New Mac mini lacks optical drive as Apple continues to ditch the disc - Page 4

except a large number of isp's are going to a data cap in usa because of these high demands. Cheaper than upgrading networks. Never mind those of us who live in waterbound countries with slow, expensive broadband with low caps.

With magic. And a screwdriver.


Not if there's no OS on the drive at all I can't. With an optical drive and a DVD I just reinstall.


CDs are still the easiest way to give somebody some music, especially when you don't know what sort of technology they have. None of the "music social" features of various products have really caught on. CDs are ubiquitous.


I disagree. If I own the DVD, I can rip it. That's fair use in my book.


I thought Apple wanted to reduce the number of wires cables and clutter in my life, not increase them.


I disagree. The floppy was of limited utility when Apple ditched it. CDs and DVDs are still being sold in vast quantities, for multiple purposes, and are still a very useful way of communicating data between people and machines. Netflix is one of the largest entertainment providers in the US, and most of its 'good stuff' is on DVD. The Mac mini has been very popular for use as a home entertainment hub. As such, it really should have a DVD drive.

You forgot the part where he says "Stop. Trolling." to anyone who questions Apple in any way or has the slightest disagreement with what Apple does.

Also the part where he says "Get. Over. It." to people who disagree with Apple's decisions but then can't follow the same advice himself over an Apple Cinema Display he bought last year.

You don't punch kids in the face when you run out of ice cream to sell. You buy more ice cream the next day and sell more.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827151231

Can everyone shut the hell up now?

If I opt for the faster of the two Mac minis (the 2.5GHz one, not the 2.3GHz one ) I get 4GB of RAM instead of 2 and a discrete Radeon GPU rather the other mini's impotent Intel integrated graphics. I would opt for the 750GB drive, more for its 7200RPM speed than the extra 250GB (which is nice just the same).

I am perfectly capable of buying my own mouse or magic mouse or magic trackpad or some combination, and I am perfectly capable of choosing my own less-expensive wired Apple keyboard which brings the Mac mini up to a total of $1,396.

And I am perfectly capable of buying my own Apple 27" monitor for $999, for a total of $2,395. And finally, I'm perfectly capable of buying an external DVD burner at additional cost.

Or, I could go here.

I am a little surprised by this given the large amount of users out there who have these and use them as HTPCs. They rejoiced at the addition of the HDMI port now they have to lament the loss of the DVD drive. I suspect the previous model will be popular on Ebay for some time to come.

As for me, I've been an Apple TV user for a while now and can't complain. Digital media is the future. I predict the end of the disc (CD/DVD/BLURAY) before the end of the decade.

In Canada, pay per use internet is on the horizon. The internet companies were pushing for it months ago and then there was a huge public backlash. Because of the election, many politicians made it an issue and it never happened. However now with the election over it's on the table again.

Nope. He also didn't pay for the shipping costs of getting boxed software sent to you in the mail. (or if you prefer the cost of gas to drive to a store to buy it or for you trendy urban types the caloric resources needed to power your human legs to walk yourself there)

What a bastard.

The trouble is that Apple doesn't have anything mid range for me to spend more money on. Now in order to have an internal optical drive I have to jump up to professional grade and shell out $2499.

The new models now shipping come with an internet recovery system - yes even if there is no OS on the drive at all.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...ss_repair.html

"If your Mac problem is a little less common your hard drive has failed or youve installed a hard drive without OS X, for example Internet Recovery takes over automatically,"

No. There is another.

http://www.apple.com/imac/design.html

I was waiting for the new macmini with thunderbolt to replaces my g4 macmini. Now i wont be doing that. I have my macmini plugged up to my tv, it is used for everything and watching dvds. Wow, on top of the machine not having a keyboard, mouse or monitor it has no optical drive. This thing should cost $499, why because i have to supply everything else. \

I promise I'm not trying to be mean here, but I get the feeling you're either old or out of touch. We all grow older and things change. Fighting it is of little use. I used to own boxes and boxes of floppies. When Apple introduced the first Mac without a floppy drive, I gasped, but this latest change is one most of us saw coming.

Everybody I know is swapping files on SD cards and flash drives these days. SD cards, in particular, are becoming... what was that word you used? Oh yes: ubiquitous. Burning a CD kind of feels nostalgic.

It isn't that the CD/DVD drive is going away quite yet. It's more a case of it not being an essential part of a computer anymore. For around $50 you can get an external drive. That's what I plan on doing when I buy a new Mini. Like you, I'm not ready for the CD to go away yet. But do I need one built into my Mac? Not so much. I just need one around every now and then.

Another change we're going to see is the end of the Mac Pro as we know it. Not yet, but soon. A decade ago, we needed those huge beasts to house our stuff. I had a G4 with an internal Zip drive (HA!) a CD/DVD, plus a pair of internal drives, plus a PCI card for SCSI and three more dedicated to a Pro Tools (pro audio) rig. Now, I don't even want internal drives at all. I have four external drives stashed behind my desk and I LOVE it. If the promise of Thunderbolt holds true, we're really just going to need a tiny beefy Mini to connect to our external stuff.

Yes, external stuff adds clutter, but it also lowers cost for us and it makes upgrading so much easier.

I won't be surprised if this spreads to other countries, simply because the companies that provide internet services are greedy bastards. On the other hand, it's good that there are companies like Apple and Netflix (among others) moving over to an internet delivery model because their model only works so long as consumers can afford internet delivery of content. In other words, expect companies like Apple to fight for a more free internet. And that will be good for us all.

The external Superdrive only works with the MacBook Air, by design. Plugging it into another Mac does nothing (a kernel log says it is not compatible).

Congratulations, you're great at it without even trying.


I was happy when they ditched the floppy. Floppies were unreliable and held very little data. But the optical drive has many years of life left in it.


I've never had anyone pass me an SD card. Last time I wanted to use a thumb drive I had to go ask everyone in the office, and only a couple people had them. Most people have several devices capable of reading a CD. That's my point: if I want to hand some music to someone, I don't want to get into a format discussion with them. You don't see street musicians selling SD cards.


Bull. When Netflix stops mailing DVDs, then maybe. Oh right, go to the library's media section (as I've been doing lately) and look around: audio CDs, DVDs etc etc.


You must be old. Old and mean. Anyway, if you're 'not ready for the CD to go away' then, wouldn't you want one to come with your computer? Why clutter things up?


Well, I do. I use my optical drives constantly. I wore the one on my MacBook out. My wife uses the one on her MacBook Pro all the time as well.


Good riddance. However there are some down-sides to external drives: cable clutter and noise being the primary ones.

Thunderbolt can carry 10W of power, but you're right, things like a video card would need much more. Perhaps my dream of modular mini would get a little messy.

DVD drives on the other hand, can run on USB power. Pretty simple to buy one of the many external DVD burners out there, put it on top of the mini, and use a short USB cable to plug it in to minimize clutter. I don't see why people view the lack an internal optical drive as such a big deal.

A flash drive would do the same thing, only faster. I heard you'll be able to buy the OS on those next month. I know you were referring to the internet restore for macs with Lion already installed, not buying a new copy of the OS, but even if they choose to include physical restore media with each mac, it would be better to put it on a flash drive. It's certainly not a reason to keep the optical drive.

As an aside. PC vendors have long forgone including restore disks with new PCs, if the hard drive crashes on those, you're in no better shape either. Even though they have an optical drive, they no disk to put in it. So you'd have to buy a new copy of windows, which costs more than a Lion flash drive.

Edit: Turns out, Internet Recovery lets you install onto a completely blank hard drive on the new Macs. Both AI and macrumors are now reporting that. No worries.

It's $100 less than it was yesterday, the CPU is better, the GPU can be better, the RAM is faster, the hard drive is larger, and the ports are modern. And all you can do is complain. An optical drive is $30. Heck, a standalone DVD player is $30.

So you have a mini the kicks a G5's butt, which was a pro level machine back in the day. You want to run Adobe Creative suite, and Cinema 4D.

How do you load that stuff on your new cool super mini?

Only if it doesn't cost much as multiple internal drives...

I still prefer multiple drives. First off, not all my computers are in the same room. Carrying drive around the house or run to other part of house (where drive is sitting) to pop in blank media is sort of... uncomfortable.

In addition, if you have only one shared drive (and that one fails), you suddenly go from 100% functional to 0% functional ODs. According to Murphy's law, you will need to burn CD/DVD or watch something OD based when that happens

Unless your other Mac is Air.

So the plan for getting consumers to migrate to a new paradigm is to require they have older "obsolete" hardware, so they can load their latest software on the "newer, better" hardware.

I don't get this one.

Agree. I'm all for ditching old technologies, but lets make them completely needless before killing them.

Floppy disk was hanging around long time after it was rendered useless, before manufacturers finally dropped it from new units. I'd like to see ODDs around until all - or, at least, majority of software and media starts shipping on Flash disks or some other format.

Is it possible you never-ever get, say, a gift music CD or DVD movie that you want to play on your computer or convert to format you can use on iPod, iPad..?

Most people I know still do. Number of them are still burning video DVDs for their parents or relatives (usual stuff - baby's first steps, family reunions etc).

Had a quick look around - nope, they are still alive and well. Interestingly enough, people are also still buying and renting them. Guess not everyone was blessed with exposure to your wisdom.

Good thing Apple is, then. Because we're not going backward from here.

Because only 99% of computers come with ODDs nowadays. Makes sense.

Market is still selling OODs, you know. Actually number of desktops without OOD is almost non-existing. Save for new MM.

So I agree one should follow market. Mac Mini is the one that doesn't in this case.

When I got my last computer I was set on getting a DVD drive but it's been a year and I haven't put a single disc in it yet. So I guess I'm fine with it not having one

You know, you don't need a mac mini to play DVDs from netflix.. a $30 DVD player will do just fine. Also, why don't you just stream, since you have a netflix subscription? Their new DVD rates are ridiculous. I don't think your usage scenario is as common as you think.

Same here. Still not ok with the lack of an optical drive in a laptop, at least macbook pro (I hope that option of an internal drive will be available on them).

Let's hope so because there are still people who use idvd (among other optical drive use), thank you very much. What about the imacs, will they have that configuration as well ?

It also works with the new Minis now. It's even a BTO item when purchasing a Mini (see for yourself).

Sorry, no there's not. With my eyesight I have problems with glare. I've even gone to doctors because of it. No matte screen means no iMac.

Apple did this fourteen years ago and you've already forgotten?

Ok, so I get that the thing is $100 cheaper, but I have always felt that the Mini was priced just a bit too high. I know you can get external drives (i have an external BR hooked up to my iMac), but I do understand the feeling of those miffed by the exclusion of an optical drive. I fully get it on a laptop machine, but just don't understand it on the desktop. Last years model of the Mini, they offered with an OD (the standard model), and without(the server version). Why couldn't they have continued the same system, and just allow the those who want the server chassis (space for two drives) to order it with the non-server version of OS X.

For those that are claiming that the Optical Disc is dead, can you please explain to me why the blank disc section in the PC deptartment of the largest electronics retailer in the US is constantly needing to be restocked? I work in the Computer dept of said store and I can assure you that Optical Discs are not going anywhere for a while longer. Sure, I get that times are changing, but some here seem to be stuck in their own little part of technology lala land and are clueless on what the real pace of change is out there. "stream this, stream that" is a load of BS right now for many, and lets face it, streaming leaves much to be desired. Are there people out there that have the dream setup and a faultless internet connection? Sure, but that doesn't mean that it is the norm. I was just down at my cousins house last week, who has "high speed" cable internet, and we were trying to watch a half hour SD show on netflix that kept pausing and rebuffering every 3-5 minutes. Then there are those who have several hundred disc movie collections. Even if another new DVD was never created, the number of discs currently in circulation, coupled with the length of time a disc can last, means that the OD method of viewing video content will be here for some time.

It always amazes me when people get annoyed with Apple for doing stuff like this. This is what Apple is famous for doing!


Apple famously doesn't give consumers what they want. Like a stern parent it gives them what it thinks they should want. We're too old for dummies (pacifiers) and nappies (diapers) and Apple is taking them away and making us use the grown up toilet - metaphorically speaking. Sure we'll lose the convenience of being able to pee whenever and wherever we like, but nappy rash will be a thing of the past

Apple's telling us that at this point CDs and DVDs are just a comfort blanket, and we can let them go. In fact it's taking the blanket outside and burning it.

An important difference is one is an intel Mac running Mac OS X and the other is an iOS device running on an ARM processor. So, for instance, if you need to run a Windows program there is a solution for Mac Mini but not Apple TV. More generally any app that benefits from a mouse/keyboard interface fits on a Mac Mini but not so well on Apple TV.