I know this is posted a lot
But what about this: New screens with DVD burners in them (like the iMac): that way when you buy a laptop (sans optical drive) and you connect to the LED LCD, you not only get power/screen/speakers, but an optical drive as well.
Do you see this happening?
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DVDs are on the way out in my opinion. The only thing stopping optical storage from turning legacy is the lack of major studio support for digital delivery of movies and a consumer version of tape backups. What else do you really use your optical drive for other than ripping DVDs and backing up data for long term archiving?
Installing software and games?
Installing software and games?
more and more games and software are downloaded and/or played online nowadays
more and more games and software are downloaded and/or played online nowadays
What about your exisiting collection?
I know this is posted a lot
But what about this: New screens with DVD burners in them (like the iMac): that way when you buy a laptop (sans optical drive) and you connect to the LED LCD, you not only get power/screen/speakers, but an optical drive as well.
Do you see this happening?
Not a terrible idea, but sounds like a very expensive set up... not that that would necessarily stop people buying it if it had the Apple logo.
more and more games and software are downloaded and/or played online nowadays
Many gamers still like to have a hard copy of the game around. I can't speak for some folks, but I can drive to the local Gamestop, pick up a title, drive back, install it, repeat twice more, and get a couple hours of sleep before a single 6 GB title would even be halfway done downloading. Until internet speeds improve dramatically across the board, physically installing games and software from a CD/DVD is going to remain the norm. It'll remain the norm even longer in rural areas. And as it's been said, if you remove the optical drive, then your existing collection of CD/DVD games suddenly becomes so much useless junk.
If you don't use the optical drive, that's fine. Just don't assume that nobody else needs to use it either. For the time being it's a very necessary part of a computer- and currently the Apple cases are so small and sleek that there's almost no argument for making them even thinner except to have bragging rights. Really, that's what the Air is- bragging rights. It's basically a MacBook with Netbook-level portability and the price tag of a fully loaded iMac.