Economics: Retail a DVD-R can be had at ~25¢ for ~7GB. 2x4GB SD is 2x$10.00 to get 8GB. Do you think Apple can save enough to make up the 80x difference in cost of the distribution media? If the difference was 4x or less I could see it, but not at 80x. Sure Apple won't pay retail for their media, but the relative cost difference and effects on the bottom line are still valid.
That would be the thought that Apple will need an alternative distribution method for the coming tablets. I see the new SD slots as foretelling us how Apple expects to do system updates on diskless products. I'd give even odds that Apples coming tablets or netbooks will have SD slots in them.
Along those lines, what are the odds that they put an SD slot on the Macbook Air - that actually sounds like a port that would actually fit on that machine without screwing it up.
That being said, if they want an alternate means of distribution, I'd hope that they use USB drives - they are cheaper than SD media right now, and all machines can use them. (of course the question for those more technologically inclined - can you boot off of a thumb drive?)
Economics: Retail a DVD-R can be had at ~25¢ for ~7GB. 2x4GB SD is 2x$10.00 to get 8GB. Do you think Apple can save enough to make up the 80x difference in cost of the distribution media? If the difference was 4x or less I could see it, but not at 80x. Sure Apple won't pay retail for their media, but the relative cost difference and effects on the bottom line are still valid.
You are more or less right about costs. The only consideration is the downward slide for flash based storage.
At the same time though your point is meaningless if we take into account that we may end with more than a few devices without a CDROM drive, maybe even without a USB port. Currently of course AIR is the only shipping Mac without a CD drive, that can change. What is more interesting is the iPod line, more exactly the coming hardware, I could see Apple making a big move here to support SD on some of the devices.
Look I know it is a bit wishful thinking but I just think Apple is trying to prep the playing field here. Ask yourself why just SD when there are so many other standards. Especially on pro cameras. If Apple is supporting flash cards at this late date there has to be a bigger game plan than what we have heard about.
My point is that Apple has hardware coming where SD cards are an important part of the device. At least I hope that is the case. It just seems a bit strange to have the slots popping up now. Especially when on the 13 incher you end up loosing legacy ports.
Hopefully we will have a better idea of what is going on after the new iPods come out.
Along those lines, what are the odds that they put an SD slot on the Macbook Air - that actually sounds like a port that would actually fit on that machine without screwing it up.
Well it is going to take a lot more than that to fix AIR. I guess it comes down to what Apples mission is here. If there is more to this than just helping out photographers then I'd say the chance is very high.
Quote:
That being said, if they want an alternate means of distribution, I'd hope that they use USB drives - they are cheaper than SD media right now, and all machines can use them. (of course the question for those more technologically inclined - can you boot off of a thumb drive?)
I understand the above but what if the future devices don't have Standard USB ports? What I'm foreseeing is very thin tablet like devices.
I'd bet that software would be installed on it via download, not SD.
Emergency Installs
Downloads won't work if the OS got corrupted to a point where your device is not even booting.
How're you going to download and re-install?
At that point you need a bootable second medium.
Storage
If a MacTablet ever happens, what memory configurations should it come in?
4GB to keep the price low?
32GB to compete with the iPod Touch?
Or 128GB to actually be able to store a few HD movies?
Point is there is such a huge range depending on how people want to use the device that Apple would have to offer too many memory configurations.
Instead how about offering a device with 2 or 4 SD card slots? With XSAN Apple has the ability to pool several cards into one 'logical' drive.
And on top of that you can insert your photo or video camera's SD card and use the MacTablet as picture viewer - without having to copy any images or videos over.
Flash storage is cheap, but not that cheap.
So in order to keep MacTablet prices down it will initially ship with very little memory, 4GB if not less.
Hence there must be a way for users to upgrade the memory. SD cards make the most sense here.
You are more or less right about costs. The only consideration is the downward slide for flash based storage.
At the same time though your point is meaningless if we take into account that we may end with more than a few devices without a CDROM drive, maybe even without a USB port. Currently of course AIR is the only shipping Mac without a CD drive, that can change. What is more interesting is the iPod line, more exactly the coming hardware, I could see Apple making a big move here to support SD on some of the devices.
Look I know it is a bit wishful thinking but I just think Apple is trying to prep the playing field here. Ask yourself why just SD when there are so many other standards. Especially on pro cameras. If Apple is supporting flash cards at this late date there has to be a bigger game plan than what we have heard about.
My point is that Apple has hardware coming where SD cards are an important part of the device. At least I hope that is the case. It just seems a bit strange to have the slots popping up now. Especially when on the 13 incher you end up loosing legacy ports.
Hopefully we will have a better idea of what is going on after the new iPods come out.
Dave
Pushing updates over the network will be the end result, I don't see that product -matrix wide for a number of years though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hobBIT
Emergency Installs
Downloads won't work if the OS got corrupted to a point where your device is not even booting.
How're you going to download and re-install?
At that point you need a bootable second medium.
A safe-mode netboot. Apple already has netboot capability.
Finally, I'm not sure what you're referring to by "distributors will have to source pen drives from different manufacturers and could end up with a large variation in quality/styles. SD cards are just more standardized." There would be absolutely no problem with any software house sourcing usb thumb drives.
Sure but the end user would end up with all manner of drives that will end up in a messy pile in a drawer or box instead of some filing solution. You could get SD booklets to hold cards like you do CD/DVD wallets but you could fit far more in them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler
With all that said, i'm not even sure that either is a good idea. I'm inclined to believe that optical media will be the last ubiquitous physical distribution format for PC software. We might see dabbling with usb drives or SD cards, but it seems more likely that these will be rare as compared to licensed downloads.
The more that we transition to HD media, the more there is a need to shuffle lots of data around quickly. It's just not feasible for an end user to upload even 1GB of HD media let alone a full 1080p 30GB file.
There will always be a need for write-protected offline storage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
Economics: Retail a DVD-R can be had at ~25¢ for ~7GB. 2x4GB SD is 2x$10.00 to get 8GB. Do you think Apple can save enough to make up the 80x difference in cost of the distribution media?
An 8GB SD card can be bought for $15 on ebay and Apple would get them for much less. They don't have to pass any cost above what they buy the media for onto the consumer as bulk buys from flash memory manufacturers helps their mobile line and it would be in the interest of establishing a distribution format. Plus, the cards don't have to be the fastest either. You get slower (but still 15MB/s) SD cards for about $10.
If Apple charged $5 extra on a piece of software, I'd buy it on an SD card over a DVD. With movies, it gets trickier because you wouldn't want to pay that much extra on low cost data but if they shipped a lot of titles, the cost of the media would come down significantly. Blu-Ray is still an expensive format vs DVD because it's new,
Of course, the incompatibility of current SD readers with SDXC isn't going to help this idea at all but the 32GB limit of SDHC etc imposed by the filesystem should be enough for a distribution format.
I'm sure netbook users would be happy to see at least an alternative format to optical even if it doesn't displace it. Not to mention mobile users. How do you play the Blu-Ray movie you have bought on your mobile device?
Once you get to large storage sizes, the optical format gets unwieldy and it's random access read/write all the way. I hope I never have to sit through a 40 minute Blu-Ray burn (+40 minute verify) only to get an error near the end. The drive would go out the window. An SDHC card will fill up in 15 minutes and verifies during copy.
Try either if you're on holiday with just your MacBook Air (sans the superdrive) or your iPhone!
In both cases you must have a second computer to boot off of or re-install from.
And this is not an option in every situation.
But keeping a bootable 'emergency' SD card in your laptop bag is (in case the MBA had an SD slot).
And this won't help a dead iPhone either. That one will just remain dead for the remainder of your holiday...
Some people keep an entire socket set and other tools in the trunk of their car. Why? Because, for example, what if you're on vacation and your fan belt loosens.
But most people don't structure their lives that way. They don't stock their trunks with tool chests and they don't carry extra bootable media on vacation.
So while your scenario is excellent justification for an SD slot for those people who carry extra bootable media, it is important to realize that this would be a rather rare use of the SD slot. The real solution is to use a phone that doesn't require people to carry extra bootable media.
Seems to have turned into a busy subject, was only joking with the 1st post.
The question being of course how do you distribute the OS for diskless devices. By this I mean no optical disk. App distribution over the net is fine, but what do you do for machines that don't have the OS installed yet or need a reinstall?
The other thing that gets me dreaming is that look of the new MBP when the bottom cover is removed. Imagine the CD drive removed from the machines so that the "harddisk" can be moved to its location. That would make room for one fat battery! We could be getting 8 hours of HEAVY usage out of a MBP then.
You maybe joking around but the reality is that looking at laptops and other computing devices with a new eye could lead to much more interesting hardware.
Just been told that all future mac hardware will be designed with the sd slot. Also Snow Leopard is gonna be shipped on sd cards. Inside info my friends. Bon Nuit
While I think it may be shipped that way, it will also have to be shipping on optical media, too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
That would be the thought that Apple will need an alternative distribution method for the coming tablets. I see the new SD slots as foretelling us how Apple expects to do system updates on diskless products. I'd give even odds that Apples coming tablets or netbooks will have SD slots in them.
So I don't discount this report. In the long run it makes a lot of sense. As Apple moves away from spinning storage they will need alternative distribution methods for the OS. I actually thought this would be USB dongles but now that these new MBP have come out I could see this as an alternative.
I thought it would USB flash drives but now that nearly all Mac notebooks have SD card slots and Apple engineers had to really work hard to get it on the 13” MBP by removing the separate line-in jack and pushing all the ports to the back of the machine more to get it to fit, I think that it will be a trend that will encompass all their machines. If it does then I think they do mean to make that the install method of choice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison
All speculative hell is gonna break out if Apple mysteriously puts SD card slots in the next iMac refresh.
The desktop machines have the room for an optical drive and they plenty of room for ports, so it’s not as important, but if the Mac desktops and the MBA get the SD Card slot then it would seem imminent. At that point I’d say it would be more than speculative.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Footloose301
This will go over really well..... trying to find a slot in my MBP to stick this thing.
If you watched the keynote you'll notice they show SL on a disc.
Introducing one doesn’t mean you still can’t have the other. Obviously such a transition, like with floppy to optical media, requires a transition time. You start with the HW changes, then you can even add the new install method to these new machines that can handle it, then you add both to the shelves and then you finally remove the old media when the planned obsolescence is complete.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
When a superdrive runs fast, it will only copy one DVD in about 10 minutes, when it's not working so well it takes 20 minutes. An SD card will do the same transfer in 3 minutes at 20MB/s. This cuts an install down from over an hour to under 20 minutes.
I haven’t tested SD installs yet, but I have done USB and internal HDD installs of Snow Leopard. They designed SL to be installed from a separate partition without the need for burning a DVD or any funky workaround to use a separate HDD partition, like was required for Leopard. I can install new SL beta updates in about 10 minutes, don’t have to burn a disc, waste a disc, work about a failed burn and I reclaim that partition when done. Easy peezy lemon squeezy!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
Economics: Retail a DVD-R can be had at ~25¢ for ~7GB. 2x4GB SD is 2x$10.00 to get 8GB. Do you think Apple can save enough to make up the 80x difference in cost of the distribution media? If the difference was 4x or less I could see it, but not at 80x. Sure Apple won't pay retail for their media, but the relative cost difference and effects on the bottom line are still valid.
Yes they can! You are considering the cost of an SD to the cost of DVD disc. You are considering the cost of the SD card drive/slot and disk against the cost of the optical drive and disc. Right there the cost is pretty much equal, if not in the SD media’s favour. Then consider the space Apple saves from the loss of the optical drive and all that side real estate that can be used for ports. Since optical drives have to on the edge and are usually the single largest component in a notebook chassis the engineers can offer more options while saving time and money on having to work around that aging tech.
Along those lines, what are the odds that they put an SD slot on the Macbook Air - that actually sounds like a port that would actually fit on that machine without screwing it up.
That being said, if they want an alternate means of distribution, I'd hope that they use USB drives - they are cheaper than SD media right now, and all machines can use them. (of course the question for those more technologically inclined - can you boot off of a thumb drive?)
Since it’s very thin I dont’ think it would be too hard. Certainly seems easier than in the MB which had the ports move farther back and had a port removed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
The question being of course how do you distribute the OS for diskless devices. By this I mean no optical disk. App distribution over the net is fine, but what do you do for machines that don't have the OS installed yet or need a reinstall?
You do SD or USB. Both are bootable. The talk of downloadable OS X system updates doesn’t seem likely. You still need a partition for the install files to sit on for the update since you might want to boot into this for repair or for a clean install. There is always a chance that Disk Utility can’t make a partition for the installer so you have to have a separate physical method or start with a hidden partition on the main HDD, like cheap machines from Dell, HP et. al. have but that wastes HDD space and there is still an issue if you HDD fails.
I think we just have to wait to see how the rest of the Mac line progresses. Apple surely didn’t add an SD card slot at this point in the game for easier transfer of camera images, regardless of what they stated at WWDC.
The other issue that is wrapped all around this new install method is Blu-ray. The 9.5mm optical drives are still new and very expensive, and I havent’ seen any of these as slot loaders, which are more expensive and slower than tray loaders. Then you have to consider that any optical media is still slow, power hungry, and prone to write issues. Finally, we have to consider that Blu-ray is mostly used for media, not for personal data storage, and it’s a direct competitor to Apple’s digital distribution method.
With all that, I can’t see a valid reason for Apple to keep optical drives in their sites for much longer. If you need it, then you buy the external drive for $99 from Apple (though this price will probably cut down quite a bit since more will be sold and that price is now a couple years old) or buy from a 3rd-party. They may even add HDCP support to Snow Leopard so you can use an 3rd-party Blu-ray drive once they made they play for no optical media in notebooks and grabbed a worthwhile share of digital media.
Yes, it's possible. But it's just a solution in search of a problem. Everyone can justify as passionately as they desire, but in the end its expensive compared to network connectivity when it's time to update.
Individuals building their own SD emergency disk is a great idea, but that doesn't make for very good justification that Apple is going to distribute it's software on them.
Yes, it's possible. But it's just a solution in search of a problem. Everyone can justify as passionately as they desire, but in the end its expensive compared to network connectivity when it's time to update.
Individuals building their own SD emergency disk is a great idea, but that doesn't make for very good justification that Apple is going to distribute it's software on them.
A network connectivity is a problem when you don’t have one. If you have locked files preventing you from making a partition for the install to reside or enough free space for the files, those are other problems. Optical drive space usage, speed, power usage are all other problems, as are the capacity of the discs. Blu-ray is not like DVD or CD when it came on the scene in comparison to other storage media.
Every year optical media keeps becoming more and more of a problem. Nothing is cut and dry, there is rarely no one defining point when you say that one tech has obsolesced in favour of another, just obsolescing, which optical media for data storage is doing.
Point updates are easily done with downloads, but I don’t see how system updates could be handled the same way. Netboot is an option, but should only be an option; having a physical media install option would still be needed, like SD or USB option.
Snow Leopard on a SD card would be nice, but expensive. Snow Leopard should be able to fit on a single layer DVD unlike Leopard which required a dual layer. For a single layer DVD, you're paying roughly $0.70, more or less depending on how many are in the package. The cheapest 4GB SD Card is $20. Granted Apple want be paying these prices, but 4GB SD memory would probably have to drop four fold before Apple would even think of shipping it on an SD card. That being said, I could see a digital download solution where you use your own flash drive or SD card.
Snow Leopard on a SD card would be nice, but expensive. Snow Leopard should be able to fit on a single layer DVD unlike Leopard which required a dual layer. For a single layer DVD, you're paying roughly $0.70, more or less depending on how many are in the package. The cheapest 4GB SD Card is $20. Granted Apple want be paying these prices, but 4GB SD memory would probably have to drop four fold before Apple would even think of shipping it on an SD card. That being said, I could see a digital download solution where you use your own flash drive or SD card.
The cheapest 4GB SD I see on Google Shopping is $4.50. But for this situation to be true the current price of SD is irrelevant.
Since pretty much all Macs have optical drives at this point (MBA with remote disc), Snow Leopard will still be sold at retail as DVDs because all Macs with Sd card slots still have optical drives at this point anyway. But, any new machines that have their optical drives removed would get the OS as an SD card. The cost of removing the optical drive itself will more than balance the cost of an SD card, even by today’s prices.
If we assume it’ll be 2 years until the next version of Mac OS X goes on sale then 10.7 won’t land until Fall 2011. That is more than enough for Apple to make the transition and for SD card costs to come down. It’s also probably best not to remove the optical drive from any Mac until after Snow Leopard lands.
Yes, it's possible. But it's just a solution in search of a problem. Everyone can justify as passionately as they desire, but in the end its expensive compared to network connectivity when it's time to update.
You are missing the whole point here, SD provides a way to install or reinstall your OS on a device that doesn't have an optical drive. Frankly it is likely the cheapest way to have an install image for compact or tablet devices.
Quote:
Individuals building their own SD emergency disk is a great idea, but that doesn't make for very good justification that Apple is going to distribute it's software on them.
I don't see Apple distributing it's software on them other than the operating system. Distribution of user software is moving to the Internet and frankly I see Apple expanding on this. Still if you want to develop a device that is independant of a support PC you need to be able to install it's OS independant of a PC.
IPhone is an example of a device that that requires a support PC for OS install. For most that isn't a problem. However if you buy a device such as a tablet and don't have the intention of supporting it via a PC, then you need that alternative OS install method.
Maybe this is all wishful thinking but we should know by the end of the year what Apples thinking is here. SD slots popping up all of a sudden is very interesting and make one wonder what is up.
Comments
That would be the thought that Apple will need an alternative distribution method for the coming tablets. I see the new SD slots as foretelling us how Apple expects to do system updates on diskless products. I'd give even odds that Apples coming tablets or netbooks will have SD slots in them.
Along those lines, what are the odds that they put an SD slot on the Macbook Air - that actually sounds like a port that would actually fit on that machine without screwing it up.
That being said, if they want an alternate means of distribution, I'd hope that they use USB drives - they are cheaper than SD media right now, and all machines can use them. (of course the question for those more technologically inclined - can you boot off of a thumb drive?)
Economics: Retail a DVD-R can be had at ~25¢ for ~7GB. 2x4GB SD is 2x$10.00 to get 8GB. Do you think Apple can save enough to make up the 80x difference in cost of the distribution media? If the difference was 4x or less I could see it, but not at 80x. Sure Apple won't pay retail for their media, but the relative cost difference and effects on the bottom line are still valid.
You are more or less right about costs. The only consideration is the downward slide for flash based storage.
At the same time though your point is meaningless if we take into account that we may end with more than a few devices without a CDROM drive, maybe even without a USB port. Currently of course AIR is the only shipping Mac without a CD drive, that can change. What is more interesting is the iPod line, more exactly the coming hardware, I could see Apple making a big move here to support SD on some of the devices.
Look I know it is a bit wishful thinking but I just think Apple is trying to prep the playing field here. Ask yourself why just SD when there are so many other standards. Especially on pro cameras. If Apple is supporting flash cards at this late date there has to be a bigger game plan than what we have heard about.
My point is that Apple has hardware coming where SD cards are an important part of the device. At least I hope that is the case. It just seems a bit strange to have the slots popping up now. Especially when on the 13 incher you end up loosing legacy ports.
Hopefully we will have a better idea of what is going on after the new iPods come out.
Dave
Along those lines, what are the odds that they put an SD slot on the Macbook Air - that actually sounds like a port that would actually fit on that machine without screwing it up.
Well it is going to take a lot more than that to fix AIR. I guess it comes down to what Apples mission is here. If there is more to this than just helping out photographers then I'd say the chance is very high.
That being said, if they want an alternate means of distribution, I'd hope that they use USB drives - they are cheaper than SD media right now, and all machines can use them. (of course the question for those more technologically inclined - can you boot off of a thumb drive?)
I understand the above but what if the future devices don't have Standard USB ports? What I'm foreseeing is very thin tablet like devices.
Dave
I'd bet that software would be installed on it via download, not SD.
A device without USB or removeable media?
I'd bet that software would be installed on it via download, not SD.
Emergency Installs
Downloads won't work if the OS got corrupted to a point where your device is not even booting.
How're you going to download and re-install?
At that point you need a bootable second medium.
Storage
If a MacTablet ever happens, what memory configurations should it come in?
4GB to keep the price low?
32GB to compete with the iPod Touch?
Or 128GB to actually be able to store a few HD movies?
Point is there is such a huge range depending on how people want to use the device that Apple would have to offer too many memory configurations.
Instead how about offering a device with 2 or 4 SD card slots? With XSAN Apple has the ability to pool several cards into one 'logical' drive.
And on top of that you can insert your photo or video camera's SD card and use the MacTablet as picture viewer - without having to copy any images or videos over.
Flash storage is cheap, but not that cheap.
So in order to keep MacTablet prices down it will initially ship with very little memory, 4GB if not less.
Hence there must be a way for users to upgrade the memory. SD cards make the most sense here.
You are more or less right about costs. The only consideration is the downward slide for flash based storage.
At the same time though your point is meaningless if we take into account that we may end with more than a few devices without a CDROM drive, maybe even without a USB port. Currently of course AIR is the only shipping Mac without a CD drive, that can change. What is more interesting is the iPod line, more exactly the coming hardware, I could see Apple making a big move here to support SD on some of the devices.
Look I know it is a bit wishful thinking but I just think Apple is trying to prep the playing field here. Ask yourself why just SD when there are so many other standards. Especially on pro cameras. If Apple is supporting flash cards at this late date there has to be a bigger game plan than what we have heard about.
My point is that Apple has hardware coming where SD cards are an important part of the device. At least I hope that is the case. It just seems a bit strange to have the slots popping up now. Especially when on the 13 incher you end up loosing legacy ports.
Hopefully we will have a better idea of what is going on after the new iPods come out.
Dave
Pushing updates over the network will be the end result, I don't see that product -matrix wide for a number of years though.
Emergency Installs
Downloads won't work if the OS got corrupted to a point where your device is not even booting.
How're you going to download and re-install?
At that point you need a bootable second medium.
A safe-mode netboot. Apple already has netboot capability.
Emergency Installs
Downloads won't work if the OS got corrupted to a point where your device is not even booting.
How're you going to download and re-install?
At that point you need a bootable second medium.
Tell that to the iPhone.
Finally, I'm not sure what you're referring to by "distributors will have to source pen drives from different manufacturers and could end up with a large variation in quality/styles. SD cards are just more standardized." There would be absolutely no problem with any software house sourcing usb thumb drives.
Sure but the end user would end up with all manner of drives that will end up in a messy pile in a drawer or box instead of some filing solution. You could get SD booklets to hold cards like you do CD/DVD wallets but you could fit far more in them.
With all that said, i'm not even sure that either is a good idea. I'm inclined to believe that optical media will be the last ubiquitous physical distribution format for PC software. We might see dabbling with usb drives or SD cards, but it seems more likely that these will be rare as compared to licensed downloads.
The more that we transition to HD media, the more there is a need to shuffle lots of data around quickly. It's just not feasible for an end user to upload even 1GB of HD media let alone a full 1080p 30GB file.
There will always be a need for write-protected offline storage.
Economics: Retail a DVD-R can be had at ~25¢ for ~7GB. 2x4GB SD is 2x$10.00 to get 8GB. Do you think Apple can save enough to make up the 80x difference in cost of the distribution media?
An 8GB SD card can be bought for $15 on ebay and Apple would get them for much less. They don't have to pass any cost above what they buy the media for onto the consumer as bulk buys from flash memory manufacturers helps their mobile line and it would be in the interest of establishing a distribution format. Plus, the cards don't have to be the fastest either. You get slower (but still 15MB/s) SD cards for about $10.
If Apple charged $5 extra on a piece of software, I'd buy it on an SD card over a DVD. With movies, it gets trickier because you wouldn't want to pay that much extra on low cost data but if they shipped a lot of titles, the cost of the media would come down significantly. Blu-Ray is still an expensive format vs DVD because it's new,
Of course, the incompatibility of current SD readers with SDXC isn't going to help this idea at all but the 32GB limit of SDHC etc imposed by the filesystem should be enough for a distribution format.
I'm sure netbook users would be happy to see at least an alternative format to optical even if it doesn't displace it. Not to mention mobile users. How do you play the Blu-Ray movie you have bought on your mobile device?
Once you get to large storage sizes, the optical format gets unwieldy and it's random access read/write all the way. I hope I never have to sit through a 40 minute Blu-Ray burn (+40 minute verify) only to get an error near the end. The drive would go out the window. An SDHC card will fill up in 15 minutes and verifies during copy.
Tell that to the iPhone.
A safe-mode netboot. Apple already has netboot capability.
Try either if you're on holiday with just your MacBook Air (sans the superdrive) or your iPhone!
In both cases you must have a second computer to boot off of or re-install from.
And this is not an option in every situation.
But keeping a bootable 'emergency' SD card in your laptop bag is (in case the MBA had an SD slot).
And this won't help a dead iPhone either. That one will just remain dead for the remainder of your holiday...
Try either if you're on holiday with just your MacBook Air (sans the superdrive) or your iPhone!
In both cases you must have a second computer to boot off of or re-install from.
And this is not an option in every situation.
But keeping a bootable 'emergency' SD card in your laptop bag is (in case the MBA had an SD slot).
And this won't help a dead iPhone either. That one will just remain dead for the remainder of your holiday...
Some people keep an entire socket set and other tools in the trunk of their car. Why? Because, for example, what if you're on vacation and your fan belt loosens.
But most people don't structure their lives that way. They don't stock their trunks with tool chests and they don't carry extra bootable media on vacation.
So while your scenario is excellent justification for an SD slot for those people who carry extra bootable media, it is important to realize that this would be a rather rare use of the SD slot. The real solution is to use a phone that doesn't require people to carry extra bootable media.
Seems to have turned into a busy subject, was only joking with the 1st post.
The question being of course how do you distribute the OS for diskless devices. By this I mean no optical disk. App distribution over the net is fine, but what do you do for machines that don't have the OS installed yet or need a reinstall?
The other thing that gets me dreaming is that look of the new MBP when the bottom cover is removed. Imagine the CD drive removed from the machines so that the "harddisk" can be moved to its location. That would make room for one fat battery! We could be getting 8 hours of HEAVY usage out of a MBP then.
You maybe joking around but the reality is that looking at laptops and other computing devices with a new eye could lead to much more interesting hardware.
Dave
Just been told that all future mac hardware will be designed with the sd slot. Also Snow Leopard is gonna be shipped on sd cards. Inside info my friends. Bon Nuit
While I think it may be shipped that way, it will also have to be shipping on optical media, too.
That would be the thought that Apple will need an alternative distribution method for the coming tablets. I see the new SD slots as foretelling us how Apple expects to do system updates on diskless products. I'd give even odds that Apples coming tablets or netbooks will have SD slots in them.
So I don't discount this report. In the long run it makes a lot of sense. As Apple moves away from spinning storage they will need alternative distribution methods for the OS. I actually thought this would be USB dongles but now that these new MBP have come out I could see this as an alternative.
I thought it would USB flash drives but now that nearly all Mac notebooks have SD card slots and Apple engineers had to really work hard to get it on the 13” MBP by removing the separate line-in jack and pushing all the ports to the back of the machine more to get it to fit, I think that it will be a trend that will encompass all their machines. If it does then I think they do mean to make that the install method of choice.
All speculative hell is gonna break out if Apple mysteriously puts SD card slots in the next iMac refresh.
The desktop machines have the room for an optical drive and they plenty of room for ports, so it’s not as important, but if the Mac desktops and the MBA get the SD Card slot then it would seem imminent. At that point I’d say it would be more than speculative.
This will go over really well..... trying to find a slot in my MBP to stick this thing.
If you watched the keynote you'll notice they show SL on a disc.
Introducing one doesn’t mean you still can’t have the other. Obviously such a transition, like with floppy to optical media, requires a transition time. You start with the HW changes, then you can even add the new install method to these new machines that can handle it, then you add both to the shelves and then you finally remove the old media when the planned obsolescence is complete.
When a superdrive runs fast, it will only copy one DVD in about 10 minutes, when it's not working so well it takes 20 minutes. An SD card will do the same transfer in 3 minutes at 20MB/s. This cuts an install down from over an hour to under 20 minutes.
I haven’t tested SD installs yet, but I have done USB and internal HDD installs of Snow Leopard. They designed SL to be installed from a separate partition without the need for burning a DVD or any funky workaround to use a separate HDD partition, like was required for Leopard. I can install new SL beta updates in about 10 minutes, don’t have to burn a disc, waste a disc, work about a failed burn and I reclaim that partition when done. Easy peezy lemon squeezy!
Economics: Retail a DVD-R can be had at ~25¢ for ~7GB. 2x4GB SD is 2x$10.00 to get 8GB. Do you think Apple can save enough to make up the 80x difference in cost of the distribution media? If the difference was 4x or less I could see it, but not at 80x. Sure Apple won't pay retail for their media, but the relative cost difference and effects on the bottom line are still valid.
Yes they can! You are considering the cost of an SD to the cost of DVD disc. You are considering the cost of the SD card drive/slot and disk against the cost of the optical drive and disc. Right there the cost is pretty much equal, if not in the SD media’s favour. Then consider the space Apple saves from the loss of the optical drive and all that side real estate that can be used for ports. Since optical drives have to on the edge and are usually the single largest component in a notebook chassis the engineers can offer more options while saving time and money on having to work around that aging tech.
• Image of MacBook x-ray
Along those lines, what are the odds that they put an SD slot on the Macbook Air - that actually sounds like a port that would actually fit on that machine without screwing it up.
That being said, if they want an alternate means of distribution, I'd hope that they use USB drives - they are cheaper than SD media right now, and all machines can use them. (of course the question for those more technologically inclined - can you boot off of a thumb drive?)
Since it’s very thin I dont’ think it would be too hard. Certainly seems easier than in the MB which had the ports move farther back and had a port removed.
The question being of course how do you distribute the OS for diskless devices. By this I mean no optical disk. App distribution over the net is fine, but what do you do for machines that don't have the OS installed yet or need a reinstall?
You do SD or USB. Both are bootable. The talk of downloadable OS X system updates doesn’t seem likely. You still need a partition for the install files to sit on for the update since you might want to boot into this for repair or for a clean install. There is always a chance that Disk Utility can’t make a partition for the installer so you have to have a separate physical method or start with a hidden partition on the main HDD, like cheap machines from Dell, HP et. al. have but that wastes HDD space and there is still an issue if you HDD fails.
I think we just have to wait to see how the rest of the Mac line progresses. Apple surely didn’t add an SD card slot at this point in the game for easier transfer of camera images, regardless of what they stated at WWDC.
The other issue that is wrapped all around this new install method is Blu-ray. The 9.5mm optical drives are still new and very expensive, and I havent’ seen any of these as slot loaders, which are more expensive and slower than tray loaders. Then you have to consider that any optical media is still slow, power hungry, and prone to write issues. Finally, we have to consider that Blu-ray is mostly used for media, not for personal data storage, and it’s a direct competitor to Apple’s digital distribution method.
With all that, I can’t see a valid reason for Apple to keep optical drives in their sites for much longer. If you need it, then you buy the external drive for $99 from Apple (though this price will probably cut down quite a bit since more will be sold and that price is now a couple years old) or buy from a 3rd-party. They may even add HDCP support to Snow Leopard so you can use an 3rd-party Blu-ray drive once they made they play for no optical media in notebooks and grabbed a worthwhile share of digital media.
Individuals building their own SD emergency disk is a great idea, but that doesn't make for very good justification that Apple is going to distribute it's software on them.
Yes, it's possible. But it's just a solution in search of a problem. Everyone can justify as passionately as they desire, but in the end its expensive compared to network connectivity when it's time to update.
Individuals building their own SD emergency disk is a great idea, but that doesn't make for very good justification that Apple is going to distribute it's software on them.
A network connectivity is a problem when you don’t have one. If you have locked files preventing you from making a partition for the install to reside or enough free space for the files, those are other problems. Optical drive space usage, speed, power usage are all other problems, as are the capacity of the discs. Blu-ray is not like DVD or CD when it came on the scene in comparison to other storage media.
Every year optical media keeps becoming more and more of a problem. Nothing is cut and dry, there is rarely no one defining point when you say that one tech has obsolesced in favour of another, just obsolescing, which optical media for data storage is doing.
Point updates are easily done with downloads, but I don’t see how system updates could be handled the same way. Netboot is an option, but should only be an option; having a physical media install option would still be needed, like SD or USB option.
Snow Leopard on a SD card would be nice, but expensive. Snow Leopard should be able to fit on a single layer DVD unlike Leopard which required a dual layer. For a single layer DVD, you're paying roughly $0.70, more or less depending on how many are in the package. The cheapest 4GB SD Card is $20. Granted Apple want be paying these prices, but 4GB SD memory would probably have to drop four fold before Apple would even think of shipping it on an SD card. That being said, I could see a digital download solution where you use your own flash drive or SD card.
The cheapest 4GB SD I see on Google Shopping is $4.50. But for this situation to be true the current price of SD is irrelevant.
Since pretty much all Macs have optical drives at this point (MBA with remote disc), Snow Leopard will still be sold at retail as DVDs because all Macs with Sd card slots still have optical drives at this point anyway. But, any new machines that have their optical drives removed would get the OS as an SD card. The cost of removing the optical drive itself will more than balance the cost of an SD card, even by today’s prices.
If we assume it’ll be 2 years until the next version of Mac OS X goes on sale then 10.7 won’t land until Fall 2011. That is more than enough for Apple to make the transition and for SD card costs to come down. It’s also probably best not to remove the optical drive from any Mac until after Snow Leopard lands.
Yes, it's possible. But it's just a solution in search of a problem. Everyone can justify as passionately as they desire, but in the end its expensive compared to network connectivity when it's time to update.
You are missing the whole point here, SD provides a way to install or reinstall your OS on a device that doesn't have an optical drive. Frankly it is likely the cheapest way to have an install image for compact or tablet devices.
Individuals building their own SD emergency disk is a great idea, but that doesn't make for very good justification that Apple is going to distribute it's software on them.
I don't see Apple distributing it's software on them other than the operating system. Distribution of user software is moving to the Internet and frankly I see Apple expanding on this. Still if you want to develop a device that is independant of a support PC you need to be able to install it's OS independant of a PC.
IPhone is an example of a device that that requires a support PC for OS install. For most that isn't a problem. However if you buy a device such as a tablet and don't have the intention of supporting it via a PC, then you need that alternative OS install method.
Maybe this is all wishful thinking but we should know by the end of the year what Apples thinking is here. SD slots popping up all of a sudden is very interesting and make one wonder what is up.
Dave