Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse | Hacker News Reader

Apple's officially over the optical drive, for better or worse

engadget.com

35 pointsshawndumas57 comments

"Over the past few years, Apple's been slyly but deliberately severing ties with a piece of hardware that most rational humans still view as essential on a full-scale computer."

I can count the number of times on one hand I've needed an optical drive in the last year.

In the last five years? Probably twenty times or so. I backup on the internet and use external hard drives. I stream content or view it off of an external. If I need to transfer files to someone, I do so using the plethora of online services, wireless networking, or using a thumbdrive.

I'm so very GLAD that Apple has the balls to do this.

"I've gotta say, though -- it's a wee bit difficult to shove 50GB worth of Blu-ray goodness into a North Carolina sky, and I'm saying that while residing just a few hours to the right."

I bought a PS3 years ago for Blu-ray, but I never ended up buying one for movies because the convenience of streaming and mail-in-DVDs made it easier to save space around the apartment.

Yeah, I found this article whiney. The last time I had to use a DVD was upgrading to Snow Leopard. When I went to do the upgrade I had to take my 1 year old laptop in to get fixed because the DVD drive wasn't working on it -- it in fact probably never worked.

I remember when BluRay 'beat' HD-DVD. By the time HD-DVD was dropped by Toshiba I was already thinking "who cares? no one is going to buy bluray anyway."

I suspect within 2 years, ODD will be completely dead from a manufacturers perspective:

* Games will be acquired through app stores (all the major consoles already have these)

* Movies will come from NetFlix type streaming options (Walmart just entered the game, no?)

* Software will be from app stores as well, or USB sticks

That's not to say you won't be able to buy DVD's, it's just that devices won't have the drives.

Biggest losers? Best Buy's and similar stores. What are they going to do with all that shelf space? (I guess I've already proved myself wrong, since they still have racks of audio CD's sell to the odd 'old' person).

I think you address an interesting market that will still need disks. The home-theater geek. It's not yet practical to stream the amounts of data necessary to play a full 1080p movie for 2+ hours without any noticeable degradation or stuttering. For now, if you want the best, you need a Blu-Ray drive.

Or a USB stick.

BR disk: 50GB. USB stick: 64GB

Do you know what a 64GB USB stick costs? For now, USB sticks are not a cost effective way for Sony et. all to deliver their content. I'm sure the price will come down in the future though.

For ahem personal (non-DRMed) use, USB sticks are fine, since you can use and reuse as necessary.

So the Blu-Ray market will pretty much be just slightly larger than the Laserdisc market was. I say it will be slightly larger because in the case of LDs, only highly affluent home theater geeks could afford to buy the players and the discs, whereas BD is priced much more competitively.

EDIT: We can also include everyone that doesn't have access to high speed broadband as candidates for BD, so the potential market isn't quite as grim as I originally surmised. Given the woeful state of broadband expansion in the U.S., there's probably a pretty good market for optical discs for the next 15 years at least.

One point frequently missed by people mocking blu-ray is that a lot of people are using it now pretty much by accident. I have a PS3 for playing games, and at a later date I got a LoveFilm subscription (it's like Netflix but British and rubbish). Now, if I want to watch a movie, it doesn't cost me a penny extra to watch the blu-ray. Do I want high def /for free/? Hell yes, I do! So I think Blu Ray will be sticking around.

However, on the "will the PC crowd miss it?" front - do I need a Bluray player? Yup! Do I need a Bluray player in my netbook, laptop, or desktop computer? Nope!

I would say the majority of people don't really care about the difference between BR and regular def DVD's. Hell, I know/understand the difference and I still don't care.

Audio CD's offered many advantages over tapes and records: audio quality, form factor, reliability. DVD's were much better than VHS for the same reasons. Other than being higher quality, BluRay doesn't really offer anything. I'm not going to replace any of the DVD's I own with BR. In fact, I'm getting rid of the DVD's and depending on streaming services so I don't have to store all that crap.

Based on that, I would actually wager that DVD will be around a lot longer than BluRay. 8 tracks were popular and are basically all gone now, but people still use records.

If I had a place to stream it from, I could easily stream an HD movie with my connection. It's not like in the future /less/ people are going to have fast internet!

You are both correct and very blessed to have such a good connection. In my experience, even people with decent internet speed seldom see that speed sustained for the entirety of a large download or stream.

A Blu-Ray disk holds 50GB. At a 10Mb/s connection (fairly common in the US), that would take over 11 hours to download, assuming no interruptions. Even at 100Mb/s it would take about an hour. Assuming you're streaming 2 hours of content you only have a 2:1 ratio of play time to download time, and that's still assuming no service interruptions. Most consumer ISPs promote their max burst rate in their packages, but for larger files kick the actual speeds down.

But again, there's no reason to assume the situation won't improve in the future, even with the exponential growth in number of devices online and increased usage per device.

You could also run a digital "rental" service - the "delivery time" is how long it takes to download when your connection isn't being used. Of course, that would only help people with slow connections rather than those with harsh caps, but it's something perhaps.

Yes the caps would be a pain to get around, but having the BR quality file delivered overnight is a possible solution. Of course when it's movie time you usually select the movie just before watching it (at least we do), so it might be difficult to get someone to accept a 12 hour wait for their 1080p movie.

If you span it right I think you might be able to get away with it - after all, Netflix works and that takes longer than 12 hours! This would also be less effort as you wouldn't have to post discs back.

H.264 at 10mbit/s looks OK to me. I can wait for it to buffer — it's still faster than getting getting it by snail mail.

Vudu HDX actually works quite well in my experience, but renting Blu-rays is much cheaper than streaming.

I really wish someone (Red Box, Apple) had built kiosks with local cacheing and good down speeds to sell movies at 1080p with a bit rate higher than Blu-Ray. Plug a flash USB in and away you go.

Exactly. Optical drives are to computing today what floppy drives were in 2000. I'm pretty sure I haven't used an optical drive in a computer for over 2 years.

Well, there are people who still buy and rip CDs as a means of obtaining lossless music :).

I will not claim to hear a difference, but like lossless music for archival purposes (to avoid future lossy to lossy conversion). Besides that, some music is still not available legally online.

Still, I would like to see optical drives axed across all Mac models. I can use an external drive for this purpose, and I do not want to carry around the extra weight if not necessary.

I own a couple of Plextor IDE drives still for this purpose. When it comes to ripping music, older is often better!

For any other uses though, I haven't needed a CD drive in the last year. It would have been useful when I installed Windows, merely because it's harder to lose than a USB memory stick!

Last year, my optical drive had gone bad, but I never realized until I had to rip a CD. Apple gave me a new Macbook Pro cause of the bad drive, but that is one of only three times in the last 2 years that I have tried using an optical drive (the other two were to load sample libraries)

I doubt I am going to miss one if they get rid of it, but I know others who would.

The only time I've ever used an optical drive is to re-install the OS.

You can pick up a USB DVD drive for next to nothing for those rare times you need it.

People always bring up the floppy drive example, but I didn't remember the huge outcry over the lack of a floppy drive that everyone mentions. By the time Apple dropped support for it, I hadn't used a floppy disk in years. Sure, PC tech pundits and journalists were up in arms, but that's their job.

As for optical drives, I have probably used it maybe half a dozen times over the past few years if you don't count an XBox. What's so crazy about dropping support for it in PCs? If anything, I'm glad. It'll lead to lighter and thinner laptops.

I remember vaguely... The first iMac was released in 1997, I think?, and the outcry was because they dropped not only the floppy but also parallel and serial ports. Some people called it "a toy".

Even for Apple's hardware customers, Apple's opinion on whether or not to deprecate the optical drive isn't entirely trustworthy.

Given that CSS has been comprehensively cracked, ripped DVDs are the most widespread and reliable source of DRM-free commercial video in the world. Apple sells DRMed video that competes with (among other things) ripped DVDs. Beyond the financial incentive, Apple wants people to buy their DRMed video because it strengthens their ties to Apple's ecosystem. This all means that Apple has substantial ulterior motives for deprecating the optical drive.

Personally, I think that as technical speed bumps are worked out and available bandwidth increases ripped video is going to follow the path blazed by ripped music, so the optical drive still has some life left in it.

So, you need an internal drive for ripping? External drives are where it’s at and Apple will gladly allow you to use them. (You can get one for the low, low price of $20 if you really want to.)

Need, of course not. That being said, internal drives make ripping significantly more convenient and, hence, more common (which still means incentives for ulterior motives). Defaults matter a lot and having to opt into an optical drive will make a significant difference in practice no matter how cheap and easy opting in is.

Also, if Apple is really done with the optical drive, the day will come when they won't sell the peripheral either. There will almost certainly be third-party options, of course, but Apple would have added yet another inconvenience. And so on.

Throughout this process, Apple can reasonably claim to be acting in the interests of the consumer, but the ulterior motives are still there. That means there is a credible reason to doubt Apple's claims.

What’s inconvenient about ordering an external drive from Amazon? It’s cheaper than Apple’s drive, anyway, and you can do it right now. There won’t be third party options – because said third party options are already here and cheap and available everywhere.

There is no need for stupid conspiracy theories. Optical media is done. It makes sense to longer include it by default. And if you really believe that there will be less ripped movies around because Apple ditches the optical drive, well then I can’t really help you. Pirating will always be easy, what Apple does doesn’t matter.

I think you misunderstand me, so I'll try to clarify.

I'm not saying that ordering a third-party drive from Amazon is some insurmountable obstacle, I'm saying it is a small inconvenience that will result in a measurable difference in behavior because defaults matter (often much more than we think - see the studies on opt-in vs opt-out 401(k) enrollment).

I'm also not arguing that there will be a smaller selection of ripped movies on bittorrent or whatever. I'm arguing people will use ripped movies less and, in particular, will use rips of their own collections less (and even watch their own collections less on their computer, but I think that effect is less interesting) because the optical drive is less convenient:

- they're less likely to have it at all (as argued above)

- it might not be at hand when you want to use it (particularly if you're not at home)

- using an external drive is flat-out physically less convenient than an internal one (particularly if you need to keep your drive and computer plugged in and/or have other peripherals in the mix...)

Why would it matter that people are ripping their own collections less? Because the norms around ripping your own collection come from CD ripping and the norms around downloading movies from bittorrent come from piracy. Many more people are willing to do the former than the latter. In other words, ripping your own collection is very useful and is fundamentally different from pirating. The convenience of ripping DVDs you own is an important factor that will affect people's video consumption and I think that effect is growing with time.

I'm also not claiming that there is a complex conspiracy going on. I'm saying that, from a consumer's perspective, Apple's judgment about whether or not "the optical drive is done" is compromised. For that matter, this compromised judgment may manifest itself consciously or unconsciously.

Apple decision-makers might unconsciously make any or all of the following mistakes (as well as others):

- underestimating the usability of DVD rips

- overestimating the usability of iTunes video by not considering niche drawbacks (e.g. subtitle issues)

- underestimating the desire of people to have video on non-Apple devices (e.g. Android phones or tablets)

To put it another way: Even though Apple has better technical judgment overall, I'm more willing to trust Lenovo or Dell's judgment about whether or not "the optical drive is done" because they don't face the same conflicts of interest that Apple does.

Who rips movies? That’s even nerdier than ripping CDs which also hardly anyone does. It doesn’t matter. Pirating has to be far more prevalent than ripping movies.

I’m not sure what all that judgment talk of yours is about. Optical drives are done for me personally. I have no use whatsoever for an internal optical drive and I actually can’t think of anyone I know who would really need one. I will certainly never ever again buy a PC with an internal optical drive. That has nothing to do with Apple’s choices. It’s my personal choice and I will be very happy if Apple will sell me a product that fits my personal choice. If not I will have to buy something else.

What do I care for Apple’s reasons? (I don’t think they are absurd like you paint them.)

I happen to care more about DVD ripping because I like it and I think it is going to become bigger, but most of my argument also holds if you're talking about watching DVDs on your laptop or desktop instead (which is completely mainstream).

That being said, where did you get the idea that ripping CDs is nerdy? Where do you think the legions of iPods Apple has sold have gotten the overwhelming majority of their music? iTunes took plenty of time to get to where it is today and ripping was where (most of) the rest of the iPod music came from. To take a personal example, my wife has had an iPod for almost 6 years. Her iTunes Library is at least 80% ripped (maybe even 90%) despite the fact that she buys plenty of music from iTunes. Why? She had a substantial CD collection she ripped to start with. She also didn't stop buying CDs (things that you can't get on iTunes, autographed CDs or special attributes, new or used CDs on sale for less than they'd be on iTunes, ...).

I'm also not claiming that Apple's reasons are absurd. I'm just saying that they have structural and institutional biases that might lead them to come to an incorrect conclusion about this particular point: the value of an optical drive. In other words, even though Apple has a pretty good batting average on these sorts of choices, there are reasons to think they might be wrong (in terms of what people will actually value) in this specific case.

Yes, good riddance.

As a bonus, I'll be happy to reclaim the "eject" key for some other use. Right now on my Mac Pro (i.e. the tower- not the notebook) I hit it by mistake fairly often when reaching for delete. The drive tray then pops out loudly and scares my dog.

PCs have been without an optical drive for years before Apple did it. I had a laptop with no optical drive nine years ago and I'm sure it wasn't original then. Granted, the experience was so poor I vowed never to live withot a built-in optical drive again.

But the time has come. In fact it might be a year or two overdue to be controversial. Now that booting from a USB flash drive is broadly supported my personal need for removable media is satisfied with just a USB port and a thumb drive. Burning a DVD to share files or boot to a rescue disk seems old fashioned and unncecessary. I don't even know where my box of recordable disks is anymore.

When I got a netbook in 2008 and realized that the optical, while possibly useful during install (USB key boot is just as good), was never missed once Ubuntu was installed and running.

Ever since then, I've felt like the drives on my other laptops are dead weight.

Apple is definitely doing the right thing... just wonder why it took them so long.

Good riddance. They add weight, I rarely use them, and they are horribly unreliable. I've run into problems with discs not ejecting, sometimes not being readable, blanks sometimes not being writeable, often issuing loud crunching noises when discs are inserted.

My 2007 MBP is dying, and I'm holding out for the next rev, hoping that the new machines won't have optical drives. I'd much rather buy a USB peripheral if I ever need it, and discard it when it gets flaky.

Optical drives are rarely needed, EVERYTHING is going online and downloadable: movies, books, shopping, games, etc. Cable companies such as Comcast (xfinity) and AT&T see this. That's why they are putting in transfer caps now (250 GB/month). Their caps will not limit their own movie services. Services like justin.tv, Netflix and so on will be hurt.

What are optical drives used for? Reading and writing data? There are much neater solutions. The typical CD holds 700MB, DVDs, 4.7GB. My reusable, USB thumb drive? 16GB, and I have at least 6 ports on my computer for them.

What about Blu-Ray and movies? For a home theater, Netflix streaming isn't going to cut it. Everywhere else I am happy to stream, or have my movies downloaded through iTunes or another provider. (Movie watching rights and transferability are another can-o-worms though.) For the most part, this solves 95%+ of my on-the-road movie watching.

For music, Apple would probably prefer you just download everything through iTunes and bypass the CD, but CDs are still a major piece of the CDN for the labels. I do need the ability to rip my old CDs to my computer, but I do prefer keeping everything digitized and backed up. Then again, I haven't had to rip a CD in years.

Last time I used a DVD was like two years ago. What a good memories: The acceleration and spinning noises, the vibrations, the spike on consume on the powermeter, the heat and the extra weight and extra volume for carrying something you don't use at all.

I don't think the issue here is (just) optical drive vs no optical drive. Its the implications that are pointed to in the article, i.e. Apple controlling the hardware, software and content on the device.

Of course, Apple will not do this completely overnight, but it does seem like we're moving in that direction one step at a time. I think Apple/Steve's long term vision has always been for the PC to be like all other electronic devices; you buy it configured, and for fixes/upgrades you always go through the manufacturer or manufacturer-approved process. It is a complete opposite to something like a Lenovo ThinkPad where a lot of the stuff is user replaceable and serviceable (hence making it a little more future proof and much cheaper for upgrades).

As a MBP user, I am happy with where Apple is right now but I'm not sure I'm completely happy with where they're headed (and Apple doesn't care about customers like me who are probably < 5% anyway). Even if we look at Apple's website (for e.g. about battery), the terminology changes from 'User replaceable battery' to 'Battery that you should not replace yourself' etc. Apple could very well make the next major iteration of Mac OS similar to iOS (i.e. Apple is the only App store, no side-loading). Minor upgrades (RAM, HDD) could cost a lot and could only be done by Apple.

Something to think about before investing a lot in Apple products and becoming tangled in the ecosystem.

I've been hearing this for a couple years, and I even had some people mistakenly telling me they don't get a MacBook because they think it only runs Apple-approved software.

I don't really think it's gonna happen. "It runs Windows" is a major selling point for a lot of people I know.

But I'll be the first to jump ship if this ever happens.

Its just a guess based on how things are moving. Won't be the first time I've been wrong about Apple :)

The MBPs are still pretty good and parts that I want to replace are still user serviceable (RAM, HD, optical drive - everyone should replace theirs with a 2nd HD).

The Mac Minis still have user replaceable RAM but the HD is not super easy to get to.

The iMac is pretty bad. You need suction cups to remove the screen from the body to service it.

I don't think they are going to bother too much about what software you can run. But hopefully they make basic parts like the HD and RAM MORE user serviceable.

A second HD in place of the optical drive? I never thought it was possible. Sounds like a plan for my recording rig: the SSD plus a bigger mechanical drive.

I've had my latest Apple laptop for a year now. I recently tried to burn a DVD for someone and realized the drive just immediately ejected everything I tried to put in -- blank DVDs, commercially-pressed CDs, etc.

I don't know if it's been damaged during or travel or it simply never worked, but the fact that it took me a full year to find out means I'll never put an optical drive on a "must have" list again. I think Apple is making the right call.

PSA: There's still a ton of excellent, obscure music on CD that hasn't reached the cloud. Get ripping your local libraries and dollar bins while you still can.

(Incidentally, the optical drive in my last machine, a Macbook, was as good as useless. It failed multiple times because of the flex in the plastic case. So much for impeccable Apple design standards.)

Yeah! While you still can! Because if we extrapolate from floppy drives, 2025 might be the year you no longer can buy optical drives. That’s, like, so soon!

Already now all the many users of floppies can pick from only a dozen or so floppy drives on Amazon. Abhorrent! And the money they have to pay for it! Way more than $10†! Truly horrific.

All kidding aside, you will be able to buy cheap external optical drives for a long, long, long time. There is no need at all to worry. The optical drive merely becomes an external add-on for those who truly need it. I also like to buy old music that hasn’t made it to “the cloud” and probably never will. I will keep an external optical drive in the closet for that purpose.

—

† http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000M3GODW/

I'm not saying that CDs will ever be inaccessible to the motivated technologist. But the media will continue to degrade and disappear at an even faster rate with optical drives no longer commonplace.

And while I'm sure that Apple buyers were among the first demographic to ditch physical media, this development is certainly another nail in the coffin of the brick-and-mortar data archives that are record stores.

You are funny. Motivated technologist, eh? A completely clueless friend of mine bought an external optical drive together with her netbook. There is nothing hard about it.

CDs will certainly disappear – and good riddance to them.

"... this development is certainly another nail in the coffin of the brick-and-mortar data archives that are record stores."

The lack of an optical drive on Apple laptops will not be the stake to the heart of the brick-and-mortar music store; lack of consumer interest will.

The social music scene is moving online. Services like Last.fm, Pandora, and user "created" content sites like SoundCloud are the future. The nostalgia of standing around a music store is nice to think about, but not particularly profitable for the owner.

My main machine for the last two years has also been optical-drive-free. Installing Ubuntu on it was kind of a pain (see http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-journal/2009-Jan... and http://canonical.org/~kragen/unetbootin.html for details) but otherwise it's been pretty much fine.

Now, it is often easier to carry around a usb flash drive which gives higher data sizes, speed, r/w, and easier to carry. Buy a new one every 6 months and that is an ok non-enterprise local backup.

My main problem with optical at this point is that the storage capacity and price really haven't kept up with USB Flash Drives. It is also now easier just to buy an external hard drive for live backups.

Did the author really just omit any mention of USB flash drives in that article? Or am I just slightly blind?

I've hardly used an optical drive since I first got my Lenovo X61. It was only available in the base unit which spent over 99.9% of it's life on the shelf.

However, even if I haven't used man CDs or DVDs for a while I still get a "but, but I know I'll need them someday..." reaction.

I can imagine that this makes the laptops much more sturdier. This is why my last 2 laptops have been without CD drives. I just bought a $50 external, and I've been having a hard time understanding why more manufacturers didn't make optical drive-less computers.

Well, while I want my next Mac to be 15" MacBook Air, I really want to have an option to plug in external BluRay drive. I do watch BluRay movies, and I want to be able to watch them on my main laptop as well.

Personally I like being able to back up my entire home directory on a single instance of write-once media. A blu-ray disc holds at least 25GB.

This is just like the floppy drive situation all over again. In a few years no one will care.

About time, and good riddance.

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