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Today Apple announced the death of the optical drive in its laptops
- gamble 16y agoIt's going to be a very slow death. Still, I look forward to the day I can buy a MBP with no optical drive and an Air-sized Flash stick in place of the SSD.
- gry 16y agoIn 1998, Apple removed the floppy drive from the iMac and extended to all their products. In 2008, Apple removed optical drives from the MacBook Air. People concede this will extend to all their products. The optical death will be faster than the floppy, that's for sure. I'm curious, what's next?
- csixty4 16y agoWe'll find out in 2018 apparently.
- Groxx 16y agoI'm voting for keyboard. Just because I don't see how they could do it while still keeping it nice to type on. And of all companies, Apple seems likely to do so successfully if anyone is even capable of doing so. And if it is possible, I want to see what the heck it would be, and who would see it coming? I mean, heck, they already went to the opposite of what people kept saying they needed on their mice / trackpads - now there's no button.
- elai 16y agoMany many people do not use their optical drives. I used to use my optical DVD drive all the time, but in past 4 years I've barely touched it. It's use has dropped considerably. The keyboard no so much so.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoI'm voting that keyboards will be around for as long as there is a physical input mechanism of any sort. The throughput and flexibility with keyboards is just too great to get rid of completely.
- Groxx 16y agoPrecisely why I want to see someone successfully supplant it. We're so wired into thinking we need a keyboard, that it's nigh-ideal, that I really want to see something better because I can't think of what it could possibly be.
- ecuzzillo 16y agoNo, I think we found out today; it's hard drives. Hard drives are the new tape decks. After that it's unclear.
- stcredzero 16y agoHow about a single plug for monitor/power/data and the death of all other ports? (Or maybe everything wireless for laptops and other mobile devices?) The death of consumer-level computing where the user can actually get root? (Everything will be on a app store?)
- wtallis 16y agoI'd settle for a single plug for power (MagSafe) and a single plug for data (Lightpeak). If you want a data cable to provide significant amounts of power or power at significant distances, it will end up having to be thick and expensive, and so will the device providing the power. LightPeak has the potential to replace USB, Firewire, Ethernet, and all kinds of digital A/V cables, but it can only economically replace all of them if it doesn't have to provide DC power. I really don't want Intel to screw up this opportunity by trying to make LightPeak provide power under some circumstances but not others (like USB and eSATA), or by charging silly licensing fees (like Apple did for Firewire), or by crippling the controller performance to save cost (like USB's lack of DMA or low-latency transfers).
- sliverstorm 16y agoI cannot help but think optical is a BAD, BAD choice for miscellaneous small external devices.
- frou_dh 16y agoI welcome it as long as external optical drives remain supported. Fill the space with battery.
- Groxx 16y agoNot going to miss it. OSes should be distributed on USB keys anyway (goodbye, scratches), and Apple sells a solid external USB DVD-RW for $80 - more than worth it for the better battery life and cheaper, smaller, lighter laptops.
- TeHCrAzY 16y agoMicrosoft did this for windows 7, you could purchase online, download, run a small program which would setup the usb stick with the required files + make it bootable. Worked flawlessly for me.
- Groxx 16y agoWill have to try that, it'd be useful for me. I still think the boxes should have a USB drive in them instead of a disk, though. Those things are huge.
- mzl 16y agoMicrosoft has had small download managers for their software when delivered from MSDN Academic Alliance for quite some time. Unfortunately, I could never get a copy of Windows to use, since I only had access to Linux and Mac computers. If it had been a normal download, I would probably have installed my free copy of Windows on some computer.
- LaGrange 16y agoLast time I tried it worked in Wine with no problems.
- mzl 16y agoNice to know. Last time I tried (about one and a half years ago) it didn't.
- LaGrange 16y agoFor me it was about two years, but one aannoying thing I kind-of-remember was that the app demanded the IE control (somehow emulated via Firefox in Wine, but requiring additional install - automatically suggested by Wine, but still). It definitely wasn't the most sensible DRM of all time. Even more annoying because of it's uselessness. I never had a problem with ordering additional downloads for MSAA software.
- mthoms 16y agoLooking a little deeper one can only conclude that the launch of a desktop App store coinciding with the death of the optical media drive is no coincidence. You don't need an optical drive because of the App store, and you must use the App store (and iTunes) because there is no optical drive. Simply brilliant. Edit: Downvotes? Perhaps the tone makes it sound too much like a conspiracy which is not what I meant to convey. It's a logical move for Apple and their customers (even if they might not know it yet).
- xenophanes 16y agoYou seem to have overlooked that CDs and DVDs aren't the main way to get programs now. You can download them from the internet.
- mthoms 16y agoAnd with respect, you seem to have overlooked that average users (ie. not people who read HN) still buy millions of dollars of boxed software/games/movies yearly. Sure downloading software was/is the inevitable future, getting rid of the optical drive just gives the average Joe the little push he needs to get with it quicker.
- ubernostrum 16y agoNone of my Mac-owning, non-programming, non-HN-reading friends buy software that comes on discs in boxes.
- mthoms 16y agoAnecdotal evidence. Irrelevant. Edit: Truly confused about the downvotes (and upvotes for parent). Since when is anecdotal evidence a good supporting argument in a discussion on HN?
- apl 16y agoIt's not good evidence, but it's definitely not irrelevant either. Don't be childish! By the way, I can confirm that observation. Now we're at N=2.
- lancerp 16y agoIt's about time. With Steam, iTunes, Netflix, and Amazon VOD all major reasons to use optical drives have become weaker. Even for backing up, it makes far more sense to use a hard drive than cd-r's. You don't need the appstore even if you go driveless, you need an internet connection.
- lukifer 16y agoI replaced my optical with a 2nd hard drive a year ago and never looked back. The only problem it's caused me was having to jump through absurd hoops to get Boot Camp working, since the Windows installer only wants to talk to an actual disc on the internal ATA bus.
- dotBen 16y agoIs this on a Mac? I'm guessing it's a desktop, or how did you manage to replace the optical disk on an apple laptop?
- lukifer 16y agoYeah, 2008 Macbook Pro, using this enclosure from iFixit: http://www.ifixit.com/Apple-Parts/9-5-mm-SATA-Optical-Bay-SATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/IF107-080 http://www.ifixit.com/Apple-Parts/9-5-mm-SATA-Optical-Bay-SA...
- marze 16y agoCouldn't you just as well say they announced the end of the hard drive, at least for portable computers? Hard drive capacity has so far outstripped the needs of a portable computer user I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier.
- ditoa 16y agoTo be fair I have not used a CD or DVD since 2006! I use Windows which I installed from a USB flash memory drive which I made after downloading the Windows 7 (and before that Vista) ISO from MSDN. All software I need I download (Office, Visual Studio, etc.). I have not even burnt a disc since back then either. Like the floppy it just sort of became unneeded as there were easier ways to access the data (faster, greater capactity, easier to reuse). I used to backup to DVD every week but I bought two external HDD to backup too now. I keep one in a small fireproof safe and the other next to my computer. Easier than burning a DVD and gives about the same level of protection. My backups only ever get bigger as I add to them (holiday pictures, video, etc.) and HDD increase in size quicker than optical media, it may cost more actual cash (I have never worked it out) but it costs a lot less in time. Optical media has been dead to me for a long time.
- subsection1h 16y ago> I keep one in a small fireproof safe and the other next to my computer. No off-site backups?
- ditoa 16y agoI have off-site backups of the very important things (personal documents, wedding pictures, etc.) at my mothers house (in their safe) and my safety deposit box with my bank. My bank is only 15 minutes away so adding to it isn't a problem at all, my mothers is a couple hundred miles away so whenever I go to visit (normally every other month) I take a backup. Again I use an external HDD (although a smaller 2.5" drive) for both my mothers and my SDB with photocopies of original documents, etc. It all comes down to evaluating the risk and value of loss verses the effort. Would I be upset if my house burned down and my safe didn't protect my HDD well enough that I list my family holiday photos to Disney World in 2003? Sure but it wouldn't be the end of the world. People still lose everything when their house burns down who do not store things digitally/offsite which is probably >99% of people in the real world. However if my house burns down and my safe fails I have all of my really important things in two off-site locations a fair distance apart. Is it perfect? No, but it is as close as I can be bothered to make the effort for. With services like Flickr and Picasa Web things like pictures and video are easier to "backup" online, Google Docs for important documents, etc. Archiving things via Gmail/Hotmail, etc. This gives me a way to store copies of those holiday pictures at Disneyworld (albeit in a lower quality than I have backed up) as well as share them with family more easily.
- mjfern 16y agoThis move is consistent with Apple's corporate strategy; a transition away from desktop computing and physical media, to a range of thin devices accessing online media via the cloud. The elimination of the optical drive facilitates smaller devices, and further establishes the importance of connectivity and online media, where Apple is well positioned with its growing collection of cloud services: iTunes, the App Store, the new OS X App Store, and so on. On a side note, this is further bad news for Sony and Blu-ray. The shift from physical to online video is happening much more quickly than most expected. Sony invested billions of dollars into Blu-ray to win the battle against HD DVD, anticipating at least a decade of future royalties. I am certain the expected returns on this investment will never be realized.
- ookblah 16y agoehh, until we can stream blu-ray quality videos over the internet i doubt it's going anywhere soon.
- pak 16y agoThe wireless Internet, no less. The Air doesn't have an Ethernet port and many devices in this category are commonly paired with (3,4)G data modems for mobility beyond the range of your own hotspot. I don't think there's a decent way of getting 40 GB of movie onto an Air without plugging something in... and USB memory is still too costly in that range.
- chroma 16y ago802.11g or n is faster than most consumer Internet connections. Nobody's suggesting streaming HD movies over the cell network... yet. Blu-ray discs are 25-50GB, but they contain lots of stuff besides the movie (bonus material and other stuff). Dropping extra features, using newer codecs, and slightly decreasing encoding quality can pare a 720p movie down to 5-6GB. Over a 20Mbit connection, that's a 30-40 minute download. Definitely streamable. In fact Apple, Netflix, and Amazon all do this already. They sacrifice some quality compared to blu-ray, but unlike blu-ray, you don't have to transport a physical disc to your home. Even though blu-ray is higher quality, you have to ship discs or travel to a store to get them. Video on demand is so much more convenient, and the quality is only going to get better as connection speeds and codecs improve.
- barrkel 16y agoI expect this to also mark the beginning of what will in the future be seen as a hole in history: a time when software was downloaded on demand, and consequently lost to time, because companies were too ephemeral, and the software bits too centralized, to survive through redundant copies.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoAn interesting point. Although CDs are not archival media.
- viraptor 16y agoThe old ones were. It seems the industry migrated to cheaper materials with time, or something with similar effect happened... I have problems reading some 2 year-old CD now, but a stack of disks from random newspapers from 1996 is working perfectly fine (found a big pile just a week ago).
- johnkary 16y agoI don't think the lack of optical or hard disk storage started the hole in history. Rather, perhaps IBM did when it invented the hard drive in the 1950s. Or maybe it was as early as Edison's phonograph in the 1870s. Whenever artifacts started requiring technology to interpret them (external dependencies, if you will) is when this hole in human history really began. Perhaps future generations will see the digital revolution as a time of strictly furthering the bottom-line; a time when it became prohibitively expensive to print most data. Yet currently, we call this "being green." How will future generations perceive this period in history?
- tomjen3 16y agoUnlikely - I had 4 year old cds that I couldn't read because they had degraded too much. So this is already an issue.
- barrkel 16y agoBut not everyone keeps all their old software on the original CDs. This is the point: the decentralization of the distribution mechanism meant that everybody was free to use different methods of storing them. Even if everybody was restricted to keeping stuff on the original CDs, the chances of all CDs failing is a lot lower than any single one failing. FWIW, I don't have any CDs (including cheap CD-Rs burnt over 12 years ago) that I can no longer read in any CD drive; some aren't readable by some drives, but they are readable by other drives. But I've since moved the small amount of data on them (and it is small, by today's measurements) to my file server, which is both RAIDZ and backed up remotely.
- Splines 16y agoI suppose it's the inexorable march of technology moving forward, but in computers that I've used that have been without optical drives, it seems a little too easy to paint yourself into a corner. If booting off a USB stick becomes common-place, I would have less to worry about. I know it's possible, but in the machines I've had to do it on, it's definitely non-standard. In those instances I've felt like I was back in the days of DOS. The talk of DRM-ed USB sticks is also disconcerting; dealing with DRM while trying to revive a machine is not something I look forward to.
- dotBen 16y agoI know it's possible, but in the machines I've had to do it on, it's definitely non-standard. USB booting is pretty common in most modern bios's, however don't forget we're talking about Apple here, where they control the entire stack. Booting off external drive on Mac (power on + option key) has been in place for many generations of their hardware. It's definitely patchy in Windows land, esp with net books.
- stevederico 16y agoI really don't see the point of an optical drive in a laptop, not to mention optical media. All the software and media I consume comes in a digital download format. If it is your only machine and you absolutely need to burn a cd, then a simple USB external will do the trick. Also, you can always setup a bootable partition on a USB flash drive. Honestly, I have been waiting for this day to come for years. I can't wait until blu Ray and video games via optical media die too. Thank you apple.
- Empedocles99 16y agoYeah, I really hate those non-digital optical media that all my software is on.
- mark_l_watson 16y agoA USB DVD writer/burner costs very little, sothat will always be an option. Also: this might make MacBoks not be such a good choice for running Ubuntu in the future.
- dotBen 16y agoUbuntu is most easily installed from USB stick already, so not sure why you would say that?
- zppx 16y agoBut even in the linux space I see people migrating from CDs. Just remember that diskless instant on small computers originally came with linux. My only problem with that is that it's much more easy to deal with isos than with imgs.
- robotron 16y agoI said this somewhere else, but my Asus eee PC w/Ubuntu from 2008 does not have an optical drive and has an SSD. Apple's a little late to the game. Once again they do something that isn't new and the world thinks that it's innovative or earth-shattering.
- rimantas 16y agoYou may want to check when the first generation of MacBook Air was released.
- drivebyacct2 16y agoI really couldn't be happier about this.
- drivebyacct2 16y agoThis wasn't sarcasm. :/
- alanstorm 16y agoIf this ends up becoming an industry trend it has some interesting repercussions for the music distribution industry. The combination of a compact disc's unencrypted contents plus an optical CD drive in almost every computer really helped push the ubiquity of digital music unencumbered by DRM. To consumers any DRM system seemed like a bigger hassle than dropping a CD in the drive, ripping the bits and then converting them to MP3s. We're years away from this, but if a majority of computers don't have an optical drive to rip CDs then the average consumer loses this non-download path to digital music. That probably emboldens DRM advocates, helps Apple's music download business, and will effect countless other things that are hard/impossible to predict.
- derefr 16y agoThe only reason Apple would consider this is that iTMS is already such a large part of the music distribution market (and likewise iTMS+Netflix for movie distribution) that their user-base doesn't put real plastic discs into computers much at all any more. I bet the ratio for the average Mac user of iTMS songs+movies downloaded, to CDs+DVDs ripped, has been on a steady decline for years, and when they do this it's because they'll have decided that it's finally crossed some inflection point. By the time Macs ship universally without optical drives, the idea of getting music off of a CD and onto your computer will be as backwards-seeming as getting video off of a VHS and onto a DVD. Sure, it's possible, and you might want to do it for things with sentimental value and out-of-print oldies, but in both cases it's way easier to just bring your old tapes (discs) to a media shop whose service include conversions, than it would be to find the equipment to do it on your own.
- alexknight 16y agoHonestly, I don't see the 2011 MacBook Pro refresh having optical drives anymore. Make way for even more battery space. Besides, if you really really really want to be stubborn about it you can also opt for one of their external drives. For the 2 times per year you may need one. Of course, even though I do tend to rip a lot of music CDs I buy, I'd still prefer just an external optical drive. The benefits of more battery in a MBP or maybe a second SSD/HD would be lovely.
- apl 16y agoI'm amazed by the fact that Apple keeps neglecting the software side of "the cloud." New MBAs? Great; they look like fine little machines, perfectly suited for the transition towards server-side computing. But MobileMe? An odd mixture of USB- and web-based syncing across devices? Come on, guys. You're not even trying.
- tfh 16y agoMy first laptop was an Asus and one of reasons I got it was the feature that you could remove the optical drive and put a second battery instead. I remember using the optical drive only 3 or 4 times. That was 6 years ago.
- robotron 16y agoMy eee pc from two years ago doesn't have an optical drive. How is this news?
- dingle_thunk 16y agoI don't know. The last MacBook Air didn't have an optical drive either. This is just nonsense.
- acabal 16y agoI travel a lot and the space and weight saved by not having an optical drive would be great for me. In fact I'm shopping for a new laptop now (though not a Mac) and finding a reasonably-priced 14-incher without an optical drive is tough. Anyone have any recommendations?
- jcromartie 16y agoI can't tell you the last time I used a CD/DVD in my computer. Maybe it was to install OS X?
- dingle_thunk 16y agoThis isn't the first MacBook Air released... The previous one didn't have an optical drive either. Little laptops never have them - EEE PCs, Librettos, etc. This article is complete non-news.