Apple Says Optical Drives Were Holding It Back

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motshardware

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I still want optical media as SOME of my computers don't have hard drives! That's right, I use live-cds and have the entire OS run in ram. This also includes my apple macbook and mac mini. Without the optical drive I'll stop buying apple hardware.

Also I still buy CDs, DVDs, and Blu Ray
 
[citation][nom]wemakeourfuture[/nom]Need my optical. No better way to share large amounts of pictures and home videos with other family and friends.Plus, my DVD / Blu-Ray provides great archiving, have had way too many backup harddrives fail on me to trust them without some form of redundancy.[/citation]

actually there is a better way . its called a flash a flash drive :)
 

wiyosaya

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[citation][nom]jacobdrj[/nom]I'm sorry, but the 'your holding it wrong' thing is kind of moot when a brand new DVD out of the shrinkwrap fails on multiple DVD drives... And it doesn't just happen once...Optical media is flaky. Flash is not. HDD is even a better option. Optical media is where good data goes to die.[/citation]
Once, I had a DVD fail. What did I do? I took it back to the store where I bought it, and the store promptly gave me another copy - which worked fine. All legitimate stores where DVD/Blu-Ray discs are sold will exchange defective discs.

Other than that singular instance, which was easily resolved, I have never had a DVD, or the much more complicated in terms of software and hardware requirements "Blu-Ray," fail out of the box; judging from the responses to your post, most other people also have not experienced what you are experiencing.

There are, however, junk players on the market that tend to have higher failure rates. Perhaps what you are experiencing is a hardware problem. I suggest trying your out-of-box failure on another DVD player, or returning / exchanging the bad disc.

As to "you're holding it wrong," I rented a Blu-Ray from RedBox last weekend. The first thing I did is examine the disc, and when I found fingerprints that might muck up playback, well, soap, water, towel = problem solved. Some people have little understanding that getting oily fingerprints all over the disc is a recipe for failure.

BTW - crApple is the one that started the whole "you're holding it wrong" thing with their crApple crapTenna design. IMHO, that particular instance only helped to solidify, in my mind, that crApple is only interested monetarily gouging their customers with their garbage products. As I see it, crApple is only interested in serving their customers what is in the best interests of crApple's bank account. That kind of a policy tends to drive companies into the ground, IMHO.
 

jacobdrj

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In fairness, CDs do seem more reliable than DVDs, but are still far from reliable archival storage medium, even when the greatest care is taken.

When designing something, you have to take into account how people use it. If you have to examine the disk every time you use it, it already points to a serious design flaw. Even when you examine it, if there is something wrong with the substrate (which happens far too often) or if your hardware gets even slightly dirty (read, used) than all bets are off.

The fault tolerance for optical media is unacceptable coming from where we were (Magnetic Tape) to where we are going (cloud based storage, flash and HDD media storage).
 

apone

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-our customers have given us a lot of trust.

Nice try Mr. Schiller, but Apple has been dictating to customers what hardware they're supposed to want for quite some time now (ahem, one-button mouse, slow 5400rpm HDD's on Macbook line, iPhone 5 only NOW receiving 4G, etc.)
 

john_4

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Since I don't watch movies on my laptop or computer I don't have a problem with them removing them but just make sure to continue to sell external ones, at least as long as cars continue to have CD/MP3 disk players in them.
 

john_4

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[citation][nom]Estix[/nom]1. Remove Optical Drive from laptop2. Raiseprice of laptop asit is now thinner due to lack of optical drive3. Sell external optical drive (bonus points if you can force the consumer to spend more on an obscure interface like thunderbolt)[/citation]
The removal of the drive you forget that they also replaced the platter HD with SSD drives and are moving to Retina Displays.
 

john_4

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[citation][nom]captainblacko[/nom]should have read the full comment before posting haha.i removed my CD/DVD drive 2 years ago. Only get my games from Steam and Origin these days.[/citation]
Origin tool, you probably think cloud storage is safe too.
 

danwat1234

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I agree with Apple on this one, optical is not used much these days and for the rare times it is, whip out a USB bluray burner. They take up way too much space in a laptop chassis. I don't agree with the itunes and apples devices though.
 

burmese_dude

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Apple should really sleep with ATT, like two stinky pimps.

With ISP like ATT capping data if you have their services, you can really watch a bluray quality movie several times a month on your PC, and in the future UHD 4K movies, probably once or twice a month. With optical drives, discs, you can get them delivered to home without having to worry about data cap.

Apple has always been behind technology and overcharged for it. When PC's rolling out DDR3, they charge DDR2 at a premium rate of expensive DDR3. Same thing for processor. PC's always ahead, cheaper, and Apple would charge premium for old tech and iSheeps gladly pay for them anyway.

Stay the fcuk behind the technology wave, Apple, but don't slow down the technology you resent.
 

deksman

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Actually... I agree with Apple on this one.
The ODD is quite frankly outdated technology (that includes BluRay) that should have been phased out the moment USB flash drives of sufficient capacity came to market.

The amount of storage you can get on a USB flash drive is much larger along with speeds (plus re-writable unlike majority of CD's/DVD's/BLU-RAY's), not to mention that those drives are far less prone to damage compared to optical media (which can get inconvenient to carry around, and lets not forget the infamous situations when ODD's went bonkers and refused to read the media in the first place).
Heck, my flash key of 8GB ended up in the washing machine a few times (by accident) and it still works like a brand new stick - can't say the same would apply to a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray.

Getting rid of the ODD in laptops can easily result in more options for cooling, and/or packing more hardware inside.
Of course, both could have been done a long time ago with orders of magnitude more impressive technology had we been using superior synthetic materials (but Capitalism is more concerned with profits, so let's table this one).
 

jonny_76

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Firstly, I am not an Apple fanboy but am in the industry and am agnostic towards technology.
Most people don't know that players, recorders and systems already exist to stream full HD movies off of tiny SD flash cards. I have seen them and they are fantastic ! Absolutely the same as if watching from a rotating dvd. There already are proposals to make kiosks, like RedBox currently, whereby the masses rent prerecorded content on a USB stick or a SD flash card.

Hence in some sense, Apple is being bold and moving in the right direction towards smaller physical media. Imagine the day when 'huge' , power hungry rotating dvd players are obsolete. Imagine the day when huge amounts of affordable flash memory is available. It can and will happen.
 

southernshark

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I agree with Apple on this one, and I own no Apple products (and never will).

The days of the big tower are coming to an end.

Small/ light weight computers look better and fit into most living rooms better (or mine anyway...). If you need an optical drive for storage just buy an external drive. It does not need to be in your PC.
 

snowzsan

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This is actually good to hear! I personally still have a disc drive in my Desktop but there are no space/power constraits associate with that, obviously. But in terms of usage? It's not even plugged in internally. I haven't had a reason to do so either. Given the size of modern flash drives, there is no reason you would still be using spinning media short of a mechanical HDD, which are inexpensive enough to consider them a valid replacement for archiving over spinning media.

It's a step in the right direction. If you're still using spinning media and find this absurd, there's a solution. Don't purchase the product or buy an external drive. I'm no fanboy of apple but I'm glad to hear someone took the step to dump support for it.
 

robochump

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I prefer solid state storage or view movies via interwebz (iTunes, Steam, Hulu, etc) but optical has its uses *especially for MSDN subscribers...lol. If you need optical just get ext optical drive.

Even though I am an Apple user I do see ulterior motives for not having optical drives such as pushing consumers to iTunes, App store, and cloud. iPads as we all know are extremely popular and I have no need for optical drive so we can live without it. Lastly Apple design is very minimalist that is difficult to push the boundaries with optical drives.
 

goodegg

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So many of you are missing the point.

Optical drives are NOT going away. Apple has simply decided to save the size, weight and power requirements of including them in their products. You can still buy an external unit. You can still purchase and backup all of your media on optical mediums.

This is EXACTLY the same thing that happened in the 90's when Apple shipped the first computers with no Floppy Drive. It took several years, but floppys were phased out for a superior media.

This IS the right direction, whether you want to admit it or not. No tablet and few ultrabooks have optical drives. Fewer and fewer laptops will have them in the next 2 years when they discover the benefits over the negatives. Optical media will die. And that's ok. All of your old stuff will still exist. You will be able to buy an optical drive for many MANY years. Just like I can go down to my CompUSA and still buy a floppy drive. I'm certain I haven't used a floppy in over 15 years, but I still have many.

In fact, I still have 5 1/4" Dos disks.

In short... get over it. The technology isn't going anywhere. Not for a LONG time. But Apple is once again, leading the push to better ways. Your devices can be smaller, lighter and more efficient without an optical drive. And it will ALWAYS have the ability to add or plug into a reader/recorder so you can continue to use your older technology.

Apple isn't evil here. They're pushing forward when PC users and makers would be content with living in the DOS/monochrome VGA/IRQ availability/Serial Port/1.44MB floppy days of computing.
 

colson79

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[citation][nom]nao1120[/nom]Optical Drives are handy for multiple reasons people left above. They should always be a standard in any device. USB is handy for boot sticks, or whatever. But in the end, its nice to load a old movie without the bullshit.The combo bluray burner/dvd burner should be available to everyone, Period. Until there is a time where its not longer needed. If they are worried about copyright stuff, Well people can just as easily do that on a stick, or a card, or a external HDD for that matter.They just want more control to force people to buy certain components and force people to go see apple genius' to fix everything that fails. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out....More money in repairs equals more money to the company. Same as a car. Were being controlled to force the power user to bring it in.... Its ridiculous. (glad i don't own one)[/citation]

This is actually incorrect information. All you need to reinstall the OS on a newer apple computer is an internet connection.
 

erichm5

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I'm all on board for dropping the expectation of having optical drives in laptops. Give me a bigger battery or a thinner/lighter machine. I can carry an external in my bag if I think I'll need it.

For a desktop though? An oem blueray/dvd-r is a staple of anything I build. I dont use it often, but when a buddy wants to take a file home from my place, I can burn a disc. When I dig up an old game on CD, I can pop it in and play.
 

N0Spin

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Which makes more sense?

Buy a(a few) terabyte drive(s) a year and cross your fingers?
OR
Write to permanent, verified non-magnetic media which you can put safely in a binder or on racks in hard cases?

(This seems rather obvious to me...)

Just because someone at Apple says it, doesn't make it reality or the best usage scenario in my opinion. Just because there are sheeple customers with very limited needs, or who are too simple to realize they're being duped or having their needs and desires shaped by a company (with monetary motivations), which is in bed with Hollywood and has a vested interest in leveraging DRM crippled products via their 'secure' ecosystem to a bunch of locked in users, doesn't mean the thinking world is going to adopt the idea.

I, for one, value freedom of choice, like the ability to record things (or series) I pay for on cable and the freedom to watch them when and where I want (in full glorious HD)...and guess what, without needing an always on internet, cable or wireless connection (and without needing ever increasing terabytes of fallible magnetic disk based storage).

I also value the ability to back 25GB (of data/music/movies/whatever) at a time off to blu-ray media for archiving, for a mere $1 a disk or 2 with a duplicate. Contrary to the naysayers, unless the current generation of Blu-ray writable media proves to be abysmally poor in the long term I expect that making 2 verified copies will more than suffice for 10+ years of careful storage, unlike any magnetic media I have ever owned or relied on.

What Schiller says may be fine for the neophytes using iTunes on an iMac/tablet crowd, but for any photographers, graphic artists, content creators or anyone who routinely deals with large files they created or own, and has the need or desire to save them, preserve backup copies before making changes etc, this idea is not going to float...

As far as business goes (just pick from a whole host of industries), from graphic artists, to video editors, architects, or engineers, banks, data processors and record keepers...buying enough disk or memory based storage to archive terabytes of data for long term is not practical, and if you work in IT and have had computers for any length of time and do anything with your systems, you will also run into the same issues.

Lack of truly viable long term storage will only work in a marketplace the where convenience of the 'leasing model' and slick polished toys dominate the need to keep and 'own things' or preserve valuable work product.






 

N0Spin

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Mark my words....if this thinking caries over to their Power Mac line they might as well give up that market as those users will not be impressed and PCs can already run just about all the productivity software Macs do.
 

f-14

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such paranoia, relax guys, i've been saying the same thing for the last 2 years.
SD or memory cards or usb memory sticks, wth is optical media good for any more?
it's slow it's clunky and costs too much for it's limited features. it's dying faster than the floppy drive.
 

nebun

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old technologies???? I don't see apple selling software on thumb drives....people still use dvd and dvd burners every day to back-up data.....info stored on a dvd will outlive hdds....and I don't have to worry if my dvd case drops
 

damianrobertjones

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"The Apple executive also said, naturally, that it's better to buy movies through iTunes, subsequently having them available to watch on all of a user's Apple devices."

Ba haa haaa!! ...Will you actually then own the movie? Does it come with or without DRM? Please don't fall into the trap
 
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