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Apple declares last MacBook Pro with an optical drive obsolete
- ijhuygft776 3y agothis makes sense... but I don't think they should have removed the audio jack from any of their product
- ActorNightly 3y agoUSBC headphones make more sense. Unified port for all accessories.
- justworkout 3y agoIf that were to be the reasoning, the least they could do is provide 2 ports on phones so nobody needs a dongle to listen while charging.
- ActorNightly 3y agoPhones should have 2 ports, but Macs have 3 already
- inopinatus 3y agoThis is the sole reason I own a wireless charging pad.
- pzo 3y agosometimes you want to not only charge but also pass data via cable to macbook. Wifi has latency, airpods bluetooth also has latency. It the past it was easy when you could still connect iphone/ipad to macbook via cable and still connect headset for mic and speakers. I tested a lot of splitter adapters and they allowed only to use headset speakers (no mic) and charge (no data)
- YeBanKo 3y agoWhy though? Audio jack delivers pretty much all you need functionality for headphones and plenty of existing hardware. iPod Shuffle 3d gen was tiny, had only 3.5mm for data transfer and charging. They remove headphone jack in iPhone 7 and added USB-C in iPhone 15. So for almost a decade the only option was proprietary lighting or bluetooth, probably resulted in a significant amount of e-waste.
- ijhuygft776 3y agoWhat would make even more sense is a round USB plug to make it even easier to plug it in. I'm just tired of losing my Bluetooth earbuds
- pat2man 3y agoThe current MacBook Pro has an audio jack…
- willsmith72 3y agoyep, wouldn't have bought it without it. that and the lack of touch bar make the latest models awesome
- thesuitonym 3y agoYes but the GP's point still remains, they shouldn't have removed it from ANY device.
- arvinsim 3y agoThe lack of audio jack in my iPad Pro is the main reason why I abandoned music production on iOS and just do it with my Macbook Pro.
- Mistletoe 3y agoI think there’s only one real reason they removed the audio jack. This is so gross: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/n5m2xp/oc_airpods_revenue_vs_top_tech_companies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/n5m2xp/oc_...
- jwells89 3y agoI’m sure that removal of the headphone jack helped drive sales, but it’s worth remembering that AirPods were also some of the first bluetooth earbuds that were good enough for mass market appeal, and for usage with phones especially wires can get pretty irritating. A lot more people probably would’ve switched years earlier had other companies released bluetooth headphones on par with first gen AirPods.
- diebeforei485 3y agoThey were definitely motivated to sell more AirPods, but Bluetooth has been a clear quality of life improvement for most people (except when using the microphone, where Bluetooth has been a quality downgrade), and the 3.5mm jack takes up a lot of space inside phones. I'd have preferred they made a true replacement - a new wireless standard for example.
- ijhuygft776 3y agoI don't think I believe these numbers... I know they are way overpriced because I paid $30 for my "clones" but still... I also hate them because they are too easy to lose
- GianFabien 3y agoCarefully stored CDs and DVDs retain their contents for far longer than hard drives. I have several external HDs that are no longer readable. Yet DVDs burnt on a 2009 MBP still read fine with an external DVD drive. I have some early USB keys that no longer work, so I doubt that flash sticks or even SSDs are useful for backup for more than 10 years.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoBlu-rays are underrated for archival. 25GB or 50GB broadly available, almost impervious to scratches, even more resistant to degradation. Alas, the DRM for the movie side left a foul taste everywhere…
- vel0city 3y ago100GB Blu-Rays are pretty easy to find as well.
- epcoa 3y agoThey’re expensive as fuck though thanks to no investment in disc media. You can get them for what $12.50 a piece if you’re lucky and I’ve heard it’s only worse in Europe. That’s 12 times the cost of hard drives. Buy just 6 or 7 and store them offsite and you have something that is more robust. Once you hit the 50TB level it becomes economical to look into late gen LTO (tape), perfectly good LTO-7 drives can be had for cheap.
- userbinator 3y agoYou can get them for what $12.50 a piece That’s 12 times the cost of hard drives Where are you seeing $1 100GB hard drives, or $10 1TB ones?
- zamfi 3y agoNowhere, of course -- but 20TB drives can be had for a bit over $300 these days, that's $15/TB, not too far off.
- Kerrick 3y agoMeanwhile, they still sell the SuperDrive brand new on their website.
- smaccona 3y agoWorth noting that these won’t work with the usual garden variety USB-C hubs sporting USB-A ports; instead, you need to use an adapter as opposed to a hub[0] - maybe because of power issues? Source: I have a SuperDrive and have experienced this first hand on a USB-C-only port Mac. [0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/102181 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102181
- armada651 3y agoCorrect, the SuperDrive requires 5V at 1.6A while most hubs only provide the standard 5V at 1A. Any fast-charging USB-A port will work though and that are hubs that support that.
- sneed_chucker 3y agoEh. From what I've seen, needing an optical drive is pretty rare for most users these days. And when you do need one, the external USB cable variety is really cheap and works fine. It is nice that on older laptops, like pre 2012 MacBook pros and ThinkPad T400s, you can swap the optical drive with an additional drive caddy and put multiple SSDs in the machine.
- jwells89 3y agoA large chunk of the remainder who still keep an optical drive around do so for personal media archival, in which case they’d want specific drives known to be well suited to that purpose (feature support, high accuracy[0], etc), and the drives built into laptops usually aren’t amazing in this regard. [0]: https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?48320-CD-Drive-Accuracy-2022 https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?48320-CD-Drive-A...
- teeray 3y agoYes, away with those pesky DVDs—stream everything. Give us a portion of your income every month so that you may never pay just a single time to access some piece of media.
- PradeetPatel 3y agoI feel like we are moving towards a service/subscription based economy. Which definitely makes some media more accessible and equitable, and might be a mutually beneficial agreement between the producer and the consumer. But that does raise the question of ownership. Given that now some game companies are looking to turn even single player games into a subscription based model...
- drewzero1 3y agoBesides ownership, the problem I see with that is that (most) people can only afford so many subscriptions, and with recent fragmentation in the streaming market there are a lot of subscriptions. I want to see one thing on a streaming service, but I can't afford to pay monthly for that service just to watch that one thing. I would have bought the DVD and given them some of my money, but without that option I don't get to watch that thing and they get none of my money. I suppose overall they still get somebody's money every month, so they don't mind missing out on mine... but somehow it still feels like a step backwards for digital media.
- hcks 3y agoExcept a single dvd back then was inflation adjusted more expensive than one month of these subscription? So how does your reasoning hold?
- drewzero1 3y agoOne month sure, but if I watch it more than once or take more than a month to complete a while season the subscription adds up. Plus a lot more was available to rent on DVD, which makes more sense for something I only want to watch once rather than signing up for a subscription service and hoping I remember to cancel before it renews. To be fair I bought (and buy) many of my DVDs at thrift stores and garage sales, so the media companies didn't see my money directly. But indirectly it did enable my neighbors to buy new DVDs to fill the space they cleaned from their sale. Perhaps I am being irrational, but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the fragmented and rent-seeking streaming landscape. Some other people's comments here suggest I'm not the only one with strong feelings about this.
- dishsoap 3y agoPerhaps an interesting note is that Apple should have added this particular model to the obsolete page when they updated it on 5 December 2023 [1] and 2 January 2024 [2] (as both were more than 7 years past the 27 October 2016 discontinuation date), but they forgot to add it until yesterday. They also never had it on the 'vintage' list at any point, as they have with other macs; instead it went straight from not listed to 'obsolete'. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231206074005/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 https://web.archive.org/web/20231206074005/https://support.a... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20240107224531/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 https://web.archive.org/web/20240107224531/https://support.a...
- drewzero1 3y agoIt was a curious holdover and I was surprised at the time that they kept selling it as long as they did. After the retina Macs came out the writing was on the wall. It's also worth noting these were also the last MacBook with upgradable RAM, and we're still seeing issues with insufficient stock RAM on the newest MacBook models.
- LispSporks22 3y agoHope they're not gonna kill my Mid 2015 MBP anytime soon. With Open Core Patcher, it's still running the latest macOS.
- opan 3y agoSeeing as you're already running OpenCore Legacy Patcher, would you really be affected by them "killing" support for your machine? I guess getting official parts/repairs seems to be what you'd lose. Maybe you could stock up on the most likely to fail parts ahead of time. I'm sure third party repair shops would still be able to fix the machine even after Apple gives up on it, though.
- prmoustache 3y agoUltimately they will stop supporting x86_64 arch so even Open Core Patcher might not help you at some point.
- drewzero1 3y agoDoes anybody have a recommendation for a slightly newer laptop (obviously not Apple) with an integrated DVD drive? My SO uses her 2012 MBP13 daily and a big advantage of that computer is that it's compact and can comfortably watch DVDs anywhere while she's working on her computer. We do have an external drive which works fine on a table but it's really cumbersome when trying to hold the computer on your lap, on a chair, on the couch, etc... you know, normal places where one might try to use a portable computer. I've been contemplating a Thinkpad T440p but I do realize that's only two years newer (though almost infinitely more upgradable). Is there anything else with a 13-14” screen, DVD drive, and decent build quality? Or are we the only people who ever watch DVDs any more?
- dishsoap 3y agoWhy not just rip the DVDs to files and watch them whenever from wherever. DVDs are cumbersome and dated.
- jzombie 3y agoHave you contemplated ripping the DVDs and/or using a streaming service? I wouldn't limit my options to just having a DVD if that means compromising everything else, especially if the computer is for work.
- drewzero1 3y agoI've considered ripping which is fine for my own discs, but I'm not going to do that every time we go to Redbox or the public library. (Yes I'm aware Redbox also does streaming, but last I checked some things were only on DVD and they were cheaper anyway.) We use a streaming service but things seem to be spread out across five or more of them. (And as soon as I find something I like on there, it goes away!) I agree with the issue of compromising everything else, which is why we've stuck with a 12-year-old computer. Obviously we'd have to settle a little, I was just wondering if anyone had ideas to avoid having to change our workflow too much.
- jzombie 3y ago
- xeckr 3y agoI remember swapping the optical drive out for an SSD, and also swapping out the RAM sticks to double my 2012 MBP's memory. I think this was shortly before they soldered all of those things in place.
- atoav 3y agoSo that is what happens when a manufacturer forgets to stick that "never obsolete"-sticker on the case of the PC.
- bdcravens 3y agoI've held on to my external DVD drive for years, but I don't think I've plugged it into any of my Macbooks for 7? 8? more? years.
- ijhuygft776 3y agoI think having an external optical drive is acceptable? How often do you need to read a CD/DVD/BR on the run?
- sotix 3y agoDoes anyone have a recommended drive I could attach to my desktop PC that could rip UHD Blu-Rays, DVDs, and CDs? With the death of the mass market optical drive, I think it’s worth being able to directly convert my content to digital.
- ics 3y agoFor those who want to read physical discs still for whatever reason I highly recommend the Pioneer BDR-XS07UHD. It does CD/DVD/Blu-Ray, can run off external power or over the USB-C connection at slightly slower speeds, is compact and lightweight. Yes, the reign of dongles is well upon us but the upside is that your best optical drive is no longer tied to one machine. I just keep the drive next to my movies and grab it whenever I want to watch something, ripping for future viewing. I still have an older MacBook Pro with optical drive but: it doesn’t do Blu-Ray, it’s loud and thick, it’s a path for dust ingress, and another moving part that can fail in a laptop on the go. If we ever get disc readers back, I hope it’s less spinning platter and more microscopic lidar where you just wave the disc in front of the holoscreen and it instantly reads whatever day it contains. Burning would be a different story I guess…
- pangolinja 3y agoM1 made apple obsolete. Cant repair my $3k computer? fuck you, you're never getting a cent from me again. 40 year Apple user, now happily a Linux user. never ever going back.