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Doesn't this go against the elegance of Apple and all that hoohah? I can already imagine the mock up images comparing that Dell PC with wires everywhere and an iMac, now with wires everywhere.

Is this a serious reply? The option is already there for the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini Server. If you are worried about what people will say about your computer then I think you should sort out your priorities a little differently. It's not any different than plugging in a USB mouse for when you are gaming.
 
No. He said the next generation of MacBooks. Last I checked, the word MacBook is in their entire line. He didn't say the next generation of MacBook Air's. He said the next generation of MacBooks. He was talking in the present tense.

Alright, now you're just nitpicking. Also, and I mean absolutely no disrespect (not even of the usual Internet variety) when I say this, but you're delusional if you think that the removal of the optical drive will bring the MacBook Pro customer base anything other than more non-practical side effects of Steve Jobs' ever-continuing obsession with thinner-than-necessary-thinness. Yes, a quad-core in a MacBook Pro would be rad; it ain't happening (at least not in this round of Intel mobile chips) for the same reason why the 17" MacBook Pro is one of the few 17" laptops out there to not have a second hard drive bay, we've sacrificed with the thinness. And sure, I like Apple's looks as much as the next guy, maybe more. But when the machine loses practicality because it's so freakin thin, no thanks.
 
Alright, now you're just nitpicking. Also, and I mean absolutely no disrespect (not even of the usual Internet variety) when I say this, but you're delusional if you think that the removal of the optical drive will bring the MacBook Pro customer base anything other than more non-practical side effects of Steve Jobs' ever-continuing obsession with thinner-than-necessary-thinness. Yes, a quad-core in a MacBook Pro would be rad; it ain't happening (at least not in this round of Intel mobile chips) for the same reason why the 17" MacBook Pro is one of the few 17" laptops out there to not have a second hard drive bay, we've sacrificed with the thinness. And sure, I like Apple's looks as much as the next guy, maybe more. But when the machine loses practicality because it's so freakin thin, no thanks.

No, I'm not. You think that Apple will do nothing but make it thinner? Where have you been the last two years? Did you miss the late 2009 iMac refresh? Apple went from a mobile dual core 35-45 watt chip to a 95-watt quad core desktop chip in the iMac while still making it thinner. If Apple wanted to make the iMac paper thin then they could have, but they didn't. They know consumers still care about performance. Anyone who thinks Apple will do nothing but make their notebooks thinner from the removal of the optical drive clearly doesn't think logically.
 
No Optical Drive?

Okay, I understand not needing an optical drive on an Air...but a MBP? Cmon, people (myself included) use the MBP as a portable FCP machine. How do I burn DVD's for clients without carrying around an extra piece of hardware? Thanks, but i'll stick to my current gen MBP with an aftermarket SSD drive. :rolleyes:
 
You mean to tell me, that as a MacBook Pro customer (note the word "PRO"). I won't be able to EDIT VIDEO, and then BURN discs to an OPTICAL DRIVE that is built-in to the machine? I'll need to buy a separate attachment for $100? I'm sorry, but screw that. It's inconvenient, and if I'm already shelling out $1000 more for a Mac laptop than a PC laptop equivalent (with the same, if not faster specs) that I could probably Hackintosh to run OS X, I should at least be treated to the convenience of not having to use one of the two or even three USB ports and extra desk/lap/pillow space that I have for burning things. I do video editing, and while I'm not installing software every friggin' second on my optical drive, you better believe, I'm going to be doing a ton of DVD burning. Give me the SSD they have in the MacBook Air, fine (though preferably with a hard drive as I'm not willing to pay an arm and a leg for anywhere near 500B worth of Flash JUST yet), but if you take out the optical drive on the MacBook Pro line, you end up with quite a few pissed off customers, me being one of them. As soon as you make SD cards or streaming the unarguable standard for distribution of digital video, you can't kill the optical drive. Period.

Also, might I remind the thread that Jobs' quote was "The Next Generation of MacBooks" not "The Next Generation of MacBook Pros" nor "The Next Generation of Laptops". Sure, optical media might not enjoy a long and prosperous future, though that day is many years off for us Pro customers. For the regular MacBook, which shares just about everything with its low-end 13" Pro equivalent, save for a FireWire 800 Port (which most consumers won't miss), an IR sensor (which most consumers won't miss), and backlit keyboards (which most consumers don't care about), the only things separating the current 13" MacBook Air from the white MacBook are Aluminum, a proper hard drive (which most consumers don't require the space for and would be fine replacing for flash), an optical drive (which most of them don't use or would be fine with the external superdrive for the one or two times they need it), and an Ethernet port. Make a 13" MacBook Air that has an Ethernet port and have it replace the white MacBook and you won't piss anyone off because for that audience, you've taken out the unnecessary and made everything else awesome. The end.

My, my, my.... I remember people saying the same stuff back in the day when Steve got rid of the Floppy Drive... :eek:

But, I do agree with you - The Pro line will keep the optical. The regular MacBook will become Aluminum and forgo the optical drive to keep the $999 pricepoint. The MacBook used to be Aluminum anyways... (remember?)

Eventually, I do see them lowering the price of the Mac Mini to $599, and getting rid of the optical drive at that end as well. They do have a version without the optical drive available right now.... ;)
 
How is the purchase of that land related to optical drives and a sale in Australia?

This is really sloppy reporting Macrumours. Stop being so lazy.

With this mashup, how can anyone expect to have a reasonable discussion on the purchase of the land if everyone is speculating on optical drives?

Also, the story on the Australian black friday got lost in the noise about drives.
 
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) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Expect this to become the new Apple HQ after Steve levels this lot. The current Apple HQ was built during the Scully years and Steve hates the introverted style of the architecture. This campus will be Steve's legacy after he is long gone. I would not be surprised to see the entire Loop leveled and one last act of spite against Scully. The money is there, ego just needs to engage. Oh how I would love to see the talks between Steve and the poor architects that will have to deal with him when this place is built!
 
No, I'm not. You think that Apple will do nothing but make it thinner? Where have you been the last two years? Did you miss the late 2009 iMac refresh? Apple went from a mobile dual core 35-45 watt chip to a 95-watt quad core desktop chip in the iMac while still making it thinner. If Apple wanted to make the iMac paper thin then they could have, but they didn't. They know consumers still care about performance. Anyone who thinks Apple will do nothing but make their notebooks thinner from the removal of the optical drive clearly doesn't think logically.

I don't mean to say that Apple will ONLY make their laptops thinner, but the only reason to exclude the optical drive IS to make it thinner; at least on the Pro line. You're not going to get a quad-core CPU by removing that thing, and if that's the trade-off, then that is just plain stupid. I'm paying more than a quad-core PC laptop costs for a dual-core Mac laptop as is. You're telling me that they need to remove the optical drive so we can have quad-core and other speed improvements in the MacBook Pro? That's bull. Make it 0.2" thicker and you can have your cake and eat it too with no sacrifice to anything but thickness.

That said, if you want to go back to the Jobs Quote of the MacBook Air being the future of all MacBooks. I think as far as using that blade Flash is concerned, sure, you might as well throw that in there; there's room. Plus the current (Mid 2010) 27" iMacs (if we're gonna cite the iMac at all with regards to a thread about portables) have the option of both SSD and HDD, and I see no reason to not do that on the MacBook Pro. All three models of them. And yes, kill the optical drive on the white MacBook, THEY are the customers that likely won't miss it and for which a $99 external optical drive won't be as much of a hassle for; they won't burn or install or playback things from optical media As for a large majority who use Macs for professional applications that aren't better served on Windows PCs, mandating the use of one of the two (or three) provided USB ports for the optical drive is ridiculous and problematic.
 
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Anyone else think they should spend a few hundred million more and buy up the rest of the middle? They could install a monorail....

No need to buy up the middle to have a monorail easement.
 
Interesting to see whats instore for the new macbookpros, hopefully extra internal storage.
I havent used Optical to install software other than OSX and iLife/iWork most others are digital from the companies themselves and would love to not have an extra drive with important stuff on being carried around and just have it internal

1) buy an external optical drive
2) use remote disk like the MacBook air

External SuperDrive, USB Software installers, Mac AppStore, etc.
 
Expect this to become the new Apple HQ after Steve levels this lot. The current Apple HQ was built during the Scully years and Steve hates the introverted style of the architecture. This campus will be Steve's legacy after he is long gone. I would not be surprised to see the entire Loop leveled and one last act of spite against Scully. The money is there, ego just needs to engage. Oh how I would love to see the talks between Steve and the poor architects that will have to deal with him when this place is built!

Steve will just hire an architect that has the same design sensibilities as he does and all will be well. Look at the plans for Steve's new house and you'll have an idea of what the new HQ might look like.
 
April 2011, if true, would be perfect in my agenda. My current Powerbook G4 Titanium still works great, but with new software starting to be intel-only and/or really slow on G4, its time for a new notebook. By then I've used this Powerbook basically every day for the past seven years, with almost no trouble.

Hopefully the new Macbook Pro's will feature Lightpeak and/or at least a BTO HD-DVD/BR burner. And ofcourse... the new Macbook Pro has to last at least another 7 years or longer.
 
If Apple expect me to wait until April, those MBPs had better be freaking perfect. Like a quad-core CPU, awesome next-gen GPU, 8 GB RAM, Light Peak, and a whole lot of SSD space (maybe some RAID 0 action).

April is a full year since the last update. That's probably the longest time between MBP refreshes ever. Certainly that I remember.
 
It's what I've been saying all along. Apple seems to have put their REAL Pro users by the wayside.

Regardless of whether the new MBP's come with or without an optical drive, Apple have lost their love and care for their Pro users.

I suspect the definition of what constitutes a REAL Pro user is a bit different than what you THINK it is. The makeup of a market segment changes from time to time and Apple has a better idea of what is selling then you ever will, so your tiny perspective has no validity.

What Apple sells today represents a harbinger of where the buying public and the markets Apple is appealing to are moving. This is so unlike the way other computer companies forecast and market that you cannot get your head around it.

The landscape is littered with failed companies with products that no longer address the moving markets they THOUGHT they were serving. Apple's plan for portable products it to make them more portable. That means making them lighter and to operate longer away from a power source. If that also makes them thinner, well, so much the better.

If you and I are burning more thumb drives and fewer CDs or DVDs then Why do we need to be lugging around an optical drive 100% of the time? Even then, if I need to have a super drive at arms length (in my computer case), then it's still an advantage to me to not have to heft the optical drive out of case every time I pull my computer out to use.

I'm in my mid-sixties and I swear I'm more able to adjust to new ways of using technology then a lot of you moaners half my age.
 
This. It's pretty clear that Apple is slowly trying to phase out the white MacBook. Almost All of Apple's products have moved away from the white plastic design. It's barely cheaper than the base 13" MBP and has about half the build quality with that plastic case. I'm sure at some point they'll just rename the MacBook Air to MacBook. I highly doubt they'll take the optical drive out of the pro though. They may offer it as an option in case people want more HDD space or battery life (like they did with the mac mini server) but nothing more.

I see it as Apple flattening the range from the lowest cost laptop to the highest cost Pro laptop. If so, this has got to squeeze some of the models out of the middle.

it could come down to a single low-end Macbook with a 11" or 13" screen and slower graphics. Then, a couple ultra-portable Airs. and finally, a couple Pro models with bigger screens (15" and 17") with superior graphics cards. The number of Apple laptops may even be less than that a year from now.
 
April 2011, if true, would be perfect in my agenda. My current Powerbook G4 Titanium still works great, but with new software starting to be intel-only and/or really slow on G4, its time for a new notebook. By then I've used this Powerbook basically every day for the past seven years, with almost no trouble.

Hopefully the new Macbook Pro's will feature Lightpeak and/or at least a BTO HD-DVD/BR burner. And ofcourse... the new Macbook Pro has to last at least another 7 years or longer.

:D

I still have a 12" 1.33 GHz G4 iBook running but I have totally ripped it apart twice.

The first time to install a newer 150 GB Hard drive, 1.5 GB of Memory, and a Superdrive.

The second time was because my daughter (for whom it was originally purchased) wanted it dyed a burgundy color.

She snagged my MacBook when she went off to University and I inherited the iBook.

I'm amazed that it still functions so well, but the PPC is definitely on its last legs as more and more apps are Intel only.

I even have a hacked MacBook Air external superdrive hooked up to it for disc burning that works flawlessly.

I am looking forward to a newer i7 MacBook Pro but do not want it sans a superdrive. I still do a lot of burning including DLs and use both the internal superdrive and the hacked MacBook Air superdrive depending on whether I am at home or on the road.

I'm still amazed that the iBook has lasted this long! :cool:
 
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The landscape is littered with failed companies with products that no longer address the moving markets they THOUGHT they were serving. Apple's plan for portable products it to make them more portable. That means making them lighter and to operate longer away from a power source. If that also makes them thinner, well, so much the better.

I'd agree with this with regards to the MacBook Pro line were it not for the fact that if Apple either keeps the computer as thick as it is (or even makes it SLIGHTLY thicker), even keeping the optical drive, it's still WAY portable. It needn't get any more portable than that.

If you and I are burning more thumb drives and fewer CDs or DVDs then Why do we need to be lugging around an optical drive 100% of the time? Even then, if I need to have a super drive at arms length (in my computer case), then it's still an advantage to me to not have to heft the optical drive out of case every time I pull my computer out to use.

Optical drives don't drastically increase the weight of the laptop. They just don't. Thickness, yes. But really, like I need my MacBook Pro to maintain the wedge-shape of the current MacBook Air. Like I really need it THAT thin and THAT light. Like any of us really do. If we need it that thin and light, then good news everybody! They make a product to address that, it's called the MacBook Air! If you are a MacBook Pro customer, such things needn't matter.
 
April 2011, if true, would be perfect in my agenda. My current Powerbook G4 Titanium still works great, but with new software starting to be intel-only and/or really slow on G4, its time for a new notebook. By then I've used this Powerbook basically every day for the past seven years, with almost no trouble.

Hopefully the new Macbook Pro's will feature Lightpeak and/or at least a BTO HD-DVD/BR burner. And ofcourse... the new Macbook Pro has to last at least another 7 years or longer.

Even without the features you mentioned a current Pro would feel like a super-speedy treat to you. Four years ago I moved from a G3 Macbook to a Pro and couldn't believe the difference.

Optical drives don't drastically increase the weight of the laptop. They just don't. Thickness, yes. But really, like I need my MacBook Pro to maintain the wedge-shape of the current MacBook Air. Like I really need it THAT thin and THAT light. Like any of us really do. If we need it that thin and light, then good news everybody! They make a product to address that, it's called the MacBook Air! If you are a MacBook Pro customer, such things needn't matter.

But it DOES matter! And, I didn't say that the Pro needed to be as thin and light as an AIR. Currently the Pro is difficult to carry around open and by one hand, and that's how I move it around. It does need to be lighter than it currently is. I have no issue with it's current geometry, but perhaps some people may.

I've not heard anyone bring this up, but a new external super-drive costs $100 and if the internal drive fails (as mine has done), it's $200 to replace. That's like a double "win" to me.
 
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I'm gonna go out there and say it (even though I'm gonna get massively flamed) because it's what I believe.

Very few of all you "Pro" users are really "Pro" users. Just because you use FCP doesn't make you a Pro.

It's true that REAL pro's don't use the internet, they burn DVDs. Like a scientist working at a radio telescope or the LHC who wants to send 300 TB of data to other scientists to do data mining. They don't e-mail, they burn tens of thousands of DVDs and physically mail them. But seriously, they aren't going to use a MBP to burn them.

I hate to break it to you, but the MacBook Pro is not made for true Professionals. That's the Mac Pro. The MBP is for consumers to use as their only computer, or semi-pro's to use as their second computer, or maybe true professionals to use as their home computer for generally non-pro things. THAT is why the MBP could very easily lose its internal optical drive early next year, because Apple knows that the vast majority of their customers may WANT an internal ODD, but don't NEED it. And Apple are generally very good at ignoring what people WANT, and giving them what they NEED.

Although of course that doesn't always work for everyone, and there are always a few random professionals for whatever reason need to use an MBP, or need things that others do not. Like I need to play Crysis on Very High at 1080p on my MBP. But Apple does not cater to these people.
 
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