And small usb sticks are a far more elegant solution for shipped software.
If some people desperately need a 'superdrive' then they can buy an external one.
I need a new MBP as I'm still using the first gen MBP (Jan 2006) but I'm not buying one till that waste of space superdrive is removed as standard...

 

[davidcmc]

Dropping optical drives in flagship systems?

More and more Apple are moving down a road where the only way to get files on your machine is through them. But nobody will complain.

Are you serious?

Ok, there's no Internet, there's no SD cards, there's no USB drives...
Apple will remove it all (including the access to others sites) so we can only download applications from Mac App Store.

 

[elppa]

unless they can get all software developers to either put it on the Mac App Store or on a USB flash drive...

More and more Apple are moving down a road where the only way to get files on your machine is through them.

It's like the internet doesn't exist.

[1] jwhite878 - Mac software developers have put their software up for download for years and years. Even in the OS 8 days people downloaded software like Audion and BBEdit. And it's by far the easiest (and in some cases only way) to get open source stuff like Eclipse, Firefox, Adium.

[2] Dagless - Dropbox, Windows Live Sync, plug in a USB flash drive or a removable hard drive. Connect to a NAS. Connect to a home server. Connect to another machine on your network easily thanks to zeroconf. I don't understand where you are going with this one? It sounds like the “how will we ever do backups/share files on an iMac without a floppy disc”.

 

[christophermdia]

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I'd like to see user changeable ssd like the MacBook air now but with multiple slots like memory modules. Imagine a MBP with 2-4 slots for additional ssd storage. That wouldn't take more room than a 2.5" drive.

 

[mikeoc]

I don't believe for a second that optical media is dead in the water, not now and no time soon.

Personally, as someone who owns and runs two small media companies and works a lot in the publishing industry, DVD's and the like are still a large part of daily life. Mainly used for backup of work, I have a huge library of DVD's that go back years - that same data is also kept on hard drives but they can fail and I want to have the security of knowing that the information won't be lost forever.

I've also done a fair bit of work whilst travelling, putting projects together when on the move and without a net connection but I did have my MBP and a wallet of DVD's to work from, not having an optical drive would have made working then supremely difficult.

Also, from another (fairly old fashioned) point of view, I'm someone who has a dislike of buying software as downloads only. I like to have software I'm spending thousands on come to me in a box and provided on a physical medium that I can go back to whenever I want. My main problem is that downloads can go wrong, corrupt for whatever reason and then I have to start over.

On the other side I can appreciate the concept of having a MBP that is both lighter and has greater battery life.

 

[alfonsog]

The only use for my optical drive is burning CD's. I still buy a few CD's if they aren't available on iTunes, etc. or if it has special booklet/artwork/packaging or if it comes in SACD format. I only listen to classical music (and some musicals) so sometimes they aren't available online. Any drivers (even for newly bought products) I download online. Office 2011, downloaded online... etc. USB keys would be great for things too big to download effectively (smaller packaging, no scratched discs, etc.) Although I wouldn't mind a blu-ray drive on the mac-pro (if I could watch my blu-ray movies on it, since I have a few hundred and gave away almost all my DVD's) although the home theatre is what blu-ray is really for with 7.1 channels of LOSSLESS audio, 1080P, & full 3D capabilities which won't be available for years in streaming.

 

[SeanMcg]

Anyone else think they should spend a few hundred million more and buy up the rest of the middle? They could install a monorail....

Jobs is on the board of the company that made them popular in the U.S. Maybe he can get a deal on some of the older trains


Then there's always high-speed rail.....

 

[Rocketman]

Many moons ago in 2007 I posted:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/3199147/

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/3199164/

I don't think I actually posted my view Apple would eventually take over the HP campus, but it is a long held one. I simply presumed it would be by acquisition of HP itself, not a simple real estate transaction.

If I were Apple I would have an affirmative effort to connect Apple employees with homes the HP employees are vacating so they can have the lifestyle Steve spoke of at the council meeting circa 2006-7. They certainly have the capital to offer loans to facilitate such efforts above and beyond the currently crippled mortgage market. Say a 60-70% LTV loan by mortgage company and the remainder financed by Apple and paid by employees on a LIFO basis.

They already made HP whole.

Rocketman

 

[croooow]

...they claim the MacBook Pro will follow the MacBook Airs move to Solid State Storage and removal of an optical drive...

Makes sense, when they introduced the 2010 MacBook Air notebooks they did say this was the future of the MacBook.

This makes me feel a bit better about not waiting to order my MBP. I would like an optical drive and I like the idea of having 500GB on board at a reasonable price (even if it is a HDD instead of SDD, I don't want to pay Apple prices for SDD)

 

[0098386]

It's like the internet doesn't exist.

[2] Dagless - Dropbox, Windows Live Sync, plug in a USB flash drive or a removable hard drive. Connect to a NAS. Connect to a home server. Connect to another machine on your network easily thanks to zeroconf. I don't understand where you are going with this one? It sounds like the “how will we ever do backups/share files on an iMac without a floppy disc”.

Of course they exist. Problem is if I want to send a 9gb compile of my game to a colleague or tester what options do I have?

Internet - It'd take as long, wouldn't cost me any additional bandwidth fees and doesn't require my computer to be on for days as it sends.
Pen drive - Costly (or at least more-so than a 50p DVD), has to be sent back.
SD card - same as above.
External drive - fragile and costly.

As it stands DVDs and blurays are still the best solution for me and my colleagues.

Are you serious?

Ok, there's no Internet, there's no SD cards, there's no USB drives...
Apple will remove it all (including the access to others sites) so we can only download applications from Mac App Store.

They certainly appear to be heading that way. Wouldn't surprise me in 5-10 years to see only Apple-approved applications will be installable. But the Apple zealots would say something along the lines of "but this works for me". (just a bit of educated speculation gathered from my 6 years on this site )

 

[MCIowaRulz]

"MacBook Pro will follow the MacBook Airs move to Solid State Storage and removal of an optical drive." ???

Then the 13'' MBP will be discontinued!

How are you going to Install Final Cut Pro that thing is 40 GB+
(no I don't want an external drive either)

 

[mattwallace24]

iPad in Jan?? Could ts be true? Will it be on verizon?

I doubt it. Verizon is at an ackward technology crossroads for the iPad now.

Do you build the iPad with a CDMA chip which allows you to utilize their current infrastructure? If you do, then everyone buying a Verizon CDMA iPad in their local Verizon store will walk past signage telling them that LTE is coming and the future.

If you put the LTE chips in the iPad, you help future proof it, but by January only a few people would actually be able to get a signal in the US. LTE is not backwards compatible with CDMA.

I suspect Apple will wait until Verizon's LTE footprint has grown before releasing their next iPad.

I could be wrong, as the original iPhone was released on AT&T's EDGE network while they were rolling out their GSM network. However, people are infinitely more sensitive to technologies and advertising these days. No one knew the difference between EDGE and GSM back then, but everyone knows 4G is better than 3G.

 

[Yinmay]

I agree that an optical drive still has many uses.

But the key question is do you need that CD drive all the time, wherever you go? Wouldn't an external optical drive -that stays at home and that you plug only when installing something, or when you want to copy a couple music CDs before travelling somewhere- be enough?

I really don't see the point of a built-in optical drive anymore.

 

[beebler]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8C148a)

Unless there is a MBP release before April 2011, they won't be the brand new redesign.

According to my source in Apple R&D, there will be a refresh of the MBP line before the redesigned ones. Those are expected in late 2011 or early 2012.

My source doesn't have some blog or anything to quote from but hasn't been wrong yet.

 

[435713]

Optical is not going anywhere for a long while. No matter how much people are willing to go DLC on the interwebs and have co-ownership with Apple, MS, Sony whoever the company; sorry they will have no say in how many times I can download anything, no stupid ass activations. F that. I think most forget about the other 80% of the world that will keep using optical for a LONG time.

With that said, I have not used my optical drive in my MBP for over three months. Might only use it 4-5 times a year but I'd much rather do things that way than use an APP store where I own the content less to a large degree. I do see the MBP losing the optical drive though, all of them. 13' will become the air. So I will just have to upgrade next year to a different laptop manufacturer. I like choice.

At least the Imacs will keep them for a while so I will just grab one of those perhaps. USB 3.0 and blu ray would be nice on those next year.

Congrats to those who push for DLC, you'll see in the future what you should be fighting against.

 

[beebler]

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There is absolutely no way they are taking the optical drive out of the MacBook Pro so soon. Personally, I would love to get rid of optical media for good - but it's not yet going to happen.

Maybe as an option, though. Might be convenient to use the space for an additional battery.

I wouldn't doubt Apple. They did away with SCSI for all USB and everyone thought they were mad. Same with floppy disks. They have a history of doing things before the rest of the Windows market is ready.

 

[beebler]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8C148a)

Dropping optical drives in flagship systems?

More and more Apple are moving down a road where the only way to get files on your machine is through them. But nobody will complain.
I on the other hand will be buying any manufacturer that can offer me cheap, disposable storage options in the form of whatever optical (or similar) media is big at the time. I need DVDs. For 50p I have 9gb that I can give to colleagues, tutors, read-only, that can universally play on any (real) computer.

Apple has done thing before with SCSI and floppy disks and you probably saw that a bad too.

 

[jamesryanbell]

No optical drive?? Are you kidding me? How am I supposed to install something if it isn't possible to download it? We aren't ready for totally getting rid of optical drives yet. It's like when Rumsfeld thought he could take over Iraq with just Special Forces.

Plug in a superdrive when you need it. You shouldn't need it much.

 

[InsanelyApple]

iPad announcement in January? really..? There will be a lot of people regretting their Christmas gift / new year sales purchase if that happens..!

I know I won't have buyer's remorse. That is such a stupid concept. Be happy with what you have.