iMac, Mac Pro Rumored to Drop Optical Drives

[captainblacko]

i got rid of my optical drive back in 2010. I might sue apple for stealing my design.

 

[theabsinthehare]

[citation][nom]pablo_max[/nom]I do not use my DVD drive too often, but a few times a month. For example, when I want to transfer music to my cars HD or update the firmware on the navigation. These things need DVDs. Sure, I could order one from the dealer and pay 50 bucks. Or I could burn it myself. My wife watched DVDs on her laptop all the time. Nearly every single day in fact. Keep in mind that just because you don't use something, does not mean that every other person in the world is like you.[/citation]

By your own logic, just because you use something, does not mean that every other person in the world is like you. You are apparently the minority, so why should the majority have to pay for a built in drive they won't use, when the minority can buy an aftermarket one for $30?

These are the same arguments I saw (at this same website) back when Apple dropped optical drives from the MacMini, similar arguments back when Apple dropped the floppy drive when it introduced the iMac, and the same arguments I saw back when Apple introduced the Macbook Air, which everyone was DAMN SURE was going to bomb since "Nobody would want a notebook with no optical drive and such small amount of storage, regardless of how thin." Then the ultrabook craze EXPLODED.

The trend I see is that Apple makes a design decision to drop a piece of near obsolete hardware and a bunch of PC users who aren't going to buy a Mac anyway say "That's idiotic! We still need those!!!" Then Apple makes a billion dollars selling their products, the buyers of which don't miss the removed component, PC manufacturers copy the move and the cycle repeats.

 

[jcoultas98]

Sometimes its painful to innovate.

 

[GreaseMonkey_62]

So, does anyone else uses their optical drives?? I don't.. And for more than 2 years already..

Well I happen to use mine on a regular basis.

 

[pharoahhalfdead]

[citation][nom]theabsinthehare[/nom]My apologies, I forgot to address your following sarcastic remarks. USB 2.0 flash drive read speeds are 7MBps, high enough for even uncompressed Bluray bitrate, let alone H.264 encoded video.I do know that ISPs have bandwidth caps, mine is one of them and it's set at 250GB. You'd have to stream 47.5 hours of full HD content running at 12Mbps in one month to hit that cap. Most streaming services like Netflix only use 5Mbps or less for their HD content (because most "HD" video is 720p, not 1080p. The exceptions are the two series you already mentioned, Planet Earth and Frozen earth, and a small handful of others.) So, it becomes something more like 114 hours of HD video a month. I have a family of 5, and we all use Netflix individually, often watching HD shows, on top of regular data use across five computers and several mobile devices and we have yet to hit our data cap.You can point out theoretical flaws all you want, but real world evidence shows that optical drives are just completely unnecessary for the majority of computer users.[/citation]

So in order to compress the files you FIRST have to buy the discs, then you can compress them to whatever quality you want, but FIRST you need the disc. Theoreticals are amazing, since that is what you are proclaiming. Personally I would like to see movies sold on flash memory (legally), it would save a lot of space, but if they are, it's not mainstream yet.

Flash drives might sell for $30, but they will add in the price of the movies also, so add in an some extra money. I've bought plenty of HD movies from Amazon Instant Video, put them on drive, and played them. The first episode of Life in Cold Blood is 1gb, and that's not even HD. The compression Amazon uses is not of the highest quality, sometimes, it's not even very good. Streaming maybe fine on occasion, but I prefer to own the movie.

About bandwidth caps, we had 5 as well before I moved, 2 laptops, a desktop, and 3 smart phones, and a PS3, and yes, we hit our cap more than once, but luckily we never got a letter. People do more on the internet than just watch movies. Last month I did a clean install of Windows and redownloaded half my games from Steam and that takes up 123gb. Personally I don't care if the optical drives are dropped by Apple, bcuz I will never own one, however, you only assume you speak for the rest of the world when you say, "real world evidence shows that optical drives are just completely unnecessary for the majority of computer users." I would like to see the surverys you have taken, otherwise you have a presupposition which can not be proven.

 

[eddieroolz]

Considering Apple has been more or less at the forefront of phasing many thing out (sometimes with disasterous results) this should have been obvious.

 

[Vladislaus]

[citation][nom]theabsinthehare[/nom]The bitrate of both Planet Earth and Frozen Earth on Bluray is 35Mbps. The entire series' are 550 minutes for Planet Earth and 350 minutes for Frozen Earth.This results in a total uncompressed size of 140GB for Planet Earth and 48GB for Frozen Earth.H.264/MPEG-4 can encode 35MBps content down to an bitrate of 12Mbps without appreciable loss of detail, pending you have a decent GPU to decode it (Which I assume you would if you are watching Bluray in the first place). This results in a total size of 48GB for the entire Planet Earth series, and 30GB for Frozen Earth. Planet Earth could easily fit on a 64GB flash drive, which can be had for ~$30, and Frozen Earth could fit on a 32GB drive which sells for ~$18, compared to the $12 you'd pay for the 3 single use DL BD-R discs or the $30 for the 3 rewritable DL BD-RE discs necessary, on top of the ~$60-100 for the burner itself and the risk of possible failed burn coasters.Research! It's your friend.[/citation]
[citation][nom]theabsinthehare[/nom]My apologies, I forgot to address your following sarcastic remarks. USB 2.0 flash drive read speeds are 7MBps, high enough for even uncompressed Bluray bitrate, let alone H.264 encoded video.I do know that ISPs have bandwidth caps, mine is one of them and it's set at 250GB. You'd have to stream 47.5 hours of full HD content running at 12Mbps in one month to hit that cap. Most streaming services like Netflix only use 5Mbps or less for their HD content (because most "HD" video is 720p, not 1080p. The exceptions are the two series you already mentioned, Planet Earth and Frozen earth, and a small handful of others.) So, it becomes something more like 114 hours of HD video a month. I have a family of 5, and we all use Netflix individually, often watching HD shows, on top of regular data use across five computers and several mobile devices and we have yet to hit our data cap.You can point out theoretical flaws all you want, but real world evidence shows that optical drives are just completely unnecessary for the majority of computer users.[/citation]
Where to begin...

First bluray discs don't use any kind of lossless codecs let alone use uncompressed streams, and the reason is obvious, because you couldn't fit 10 minutes of a 1080p@24fps video on a BD-DL. Blurays can use MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and SMPTE VC-1 streams, all of them are lossy codecs. The most common codec used in blurays is the MPEG-4 AVC, or like you called it, H.264/MPEG-4.

You also state that changing the bit-rate by three times less while still maintaining the same codec there's no appreciable drop in quality. Perhaps if you watch on the tiny screen of a laptop, but on a bigger TV you most definitely notice the drop in quality, specially in the darker parts of the movies.

But you're right that in the real world optical drives are unnecessary, because most people care much more about convenience than they do care about quality. This is why the SACD and DVD-Audio (just to name a few) failed and why Bluray will fail.