Forums | MacLife

mentholiptus wrote:

It would be wicked awesome if CD's and DVD's were completely replaced by SD cards. No moving parts, and potentially 16gb's (I haven't followed this tech...I don't know the current limits) of rewriteable storage. Software could come on carts like DS games, you could carry all kinds of data in your pocket, and it would be a huge load off of power consumption.

Faster read/write times as well...no?

True, that and possibly HVD as well. If it's simply flash storage as a replacement, you'd still have to maintain some sort of optical burn with your system until the software developers switched media. Then there the whole low volatility/higher volatility storage issue. [Solid state and magnetic media are typically susceptible to erasure (with the notable exception of that used by the DS) while optical is typically less so making each better suied for different tasks.] HVD (if it ever becomes viable) also lacks moving parts and would give you backward compatibility with other currently standard optical media. Combining the usage of such technologies would likely be the best option as you would have the the freedom of flash for simple transfers and rewritable storage but the longer term security of optical for backup & storage.

P.S. I do see solid state eventually replacing optical eventually but it's gonna be a little while before the market allows the transition from internal standard to external standard to external optional to abandonment even on any system.

ScifiterX wrote:

Point of fact, the ability to read optical was a necessity just not the ability to write to it. That fact hasn't changed all that much, just the technology that allows for that fact. However given time and the proper market trends the need to ability to read optical might even become diminished.

Yes, that would be nice.  Some software now comes on a usb thumb drive, that you can keep and reuse.  That is a nice trend.

I for one have always hated optical media, and found it to be a necessary PITA since that is the standard right now.  Discs get scratched, burns have always been flaky, some media sucks.  It has always been hit or miss, and I for one will be glad to see such fundamentally flawed technology go by the wayside, when the time is right with a suitable (and hopefully better) replacement.

ScifiterX wrote:

rufio wrote:

Pariah wrote:

The original iMac was released with no writable removable media at all and at the time external CD burners were over $500.

And then, optical media was not a necessity. Then, you wouldn't be talking about getting a CD burner, you'd be talking about getting a Floppy or maybe a Zip drive, which cost much less than $500.

That's like saying the iMacs now are available but without any type of high-capacity removable media, and Blu-Ray burners are $500.

Point of fact, the ability to read optical was a necessity just not the ability to write to it. That fact hasn't changed all that much, just the technology that allows for that fact. However given time and the proper market trends the need to ability to read optical might even become diminished.

Is iDVD not going to be included in these possible ultraportable machines? (It's possible, considering combo drive machines in the past have excluded iDVD)

An integral part of the iLife suite is the ability to burn any element of your media, be it a slideshow of pictures, an Mp3 CD of music, or a home-created movie onto a CD or DVD to play in other devices to share with people. Taking this away, or requiring an external optical drive to perform these functions does not seem like a typical Apple tactic to me. That's what I'm saying.

Reading from optical drives, sure, could go away anytime. I'm talking about writing, not reading.

The average consumer does not want to share home videos, Garageband-created music, or their photos over the internet because to them it is still more diffiicult, and they'd rather burn it to a CD/DVD and then send it to their relatives, or worse, then take that CD to Walgreens, get prints of their photos, and then send those.

You can take your photos to be printed directly from the media card in the camera. Also, by getting rid of built-in readers, they can push .Mac even more.

Even folks who burn slideshows, music, etc. likely don't do so all the time, plugging in an external drive isn't that much of an inconvenience. I also doubt that Apple would drop built-in optical drives in all machines. For many the slight inconvenience of an external drive would be worth it to carry around a smaller, lighter laptop.

Pariah wrote:

Both of those drives were over $200 and those OMGHUGE 100meg disks were about $12 each.

I remember those disks, and I remember that exact price and feeling about the size.  4 discs were enough to back up my entire computer.

Czachorski wrote:

Pariah wrote:

Both of those drives were over $200 and those OMGHUGE 100meg disks were about $12 each.

I remember those disks, and I remember that exact price and feeling about the size.  4 discs were enough to back up my entire computer.

I had a 6500/250 at the time with a 2.1 gig HDD on the ata bus and a mondo 9gig duct taped in place up above the CD drive on the scsi bus.
Lots-o-storage for those days.

Czachorski wrote:

rufio wrote:

Czachorski wrote:

This is true, but Apple has never been the type of company to cater to the preferences of consumers today, but to look to their preferences tomorrow.  Sometimes they do it too soon, but you can bet they will be one of the first to push the envelope.

I agree, but in order to try to look to consumer preferences tomorrow, I think they would start that with a new release of iLife first, which is not going to happen at Macworld. They wouldn't make a piece of hardware first before having the software ready for the new concept of the machine. Or consumers would be hugely critical of it.

I guess I am not following you on the iLife not being capable.  You could publish content to the web, or burn with an external burner.

iLife is perfectly capable, but the average consumer does not know this. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make. Sure, the capability of publishing to .Mac is there, but I'd venture to say that most consumers do not use it, even if they are .Mac members. For instance, in iPhoto, your choices are (under the Share menu, that's what this is designed for):

-Email (everybody uses this, but it is not a substitute for sharing a lot of pictures, or pictures for printing)
-Set Desktop (no real purpose at all)
----
-Web Gallery (requires .Mac)
-Send to iWeb (requires .Mac or more experienced webhosting skills)
-.Mac Slides (requires .Mac and is essentially useless)
----
-Send to iDVD (to burn with an optical drive)
-Burn (obviously..)

If optical media is taken away, or made external, what are the consumer's immediate choices? Especially with an ultraportable, you take it to your auntie's house for the holidays, leave your optical drive at home naturally, and she wants a copy of some pictures you were showing her. How do you do this if you are a layman? Flash drive, maybe, but an intuitive way to add these photos to a flash drive is not in the Share menu (few would think of using Export, trust me). If you have .Mac, then you can put them on a Web Gallery in full quality, but again, very few have explored this technique.

So end result, the consumer is frustrated with how "crippled" their ultraportable seems, and promises auntie that she'll get a CD of all of the pictures in the mail in a week or two. And from now on, the consumer carries the external drive or docking station with them just in case, thus adding weight to the bag and making the term "ultraportable" seem like a misnomer.

I've seen this happen on the windows side with some friends who have the ultraportable Sony Vaios. They literally carry their docking station with them, even on my campus from their dorm room to the library... just in case. And it ends up being a bulkier computer than a Macbook. Probably more comparable to a Macbook Pro in weight and size.

robco wrote:

If said person in your example has a USB key, they move the pics to that, plug the drive into auntie's computer, transfer the files and done. Just drag the pics to the drive on the desktop. Actually, this points out shortcomings in iPhoto as burning to optical media is so last century. Apple needs to make sharing much much easier.

Like I said previously:

rufio wrote:

They wouldn't make a piece of hardware first before having the software ready for the new concept of the machine. Or consumers would be hugely critical of it.

If they want to eliminate an optical drive from a machine (and in all reality, making it external will "eliminate" it for most people in a lot of situations), and move on from the idea of optical media being the source for transporting things (like they did the floppy with the iMac), they need to first rewrite iLife to make it easier to avoid optical media when sharing things.

And we all know that's not going to happen at Macworld, we already have our copies of iLife '08, and it wasn't rewritten, which is why I don't think they'll drop optical drives just yet.

Czachorski wrote:

Pariah wrote:

Both of those drives were over $200 and those OMGHUGE 100meg disks were about $12 each.

I remember those disks, and I remember that exact price and feeling about the size.  4 discs were enough to back up my entire computer.

What I got a Zip drive I had a PowerBook Duo 210, with a 80MB Harddrive, so the 100MB zips where a revolution.. I clearly remmber being deeply amazed of being able to carry all my data in the pocket.

edit BTW: I vote for external optical for the MacBook Slim.

Last edited by pirloui (2008-01-05 6:45 am)

rufio wrote:

If they want to eliminate an optical drive from a machine (and in all reality, making it external will "eliminate" it for most people in a lot of situations), and move on from the idea of optical media being the source for transporting things (like they did the floppy with the iMac), they need to first rewrite iLife to make it easier to avoid optical media when sharing things.

And we all know that's not going to happen at Macworld, we already have our copies of iLife '08, and it wasn't rewritten, which is why I don't think they'll drop optical drives just yet.

You mean like this:




See, I think this is where I am losing you.  It seems to me that they already did that with iLife '08.  Sharing or exporting brings up iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, computer, .mac and YouTube.  I think this is where I am losing your point.  Apple has already redone the sharing and made it heavily focused on non-optical media methods of sharing.  Sharing doesn't even bring up an optical media option.  If you want to go to iDVD, there is a special pull-down just for sharing with the media browser to do that.  They have completely removed optical media from sharing.

If you were saying that these methods were not widely adopted or used yet, I think I could follow your point.  But you keep saying iLife is not ready or needs a redesign, and I don't get that.

Last edited by Czachorski (2008-01-05 8:51 am)

Pariah wrote:

Man, I am still having a hard time swallowing the Mac-YouTube tie in. Maybe it's just me but I have always thought of YouTube as being a part of the internet ghetto like MySpace, AOL, Yahoo 360 and such.
A shame Apple can't or won't make dot Mac work well for posting content.

There is the .mac web gallery that is integrated with iLife now.  Here's mine.  It works amazingly well.

Czachorski wrote:

Pariah wrote:

Man, I am still having a hard time swallowing the Mac-YouTube tie in. Maybe it's just me but I have always thought of YouTube as being a part of the internet ghetto like MySpace, AOL, Yahoo 360 and such.
A shame Apple can't or won't make dot Mac work well for posting content.

There is the .mac web gallery that is integrated with iLife now.  Here's mine.  It works amazingly well.

Yeah, I use my gallery now too. It is the first new dotmac feature in a long time that is actually useful (they need to give us more space though...always more space).

I'm not so sure about removing optical though. A lot of software hasn't made it to the downloadable content side of the fence (unlike during the killing of the floppy where software wasn't published on floppies anymore).

I think you seriously underestimate the price (it is going to be at least $1500). Just because you're making it thinner/smaller doesn't mean the price is less. And no, it isn't going to be a big iPod. If you would only use it as a big iPod then obviously a subnotebook wouldn't be right for you. You'd be better off with...an iPod.