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Is the optical drive in the MM truly dead?
- Thread starter glocke12
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I Don't think It's Going To Be
Re-instated....I bought an external Superdrive when I bought my MBA. It's really handy, portable and works with any mac.
I think the trend towards SSD's over the next year may well push optical drives out of the case and into the external option.
Those external super drives are not that expensive, and I've found mine far more useful than I thought I would...Often carry it in my case and it's come in handy on more than a few occasions.
Re-instated....I bought an external Superdrive when I bought my MBA. It's really handy, portable and works with any mac.
I think the trend towards SSD's over the next year may well push optical drives out of the case and into the external option.
Those external super drives are not that expensive, and I've found mine far more useful than I thought I would...Often carry it in my case and it's come in handy on more than a few occasions.
Internally? Yes, I sure as hell hope so. Optical media in and of itself is slowly dying with the ability to buy or rent stuff through iTunes or Netflix.
If Apple wants to sell the external USB drive, that is fine. Otherwise, I say kill it in all systems except the Mac Pro.
Of course there would still be room in there for extra hdd/ssd and a half decent graphics card if Apple hadn't gone down the smaller, thinner route.
No way Apple will bring it back. Fine with me. I bought an external USB BluRay drive. Try ripping/playing a BluRay with a stock Mini Superdrive. Not gonna happen!
If the macbook pro or the imac loses its optical drive then I guess we can say that Apple has truly given up on it. Apple will then probably go even thinner so they'll get rid of the ssd drives which will replace the outdated hard drives and everyone will store their data in the cloud and all Apple products will be lightweight and wafer thin. Interesting how Acer and Asus are pushing their ultrabooks so maybe everyone is keeping their options open just in case. However it's hard not to think that design choices (thinness) and business models (itunes) have had more of an influence on this decision with the mini than anything else and of course they can judge people's reactions to the decision before deciding if this is a goer across the board.
From the looks of things, how how most content is just downloaded. I would say its safe to say the the optical drive wont really be making a come back. But then again who knows, right? 
From the looks of things, how how most content is just downloaded. I would say its safe to say the the optical drive wont really be making a come back. But then again who knows, right?
There is alot of content downloaded these days, but many people prefer discs.
iTunes only affairs 256 kbps downloads, not CD quality and not lossless. While there are some tunes I will download regardless, I can tell a difference and will buy a CD for artists I really care about.
No blu-ray downloads. I prefer blu-ray over the itunes HD that is offered, again I can tell a difference here also. The one thing that really sold me on the original MM was the fact that it played DVD's and I did not need a separate DVD player. Would be great if the Apple would just embrace blu-ray and and either allow blu-ray downloads or add a blu-ray player internally.
I honestly don't know why this is an issue. Laptop size CD/DVD drives have always been inferior in numerous ways to full-sized drives -- they burn slower, are more prone to malfunction, they burn media poorly, they can't be modified or upgraded, and on and on and on -- so Apple is really doing folks a favor by getting rid of it. Ripping, burning, reading, and in every way imaginable, if you're serious about optical media, you didn't have any use for the internal drive anyway, and if you're a casual media user, a small external drive will handle your needs. Trust me on this people. I know you like the aesthetic look and convenience of the internal drive, but frankly, Apple supplied drives have always sucked. Ask any expert about optical media and burning, and they will tell you that Apple has always been at the bottom of the barrel in that area. They got rid of the drive for reasons beyond the march towards iTunes ubiquity.
Which is exactly what they've done in the current revision
The 6630M is fairly decent (better than the 6490M which was in the baseline 15" pro when the 2011 mini came out). And space for 2 drives.So the thin form factor isn't really a problem.
Apple could have easily added a couple of inches to the height of the mini to provide room for an optional optical drive for those that still use them. I doubt too many people would have been negatively affected by this increase in case height. Instead Apple decided to dump on Apple owners that own and use optical media.
Yes I have movies on DVD. I do not use any portable devices. Why spend the time and effort ripping them to a desktop hard drive for watching at home when I already have the disc at home? I can spend that time doing something else.
For an Apple user like me who does not like glossy screens and wants a desktop computer Apple has made it where I have to chunk out huge bucks for a Mac Pro in order to have an internal optical drive.
Yes I have movies on DVD. I do not use any portable devices. Why spend the time and effort ripping them to a desktop hard drive for watching at home when I already have the disc at home? I can spend that time doing something else.
For an Apple user like me who does not like glossy screens and wants a desktop computer Apple has made it where I have to chunk out huge bucks for a Mac Pro in order to have an internal optical drive.
Time?? It takes a few seconds to set up a rip. After setup, no user input is required.
You're right. You shouldn't have to rip DVDs to your hard drive in order to play them on your TV. That's why you have the option to play DVDs on a DVD player (what???) or even buy an external drive for your Mini.
A couple of inches on top of the mini? The mini is already only a couple of inches tall! Why double the size of the mini and charge people for something that most don't need so that there can be an optical drive on board?
I prefer a disc drive, there is still content that requires a disc and i'm not a fan of external dd's. i bought a 2010 mac mini for that specific reason. also when i had an x-ray/mri a few months back on my knee the company that did it gave me a copy on dvd. its more functional for me to have everything integrated rather than carrying an extra drive etc...
So buying an external Blue Ray player will work on a 2011 Base Mini? I thought Apple was not going to support Blue Ray at all? Especially since there is no software for a BR player on a Mac, or is there?
You can burn and read a BluRay data disk on the Mac easily. It is watching BluRay movies that has been the issue, due to the multi-layer copy protection on the movies. And there is a software solution for playing BluRay on Macs now...
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/40390/blu-ray-player
Why? The same reason why we do it for music. Let's rephrase what you said: "Yes I have music on CD. I do not use any portable devices. Why spend the time and effort ripping them to a desktop hard drive for listening at home when I already have the disc at home? I can spend that time doing something else."
Why mess around with hundreds of plastic discs and cases that take a lot of room when you can have it on hard drives? A video library is as useful as a music library. It's not so much about portability as it is about accessibility.
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