GigaOM » optical drive

At long last: new iMacs almost here?

Erica Ogg — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 14:49:26 +0000

Apple’s sure taking its sweet time updating its desktop computers, isn’t it? Lightweight notebooks like the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are clearly Apple’s priority these days, but there is still a contingent of people who badly want to upgrade their all-in-one Apple desktops. For those of you who fit that description, it looks like good news is on its way. On Friday, Fox News’ Clayton Morris says he’s heard from “multiple” people that upgraded iMacs are “imminent.”

The last iMac upgrade occurred in May 2011.

What will see see in these new models? They could have Retina displays or something very close to it. Here are the other features Morris is told will be in the new desktops:

A few things we can count on in the new iMacs are new Ivy Bridge processors, improved graphics chips, USB 3.0, and expanded SSD capacities. Also look for a new slimmer design with Apple finally removing the optical drive from the side.

The lack of an optical disk drive might be surprising to some, but there have been clues this was coming. Eagle-eyed developers looking at OS X Mountain Lion code last month saw hints that Apple was heading this direction. The argument for no optical drive in laptops like the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro with Retina display was that it eliminated extra bulk. The argument for not including them in a desktop like the iMac? Apple considers it legacy technology. And Apple’s not the only one — Sony also plans to get out of the optical drive business.

When will we see these new devices? I don’t think Apple will take time away from a new iPhone/iOS 6 or smaller iPad event to talk all-in-one desktop refreshes. My best guess is the announcement will come via unceremonious press release with plenty of time before holiday shopping picks up.

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The Apple Roundup: Microsoft got iOS license with promise not to copy

Erica Ogg — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 18:17:14 +0000

With so many people writing about Apple, finding the best stories and reports isn’t easy. Here’s our daily pick of stories about the company from around the Web that you shouldn’t miss:

Apple revealed during a courtroom session in its Samsung trial today that it’s licensed some of its iOS design patents to Microsoft, but with the agreement that Microsoft not try to use them to clone any Apple devices, Reuters reports.
Technology Review looks at how far iPhone security has come since 2007. With app sandboxing and device encryption today, it is so secure that it’s mostly impossible for law enforcement to search iPhones for forensic evidence.
Like clockwork, BGR gets wind of AT&T wireless memo banning employee vacation from the third or fourth week of September through mid-October.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has been predicting the arrival of an Apple television for years, yet no such device has materialized. Dan Rayburn of StreamingMedia.com wonders why people still take Munster’s predictions seriously.
Apple’s already killed the optical drive in the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Computerworld looks at the evidence that Apple may be killing the optical drive in more Macs pretty soon.

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New Mac mini Runs OS X Server for $999

Charles Jade — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:08:10 +0000

Calling it a “new, mightier mini,” Apple (s aapl0 updated its smallest desktop with special attention to the optical drive. No, Blu-ray wasn’t added, rather Apple now offers a model with no optical drive at all.

However, contrary to rumors and wish-fulfillment on my part, Apple did not lower the price of the entry-level mini to $499.

On the low end, the $599 Mac mini has a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, up from 2.0GHz, and 2GB of RAM, up from a measly 1GB, and a 160GB hard drive, up from 120GB. You still get five USB ports and one FireWire, as well as NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics and a SuperDrive. The $799 model now has a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive. So, same price, a little faster, more memory, a bit more storage on the low-end. It’s not much of an update to talk about, if not for the Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server.

For $999, you lose the optical drive, but do get two 500GB hard drives (5400 RPM) on a Mac mini running OS X Server. The other specs match the $799 model. Essentially, for another $200 you are getting an additional 500GB of storage and OS X Server (upgrading the $799 model to one 500GB drive balances out against buying an external SuperDrive for the $999 model). But why?

Apple advertises this curious machine as a “simple” server “perfect for any small business or group,” but how many of those types of customers are going to drop a thousand dollars on a server? It seems like Apple missed an opportunity here, no doubt on purpose, to offer a media and backup server, an iServer for the rest of us. Of course, that would have been competing with the beleaguered “hobby” that is the Apple TV, so instead Apple has extended its overpricing of the Mac mini into the sever market.

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Are Optical Drives Going the Way of the Floppy?

Charles Moore — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:00:44 +0000

Computerworld’s Seth Weintraub thinks optical drives are going the way of the Dodo bird. He predicts the MacBook Air and white MacBook will get Secure Digital (SD) slots with their next updates (will the WhiteBook get another update?), and that SD may replace built-in DVD drives entirely on the next generation of MacBooks.

Why Otherwise Explain SD Bootability?

Why otherwise, Weintraub reasons, would Apple bother going to the trouble of explaining how to configure a bootable SD card, which it recently did in a Knowledge Base article. He deduces that the SD card is now a key element in Apple’s MacBook strategy, destined to replace optical drives on most Apple laptops going forward, which would logically mean system install/software restore data along with application software eventually being shipped on SD rather than optical media.

Those who really need DVD access would still be able to buy external USB Superdrives, like the one available for the optical drive-less MacBook Air.

This concept makes good sense to me, a nascent SD card fan. I mean, as Weintraub challenges, which would you rather have on your laptop — an easily rewritable, silent, 32GB SD card the size of a postage stamp that can hold about the same amount of data as eight DVDs, or a big, heavy, noisy, vibrating, power-sucking spinning disk with media that scratches easily, and which gobbles up about one-quarter of your computer’s internal volume?

“Optical is Over”

“It is a no-brainer,” declaims Weintraub, “optical is over.” I think he may be onto something here. Indeed, I’ve always thought CD and DVD ROM optical storage were second- or third-rate technology. They’re agonizingly slow. I absolutely revile having to boot from a DVD or CD and go to great pains to avoid it. Optical storage isn’t stably archival either, and the ability to rewrite is clumsy and lame at best. Floppies probably stayed beyond their best-before date even on the Mac, but at least they were easily erasable and rewritable, and I really missed that with the transition to optical, whose main advantages were cheapness combined with decent storage capacity. Then there are the manifold other shortcomings inventoried in the preceding paragraph. SD technology, which is already pretty impressive and has plenty of potential for further development, promises to be a much more satisfactory and versatile solution than optical drives.

SD data storage is somewhat more expensive than DVD at roughly $2 per gigabyte, but that’s not really a deal-killer issue. A full-length movie can fit on a 1GB SD card, and SD is a vastly superior medium for data backups. You can even use Time Machine with SD, which you can’t with DVDs. With 32GB SD media in the works (8GB is currently tops), the capacity headroom issue should be resolved.

Not Everyone Agrees

However, not everyone agrees. Prolific Irish blogger Thomas Fitzgerald thinks the optical drive isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, suggesting that Apple’s equipping the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pros with SD card slot is simply a matter of making life easier for users with digital cameras and for compatibility with the majority of PC laptops that come with card readers, rather than spearheading any gradualist agenda to displace the optical drive.

Fitzgerald points out that when Apple unveiled a floppy drive-less iMac in 1998, most software was already being shipped on CD-ROM, but to his knowledge (and mine), no major commercial software has ever shipped on SD media. Good point, but that could quickly change.

The Cost Factor

More compellingly, Fitzgerald notes that the OEM cost of 8GB SD cards currently runs in the neighborhood of $14, even for bulk purchases. Economies of scale with increased manufacturing volumes would help lower that somewhat, but unlikely ever to as cheap as DVD, which is indeed a significant stumbling-block to displacement of optical by SD media.

The Blu-ray Factor

Less convincingly, Fitzgerald also cites “the Blu-ray factor,” noting that the format continues to gain momentum, and contending Apple won’t be able to ignore it forever. I’m skeptical. Most Mac users are getting along quite happily without Blu-ray, and it’s really a peripheral issue, both figuratively and literally, since you can buy a Blu-ray drive if you really want one. As Fitzgerald concedes, DVD still accounts for over 75 percent of video content sold (although he says Blu-ray sales have increased over 230 percent year over year). However, the media cost factor is far less significant for movies than for software packaging, and one can easily envision SD supplanting or supplementing Blu-ray and DVD both.

What do you think? Are built-in optical drives lame ducks, or does the optical category — DVD or Blu-ray still have a future in Apple laptops? External DVD drives are already a fait accompli on the MacBook Air. Will it spread to the larger MacBooks?

Photo courtesy of Marco Wessel.

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