Why is this even needed? The 12" powerbook was fine for portability and had a slot loader. The 12" ibook had a tray. We don't need smaller than 12" otherwise they'll have to make it expensive, but we'd like one quickly please.
Did you guys even read the text? They are discussing ODD placement for a machine that is too small for the traditional edge loading design. Given that constraint, the alternatives aren't pretty. In fact, if they aren't pretty enough Apple may simply not build a smaller machine.
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.
Others have mentioned it higher in the thread. The problem there would be that a keyboard needs to be good and stiff to have acceptable "feel." You can't do that on a thin, flip-up keyboard. If you were to look at the Powerbook G4, its keyboard was easy to remove and flexible, but it was supported by a pretty robust structure.
For an ultra portable I'd be very fine with no CD drive at all. Just leave it to an external.
Exactly. This to me is a solution in search of a problem. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I needed to insert a disk in my mbp when I'm out with it.
Most of these designs look terrible, but Apple never shows its final design on the filings. I have a disk in my laptop perhaps 1-5 times a month.. it's not like I'm constantly shifting disks. So for me a backside optical disk drive would be totally ok. I think on mac book pro and macbook it'll continue with the slot loading. This design is for the touch mac, is my guess. A touch mac is something you would constantly and easily flip around anyway.
Why is Apple working on ODD designs anyway? Aren't all optical drive just bought off the shelf from Pioneer/Panasonic etc and built into the respective Macs.
If Macs actually used custom drives then we'd still be stuck on DVD-R only with the Windows world laughing whist burning DVD±RW DL.
Please just take the optical drive out of the laptop alltogether. I've used the drive in my MacBook maybe 3 or 4 times in 8 months. An ultra portable is probably a secondary machine anyway.
FWIW Apple used to do this back in the day of the Powerbook Duos, and the idea is no less valid now. You can always have a tiny external USB 2.0 disk drive if you really need to use one.
Please just take the optical drive out of the laptop alltogether. I've used the drive in my MacBook maybe 3 or 4 times in 8 months. An ultra portable is probably a secondary machine anyway.
FWIW Apple used to do this back in the day of the Powerbook Duos, and the idea is no less valid now. You can always have a tiny external USB 2.0 disk drive if you really need to use one.
Agreed. If Apple is running out of space in the new MBPs and they've got some great ideas for new stuff to put in, they can feel free to take out the optical drive in my 15" while they're at it. Just bundle a USB 2.0 Superdrive with it.
It's been ten years since I used optical media for anything else than software installation, so quite obviously I'd prefer external drive. I only watch DVD's at home and if I wanted to watch them on the laptop on the go I'd rip them. Network is where it's at. Memory sticks and USB powered external drives for emergencies and ad hoc shuffling of small files.
Speaking of USB memory sticks and external drives, I'd like to see Apple put in an "USB target mode" where your computer looks like an USB drive. You could have one without the rebooting required for Firewire target mode, if it didn't give full access to the disk. Instead you'd make a disk image, say 2GB, and put miscellaneous files on it. You'd then load that disk image into USB Mass Storage Utility, whereupon the utility would reserve the USB port and lock the disk image. You'd only need a standard USB cable, no shuffling of physical devices, and you could transfer as much stuff at a time as you have free space for the disk image.
I agree with Programmer. The savings with this type of drive (or one place underneath the keyboard) are not so much in the internal space and weight as they are in the "edge real estate." Regardless of how thin and light you make a notebook, if it has an ODD that's side-loading (tray, slot, or otherwise) then at a bare minumum you are giving up 5.25 inches of horizontal space on the side of the machine. That's a big percentage of the available space on an ultra-portable. Eliminating the side loader could free up gobs of room for more frequently-used ports, such as Firewire (400 & 800), USB, video out, you name it. How about a direct connector to iPod/iPhone/future-iGizmo?
As a road warrior who spends way too much time sitting on a plane, I rather enjoy being able to take my movies with me. Sadly, iTunes doesn't offer every movie or TV show ever made, and even if it did I wouldn't re-buy the ones I already own just so I could have an electronic copy of them to take with me on the plane. not everyone is going to be savvy enough to rip the DVDs they want. As for network access to files, if you have an ultra-portable chances are you're not always in a place where your network is available, especially at speeds that are generous enough to transfer large files. As soon as BD- or HD-ROM catches hold, we'll see even more items on optical discs. I don't use mine often, but I'd certainly hate to be caught without it. JM2C . . . \
I think you're giving quite a few people who do that more credit for having technical savvy than they deserve.
Yes. All you have to have is the right software. Mac The Ripper and iSquint requires very little technical knowledge. That software is illegal in the US, and will probably be illegal in other developed nations soon, if not already.
The savings with this type of drive (or one place underneath the keyboard) are not so much in the internal space and weight as they are in the "edge real estate." Eliminating the side loader could free up gobs of room for more frequently-used ports, such as Firewire (400 & 800), USB, video out, you name it. How about a direct connector to iPod/iPhone/future-iGizmo?
It certainly isn't for height saving because on the Macbook, the firewire port stretches top to bottom:
Now, if it is to save width or length, none of these designs will make a difference because the drive has to go somewhere.
I don't believe Apple are stupid enough to omit the most popular storage device on the planet so just forgetting the optical drive is not an option.
Well, you say how can Apple possibly do it? Perhaps they should ask Sony how they managed to fit an optical drive and a 1280x768 resolution screen into a 10.1" enclosure.
I really wish Apple could make something like that as long as they didn't have to increase the price beyond the other models. If it was the same price as the 15", I'd pick the smaller one given the choice if it had the same spec including external video support.
I don't believe Apple are stupid enough to omit the most popular storage device on the planet so just forgetting the optical drive is not an option.
They did just that with the floppy. They did it at a time when it was impossible to find a computer without that drive, and it was still in common use because flash drives weren't an affordable option and optical writers were still too expensive to standardize.
We've already discussed several reasons why the optical drive doesn't have to be with the machine when on the go, I don't think your argument is a sufficient rebuttal.
They did just that with the floppy. They did it at a time when it was impossible to find a computer without that drive, and it was still in common use because flash drives weren't an affordable option and optical writers were still too expensive to standardize.
I suspected that would come up but the difference is that the floppy was a terrible storage medium and zip disks quickly took their place. Optical drives don't lack storage capacity, they aren't unreliable and they aren't expensive therefore there is no reason to omit an optical drive when as I've shown, it is possible to fit an optical drive into a very small laptop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
We've already discussed several reasons why the optical drive doesn't have to be with the machine when on the go, I don't think your argument is a sufficient rebuttal.
Ok, but what has that got to do with this discussion? This is about a patent to find a way to fit an optical drive into a small laptop. If leaving out the drive was an option, they wouldn't have bothered with this. But they did so it is clearly not an option. For a small minority of people, leaving out the optical drive may be acceptable but for most others, it's a deal-breaker as to whether or not they should buy the machine.
I use DVDs constantly and I copy discs a lot. If the solution is to bundle an external drive then I'm going to need two external drives. Normally I'd have an internal combo and an external burner. Two externals would mean that I'd never need to worry about my internal one breaking, which is nice I'll admit but it's not convenient for a portable machine.
I think it's about time we had smaller discs though. If they could somehow standardize a UMD sized Blu-Ray drive - judging by a 50GB standard - it should be able to hold about 20GB. IMO, that would have sealed the deal between which movie format will win the HD war. Smaller discs also means stronger discs and they make less noise because they wobble less. Of course we know how unpopular UMD is though.
I suspected that would come up but the difference is that the floppy was a terrible storage medium and zip disks quickly took their place.
Zips were a horrible storage medium too. A bad drive ruins a disk. A bad disk ruins a good drive. The disks weren't reliable even with good treatment. Optical discs aren't necessary for file transfer anymore either, and they are slow and loud too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin
I use DVDs constantly and I copy discs a lot. If the solution is to bundle an external drive then I'm going to need two external drives. Normally I'd have an internal combo and an external burner. Two externals would mean that I'd never need to worry about my internal one breaking, which is nice I'll admit but it's not convenient for a portable machine.
The real question is, do you really do all this "on the go"? I don't know a whole lot of people that duplicate optical discs a lot, so if you want to talk about minority, there you go. I used to insist on two drives for duplicating discs, but I haven't needed to do that in a long time, and only rarely need a single drive because better alternatives came along.
It's not about not shipping an optical drive, it's about not having to have one with you at all times. The playback media can be imported at home or work, and played as a file when on the go. Data transfer can be done faster and with less work with flash media, and those things are continuously getting bigger.
Comments
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.
Others have mentioned it higher in the thread. The problem there would be that a keyboard needs to be good and stiff to have acceptable "feel." You can't do that on a thin, flip-up keyboard. If you were to look at the Powerbook G4, its keyboard was easy to remove and flexible, but it was supported by a pretty robust structure.
Did you guys even read the text? They are discussing ODD placement for a machine that is too small for the traditional edge loading design.
I read it, but I just don't accept that premise, I don't see anything about the designs offered that save much space, if they save any space at all.
For an ultra portable I'd be very fine with no CD drive at all. Just leave it to an external.
Exactly. This to me is a solution in search of a problem. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I needed to insert a disk in my mbp when I'm out with it.
If Macs actually used custom drives then we'd still be stuck on DVD-R only with the Windows world laughing whist burning DVD±RW DL.
mrtotes
FWIW Apple used to do this back in the day of the Powerbook Duos, and the idea is no less valid now. You can always have a tiny external USB 2.0 disk drive if you really need to use one.
Please just take the optical drive out of the laptop alltogether. I've used the drive in my MacBook maybe 3 or 4 times in 8 months. An ultra portable is probably a secondary machine anyway.
FWIW Apple used to do this back in the day of the Powerbook Duos, and the idea is no less valid now. You can always have a tiny external USB 2.0 disk drive if you really need to use one.
Agreed. If Apple is running out of space in the new MBPs and they've got some great ideas for new stuff to put in, they can feel free to take out the optical drive in my 15" while they're at it. Just bundle a USB 2.0 Superdrive with it.
Good call.
Speaking of USB memory sticks and external drives, I'd like to see Apple put in an "USB target mode" where your computer looks like an USB drive. You could have one without the rebooting required for Firewire target mode, if it didn't give full access to the disk. Instead you'd make a disk image, say 2GB, and put miscellaneous files on it. You'd then load that disk image into USB Mass Storage Utility, whereupon the utility would reserve the USB port and lock the disk image. You'd only need a standard USB cable, no shuffling of physical devices, and you could transfer as much stuff at a time as you have free space for the disk image.
As a road warrior who spends way too much time sitting on a plane, I rather enjoy being able to take my movies with me. Sadly, iTunes doesn't offer every movie or TV show ever made, and even if it did I wouldn't re-buy the ones I already own just so I could have an electronic copy of them to take with me on the plane. not everyone is going to be savvy enough to rip the DVDs they want. As for network access to files, if you have an ultra-portable chances are you're not always in a place where your network is available, especially at speeds that are generous enough to transfer large files. As soon as BD- or HD-ROM catches hold, we'll see even more items on optical discs. I don't use mine often, but I'd certainly hate to be caught without it. JM2C . . .
not everyone is going to be savvy enough to rip the DVDs they want.
I think you're giving quite a few people who do that more credit for having technical savvy than they deserve.
I think you're giving quite a few people who do that more credit for having technical savvy than they deserve.
Yes. All you have to have is the right software. Mac The Ripper and iSquint requires very little technical knowledge. That software is illegal in the US, and will probably be illegal in other developed nations soon, if not already.
All you have to have is the right software.
I intentionally omitted names to protect the innocent.
The savings with this type of drive (or one place underneath the keyboard) are not so much in the internal space and weight as they are in the "edge real estate." Eliminating the side loader could free up gobs of room for more frequently-used ports, such as Firewire (400 & 800), USB, video out, you name it. How about a direct connector to iPod/iPhone/future-iGizmo?
It certainly isn't for height saving because on the Macbook, the firewire port stretches top to bottom:
http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html
Now, if it is to save width or length, none of these designs will make a difference because the drive has to go somewhere.
I don't believe Apple are stupid enough to omit the most popular storage device on the planet so just forgetting the optical drive is not an option.
Well, you say how can Apple possibly do it? Perhaps they should ask Sony how they managed to fit an optical drive and a 1280x768 resolution screen into a 10.1" enclosure.
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1779&page=2
I really wish Apple could make something like that as long as they didn't have to increase the price beyond the other models. If it was the same price as the 15", I'd pick the smaller one given the choice if it had the same spec including external video support.
I don't believe Apple are stupid enough to omit the most popular storage device on the planet so just forgetting the optical drive is not an option.
They did just that with the floppy. They did it at a time when it was impossible to find a computer without that drive, and it was still in common use because flash drives weren't an affordable option and optical writers were still too expensive to standardize.
We've already discussed several reasons why the optical drive doesn't have to be with the machine when on the go, I don't think your argument is a sufficient rebuttal.
Tablet PPC
the one thing a true tablet lacks... optical drive.
"Oh, looky, Apple reinvents the tablet"
They did just that with the floppy. They did it at a time when it was impossible to find a computer without that drive, and it was still in common use because flash drives weren't an affordable option and optical writers were still too expensive to standardize.
I suspected that would come up but the difference is that the floppy was a terrible storage medium and zip disks quickly took their place. Optical drives don't lack storage capacity, they aren't unreliable and they aren't expensive therefore there is no reason to omit an optical drive when as I've shown, it is possible to fit an optical drive into a very small laptop.
We've already discussed several reasons why the optical drive doesn't have to be with the machine when on the go, I don't think your argument is a sufficient rebuttal.
Ok, but what has that got to do with this discussion? This is about a patent to find a way to fit an optical drive into a small laptop. If leaving out the drive was an option, they wouldn't have bothered with this. But they did so it is clearly not an option. For a small minority of people, leaving out the optical drive may be acceptable but for most others, it's a deal-breaker as to whether or not they should buy the machine.
I use DVDs constantly and I copy discs a lot. If the solution is to bundle an external drive then I'm going to need two external drives. Normally I'd have an internal combo and an external burner. Two externals would mean that I'd never need to worry about my internal one breaking, which is nice I'll admit but it's not convenient for a portable machine.
I think it's about time we had smaller discs though. If they could somehow standardize a UMD sized Blu-Ray drive - judging by a 50GB standard - it should be able to hold about 20GB. IMO, that would have sealed the deal between which movie format will win the HD war. Smaller discs also means stronger discs and they make less noise because they wobble less. Of course we know how unpopular UMD is though.
I suspected that would come up but the difference is that the floppy was a terrible storage medium and zip disks quickly took their place.
Zips were a horrible storage medium too. A bad drive ruins a disk. A bad disk ruins a good drive. The disks weren't reliable even with good treatment. Optical discs aren't necessary for file transfer anymore either, and they are slow and loud too.
I use DVDs constantly and I copy discs a lot. If the solution is to bundle an external drive then I'm going to need two external drives. Normally I'd have an internal combo and an external burner. Two externals would mean that I'd never need to worry about my internal one breaking, which is nice I'll admit but it's not convenient for a portable machine.
The real question is, do you really do all this "on the go"? I don't know a whole lot of people that duplicate optical discs a lot, so if you want to talk about minority, there you go. I used to insist on two drives for duplicating discs, but I haven't needed to do that in a long time, and only rarely need a single drive because better alternatives came along.
It's not about not shipping an optical drive, it's about not having to have one with you at all times. The playback media can be imported at home or work, and played as a file when on the go. Data transfer can be done faster and with less work with flash media, and those things are continuously getting bigger.