This way of accessing the disk will be used in a tablet-computer, where one is already holding the computer in one arm and stylus or other (finger?) input device with the other arm.
It also seems ridiculus to keep making these laptops ever more thinner. They are thin enough as the need to be, withouth getting lost in a stack of paper. I would prefer they kept the same size and crammed technology into the case faster (and cheaper) instead of reducing the volume and keeping out of the computer some essential elements (modem, battery, iPod connector etc).
Who needs the future MBP to be less than 1" thin? If it gets to thin it'll be too fragile for practical use anyhow. I'd like to see a MBP that could stand a bit more rough and tumble.
the odd is under the keyboard and mouse pad, I agree thie design here may just be for patent use and not find it's way into final product. If it does, well I don't think many people would go for that, after the slot loading drives it looks too cumbersome and it looks like a copy of a portable cd player type. Cheap.
I'd have to say this will likely never be produced. I agree with previous posts that highlight Apple's attention to detail and convenience. It's just so far off base from their typical production designs. If they do produce an "ultra-portable" my vote is for an external ODD solution. Although they are awkward to carry around if you travel, it's sort of balanced by the fact the a lot of users don't use the ODD super-often.
On a personal note, If this does end up getting produced in the described fashion, it will be a sad day for Apple's design department and myself as a user. One of the things that caused me to switch is the simplistic/elegant combination of Apple's hardware and OS. I think that it's one of those things where, put together, they are more than the sum of their parts. Take away any one thing, and it doesn't fly.
Why can't the whole thing pop out? Like there's a circular plate and the whole mechanism is attached to it and can move up and down, and when you open it, the plate just pops a bit and there's a little button lever in the middle that allows you to slide the disc out just a little to grab it from the side. No?
In other words, currently you have horizontal eject in Macs, why not do a vertical one?
How about a variation on the pop and rotate door? Forget the pop. Just mount the motor and spindle on a section of the underside. When you need access, just swing it out horizontally to the side, using a pivot located on one of the back corners of the notebook. This way, users wouldn't have to flip the notebook upside down. Well, maybe flip the disc upside down, so that the pickup assembly can remain in the main chassis and not on the swing-out portion.
Whatever the form factor, I wish it were a Blu-ray burner, but that probably won't happen for another year or two.
Or build it into the back of the LCD in the center top region. Not a bad location for a top facing slot-loading drive. I'd rather add .35" to my display thickness then have to juggle my notebook when trying to install a disc.
or they could do an LCD/side load variation on the iMac theme...
I think the pop and rotate idea is a great one. This notebook would be about 3/4" thick and about 11" widescreen. Picking it up and turning it over would be as easy as turning a slice of toast over to butter the other side (if you were into that). I'm right-handed, so I'd grab with my left hand flip it over, rest on my left arm, press the door with my right hand, rotate out of the way, pop in the disk, and pop the door closed, I think that would be easy peazy and more than acceptable.
as someone said, i don't see a reason to go much thinner.... just yet.
the goal should be lighter and lighter.... and if we go thinner we also have to reduce the thickness of the battery.....
although this is something to be pursued eventually, there are bigger fish to fry.
i think one thing that adds unnecessary thickness is the different connectors: RJ45, USB, FW400/800, DVI etc.
i'd like them to adopt maybe industry-wdie standardizations for all these that are smaller and thinner. if they were smaller and thinner we could reduce the space they take up in the machine which would allow for other stuff or more connections (goodbye USB and FW hubs)
The DVI connection is unnecessarily thick.... they could move towards hdmi which would also carry sound too.
could you make the motor have less volume and thickness by rotating the disc at the edges.... i.e. you use the center hole to pull the disc out but the motor becomes a thin periphery and the disc snaps in.... i don't know much about motors but it's a possibility to explore. i assume a motor would have to be thicker if it is center mounted than distributed at the edge of the whole disc....
smaller discs based on Blu-ray
movement towards flash memory as a replacement for optical discs- i would love if 4-8GB flash memory got cheap enough to replace DVDs/CDs... this one isn't happening for a while.
i think one thing that adds unnecessary thickness is the different connectors: RJ45, USB, FW400/800, DVI etc.
The connectors are fine. If they desperately needed to make it thinner while keeping the current connectors, they could make a section for them along the back that is the full thickness of the laptop. Sort of like the really early laptops like the Grid Compass and Mac Portable, although obviously not extending that far behind the machine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by intlplby
could you make the motor have less volume and thickness by rotating the disc at the edges.... i.e. you use the center hole to pull the disc out but the motor becomes a thin periphery and the disc snaps in.... i don't know much about motors but it's a possibility to explore. i assume a motor would have to be thicker if it is center mounted than distributed at the edge of the whole disc....
Then you're talking about higher rotational speed for the motor and bearings, increasing cost and stress on the components. At any given RPM, the tangential speed goes higher the further away you get from the center. Rim-drive is almost never a good option in the field of engineering.
The idea is interesting if they go with the camera iris one but damn this would be expensive to make, apple could no longer turn to other companies to supply the optical drive for them. This idea gets even crazier when thinking about next-gen disk formats, while not as elegant it'd be better if they simly just bundled in an external optical drive, or a docking station. A lot road warriors are used to not having optical drives on the road anyways and do that in either a hotel room or at home. I don't see it as so much of a problem that we need to insanely up the costs by doing stuff like this.
JeffDM the panasonic type drive is interesting but that still puts it along the edge and panasonic probably has a patent for that anyways.
[English teacher]Actually, that first sentence is grammatically correct, not a run-on. A run-on is not a long sentence; it is two independent clauses not separated by a period, conjunction, or a semicolon.
How can the Designer of the Year and the best industrial design team in the world come up with something that clearly I could have done in my bedroom? I mean its only gonna save like a millimetre or two
And why would they show it on TiBook? Its almost as if they were trying to hide the true final use of the patent or something
I don't know if this idea has been posted before. However here is what I thought. Why not have the cd drive under the keyboard? Press the eject button and part of the keyboard opens up like a door on hinges or perhaps a section of the keyboard raises up and moves to the side so you can access the drive. Place the cd inside and close the drive. They would have to figure out a way to have the keyboard still function but it's better than putting the drive on the bottom.
Methink that Apple has a stack of ready-to-submit patent requests for ludicrous things that they never intend to use; this serves 2 purposes: take attention away from what is really going on as to add shock and wow to the next Stevenote and to build an insain arsinal of patents to use for the present cold-war like state where people like Creative can sue them for a product that has been shipping for 6 years and is the de-facto market leader.
It is all about throwing off the guessers and foiling patent lawsuits.
For the record, that drive is the stupidest idea ever...
Apple pointed out that "edge access" to optical drives involves moving a disk horizontally, parallel to the plane of the disk. Therefore, it said, removal of the disk from a notebook computer or other portable device is thus relatively simple -- even a person with large fingers -- because major portions of the flat surfaces (top and bottom) of the disk can be easily presented to the user.
the way i read this, i see the two access points..
Comments
It also seems ridiculus to keep making these laptops ever more thinner. They are thin enough as the need to be, withouth getting lost in a stack of paper. I would prefer they kept the same size and crammed technology into the case faster (and cheaper) instead of reducing the volume and keeping out of the computer some essential elements (modem, battery, iPod connector etc).
ultra portable coming, good reason why we did not see 12" PB oops 12" MBP
I'd have to say this will likely never be produced. I agree with previous posts that highlight Apple's attention to detail and convenience. It's just so far off base from their typical production designs. If they do produce an "ultra-portable" my vote is for an external ODD solution. Although they are awkward to carry around if you travel, it's sort of balanced by the fact the a lot of users don't use the ODD super-often.
On a personal note, If this does end up getting produced in the described fashion, it will be a sad day for Apple's design department and myself as a user. One of the things that caused me to switch is the simplistic/elegant combination of Apple's hardware and OS. I think that it's one of those things where, put together, they are more than the sum of their parts. Take away any one thing, and it doesn't fly.
Just my $.02...
In other words, currently you have horizontal eject in Macs, why not do a vertical one?
Whatever the form factor, I wish it were a Blu-ray burner, but that probably won't happen for another year or two.
or they could do an LCD/side load variation on the iMac theme...
the goal should be lighter and lighter.... and if we go thinner we also have to reduce the thickness of the battery.....
although this is something to be pursued eventually, there are bigger fish to fry.
i think one thing that adds unnecessary thickness is the different connectors: RJ45, USB, FW400/800, DVI etc.
i'd like them to adopt maybe industry-wdie standardizations for all these that are smaller and thinner. if they were smaller and thinner we could reduce the space they take up in the machine which would allow for other stuff or more connections (goodbye USB and FW hubs)
The DVI connection is unnecessarily thick.... they could move towards hdmi which would also carry sound too.
could you make the motor have less volume and thickness by rotating the disc at the edges.... i.e. you use the center hole to pull the disc out but the motor becomes a thin periphery and the disc snaps in.... i don't know much about motors but it's a possibility to explore. i assume a motor would have to be thicker if it is center mounted than distributed at the edge of the whole disc....
smaller discs based on Blu-ray
movement towards flash memory as a replacement for optical discs- i would love if 4-8GB flash memory got cheap enough to replace DVDs/CDs... this one isn't happening for a while.
This is either a way of getting Dell to pay for patent liscences when they try to implement these awkward designs
or
like the tablet folks, this is for a future ultra-portable device that is not shown in the drawings.
I think the subnotebook people should be at least VERY happy that this is even on Apple's radar.
i think one thing that adds unnecessary thickness is the different connectors: RJ45, USB, FW400/800, DVI etc.
The connectors are fine. If they desperately needed to make it thinner while keeping the current connectors, they could make a section for them along the back that is the full thickness of the laptop. Sort of like the really early laptops like the Grid Compass and Mac Portable, although obviously not extending that far behind the machine.
could you make the motor have less volume and thickness by rotating the disc at the edges.... i.e. you use the center hole to pull the disc out but the motor becomes a thin periphery and the disc snaps in.... i don't know much about motors but it's a possibility to explore. i assume a motor would have to be thicker if it is center mounted than distributed at the edge of the whole disc....
Then you're talking about higher rotational speed for the motor and bearings, increasing cost and stress on the components. At any given RPM, the tangential speed goes higher the further away you get from the center. Rim-drive is almost never a good option in the field of engineering.
And why would they show it on TiBook? Its almost as if they were trying to hide the true final use of the patent or something
The filing was nearly two years ago, and it is possible that the drawings were made two years before that.
JeffDM the panasonic type drive is interesting but that still puts it along the edge and panasonic probably has a patent for that anyways.
I mean, run on sentence.
[English teacher]Actually, that first sentence is grammatically correct, not a run-on. A run-on is not a long sentence; it is two independent clauses not separated by a period, conjunction, or a semicolon.
This however is a fragment.
And "run-on" is hyphenated.
I just don't buy it
How can the Designer of the Year and the best industrial design team in the world come up with something that clearly I could have done in my bedroom? I mean its only gonna save like a millimetre or two
And why would they show it on TiBook?
This is just crazy and Apple sux!!!
Er.. OK. I was joking. (badly obviously)
It is all about throwing off the guessers and foiling patent lawsuits.
For the record, that drive is the stupidest idea ever...
Apple pointed out that "edge access" to optical drives involves moving a disk horizontally, parallel to the plane of the disk. Therefore, it said, removal of the disk from a notebook computer or other portable device is thus relatively simple -- even a person with large fingers -- because major portions of the flat surfaces (top and bottom) of the disk can be easily presented to the user.
the way i read this, i see the two access points..
1 "edge access" via a slot on top of the notebook
2 back door access to disks that are stuck
now i wish for a motorized iris (drool)