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Comment by tomstuart | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if Apple removes [the floppy drive] itself in the next version of [the Mac], or decides [wi-fi] is the future and gets rid of [the Ethernet port]?

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I actually found the removal of the floppy drive to be rather premature. It took several years for any of the currently popular alternatives to reach critical mass for most people. It wasn't reasonable to assume, for example that Internet access would be available on a computer you wanted to bring a file to. USB flash drives weren't available (or at least cheap and common), and it was more likely than not that a destination computer wouldn't be able to read one.

I knew a lot of people with Macs in the late '90s, and most of them bought USB floppy drives.

If they hadn't kickstarted the process, how long would it have taken for the removal not to be premature? Often these things have to be done before their time in order for their time to come at all.

Removing the floppy drive and ethernet ports have clear and straightforward benefits, though. Removing software, less so.

> Removing the floppy drive and ethernet ports have clear and straightforward benefits, though.

What were those clear and straightforward benefits?

To the consumer, I mean; not to Apple.

To an extreme example, the Macbook Air.

More generally, saving space, allowing you to add different things inside a laptop. I realise you could argue the same for hard disk space, but it's not anywhere near as limited.

Smaller, lighter machine.

I had one of the first machine where they dropped the floppy. There were 2 or 3 times that it was a real pain, and the rest of the time, it just didn't matter.

Eventually, I went back to a machine with a floppy, but I wound up using zip drives instead, since the floppies were so damn small (capacity).

(BTW, that's the Powerbook 100 and 5300 I'm referring to above, but I did have a duo 230 and 2300 around that time too.)

OS X is now download-only, so I imagine pruning bloat has an immediate benefit for any users without infinite, speedy broadband.

X11, Flash, and Java were all potential attack vectors whose security is provided for by a third party -- I can see why Apple would want to discourage this.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Apple's Radar bug tracker had a few dozen bugs in Safari RSS, maybe even a potential DOS threat, and they chose to move on rather than allocating more resources to an unpopular feature.

Imagine if [fanboy] doesn't cherry pick from the last 20 years and talks about the [article].

Cherry pick? Apple has a long history of removing what most users don't use. RS-232, Centronix ("printer"), FireWire, VGA, Ethernet, and various other ports have all been dropped over time. Floppy (both 5.25" & 3.5"), CD, DVD, and probably other media (escaping me) support gone. Blu-ray in effect dropped before even included. Likewise, various software support has been eradicated over time as use dwindled to more-hassle-than-it's-worth status. When dropped, everything still was available those needing it, provided by easy/cheap add-ons & installs. Users do well to wean off HyperCard, X11, and other things which cling to a double-digit past.

Contrast that with the Dell box on my desk right now, which still has every physical port mentioned above, plus 2 PS/2 (!!!) plugs, an eSATA port, and an I-don't-know-what; the software running thereon (Windows) will _still_ run darned near everything I've accumulated over the last 30 years. ..._WHY_ do I want to run darned near everything I've accumulated over the last 30 years?

No wonder this two-cubic-foot boat anchor has a Geekbench score lower than a barely-there MacBook Air.

>Apple has a long history of removing what most users don't use.

Apple has a long history of removing what they think users shouldn't use.

And they're generally right as well.

Tell that to jwz:

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/07/apple-dicks/

The fact it was eventually resolved changes nothing about how idiotic the process to that point was.

That was an app store thing, not a hardware decision.

How is that in any way related to this conversation?

It's Apple proactively removing things from one of their products. They decided that XScreensaver was not something they wanted to allow and invented reasons to not allow it. Until they changed their minds.

The conversation was about Apple removing built-in hardware from their computers when making new models, not about Apple blocking third-party software.

The ethernet port has been removed ...

Edit: Oh ... got it now. Shit that was a woosh

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