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When will be a superdriveless macbook?

K

knucles

macrumors regular
Original poster
So the other day i've seen a unibody macbook disassembly and i was amazed, the computer itself it's 1/4 of the entire laptop (without the monitor of course), in fact the piece that i use the least (superdrive) was almost half of the space long.

This could be mean more battery - can you imagine a 14 hour long battery? or simple a thinner lighter cheaper notebook.

I'm an architect so i was stunned by the waste of some much (needed) space.
So the question is simple- Do you that it's going to happen any time soon?

Assuming that is inevitable...
 
really?

really? there's a macbook air? wow...

can you imagine a 14 hour long battery? or simple a thinner lighter cheaper notebook.
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It already exists - it's called a MacBook Air.
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yeah, i know. The macbook air has a 14 hour long battery and it's cheaper. like 0,6x cheaper.....

forget the lighteness and thiness and cheapness. one day or another macbook is going to lose the superdrive, and maybe keep the same design with more juice.

i was trying to talk about that.....what is apple doing with so much more space?
 
The day that optical discs die cant come soon enough. Many people are already at the point where it is superfluous technology, unfortunately the mass market is not there yet. If you want to make more productive use of that space you can remove the ODD and install a second hard drive in its place.
 
copykris

*you* don't use the superdrive so apple needs to make macbooks without one?

right
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i am just saying that it doesn't worth 40% of the space....

and if want to do a poll asking people if they would prefer superdrive or 6 more hours of battery in the next macbook revision i am pretty sure about the results.....

Do you conceive a macbook with blu-ray following the path of optical drives? i don't....

with 64gb pen drives now available optical drives(specially in this size) got to have their day counted at least in the laptop business where everyday you see new 10+ battery laptops
 
Problem is that the market for people who need a MacBook-size computer and a 14 hour battery if quite small because in most places you can plug in these days; if you need a battery, 4-5 hours is enough for most people.

Finally if you really need an external battery consider a refurbished MacBook Air and an external battery.
 
cube said:
Yes, that's the MBA, also known as Apple's netbook.
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No it's not a netbook. A netbook is cheap and low powered; the MacBook Air is neither. It's an ultraportable in line with existing computer like a Thinkpad X200.
 
cube said:
It doesn't have an optical drive, it doesn't have FireWire, it doesn't have gigabit ethernet, it has a bad USB port. It is crippled.
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It has a displayport connector that can drive an Apple Cinema Display, it can run a full, not watered down, version of OS X Snow Leopard, the USB port is a USB 2.0 port, which can be plugged into a USB hub (how is it bad?), ethernet and optical drive can be had via attached dongles. It also has a built-in iSight for videoconferencing. It only lacks firewire. Big whoop. Not crippled, IMO.
 
ss957916 said:
It already exists - it's called a MacBook Air.
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Dang, I'm way too slow today...

And I was even gonna say that I already had one - its called the old white Macbook with the COMBO drive. (Hey you did say "superdriveless" right?)
 
cube, less people use optical drives than one might think. The Unibody Macbook didn't have Firewire, yet nobody ever considered it a low-powered laptop. It has a powerful wireless card, which is much more popular than an ethernet port. And I just don't understand how the USB can be a 'bad' USB port. It's still USB 2.0, it works just as well as all the other Macs being sold with USB 2.0. You don't like the Macbook Air, we get that - seriously - but for others it is extremely useful for it's portability, even if it is a bit slower yet more expensive than the other Macbooks.
 
When hard drives/flash drives are cheap enough to replace an OS X install disk (like buying a "10.7 install kit" which comes with a bootable flash drive)

Good luck with ripping/backing that up (like I do with all my disks). It'll have encryption up the yams and sell for a premium.

Common folk (non haxor) still need another computer to reinstall OS X on an MBA, and most aren't savvy enough to make a disk image on an external drive.
 
Eddyisgreat said:
When hard drives/flash drives are cheap enough to replace an OS X install disk (like buying a "10.7 install kit" which comes with a bootable flash drive)

Good luck with ripping/backing that up (like I do with all my disks). It'll have encryption up the yams and sell for a premium.

Common folk (non haxor) still need another computer to reinstall OS X on an MBA, and most aren't savvy enough to make a disk image on an external drive.
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I'll use an external SuperDrive for that.
 
Is it so uncommon for people to want to watch DVDs on their laptop?

The main shortcoming of my iPhone as a supplement to using the computers at the library is that I can't watch movies on it on the spur of the moment.

The main reason why I "need" a laptop is so I can rent or borrow movies and have somewhere to watch them.

Yes, I'm aware of TVs, but those are distinctly less easily stuffed into my backpack or car.
 
Mactagonist said:
The day that optical discs die cant come soon enough. Many people are already at the point where it is superfluous technology, unfortunately the mass market is not there yet.
Click to expand...

So, many people are at that point but more are not?

If you want to make more productive use of that space you can remove the ODD and install a second hard drive in its place.
Click to expand...

I don't see that as more productive. My HD is not nearly full; I have no use for a second drive (and I've used laptops for many years and have never felt the need for RAID in one). Even if I only use my optical drive once in a while that's still more often than I would use a second HD.
 
copykris said:
*you* don't use the superdrive so apple needs to make macbooks without one?

right
Click to expand...
I hope you're not implying there shouldn't be an option of a MacBook (Pro) without an optical drive. I'm hoping for something like the Mac mini Server, a MacBook Pro with a second hard drive, a bigger battery, and/or faster components in the place of the optical drive.

knucles said:
i am just saying that it doesn't worth 40% of the space....
Click to expand...
Let me put it this way… the optical drive is the only part with any significant size in my MacBook Pro that I use rarely.

And I'll put it another way… certain parts of my MBP are "maxed out" frequently (or will be sometime soon) and could have been "higher performing" without the optical drive.

xizar said:
Is it so uncommon for people to want to watch DVDs on their laptop?
Click to expand...
Probably not but at least for me I would be fine with taking an external optical drive for these situations. I would have to take the disc with me anyway.
 
Let me put it this way… the optical drive is the only part with any significant size in my MacBook Pro that I use rarely.

And I'll put it another way… certain parts of my MBP are "maxed out" frequently (or will be sometime soon) and could have been "higher performing" without the optical drive.
Click to expand...

i would buy that.

So from those of you who believe in the optical drive death, any predictions about the timing?

ps. how can i wide this talk to the macbook pro forum without duplicating the thread?
 
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