Think about it. Apple did something like this before when they came out with the very first new iMacs. Remember? No floppy drives. Apple was ahead of the curve then. So why not now, when the new Intel Macs come out? Having a CD/DVD drive is old hat. What better time to drop them altogether and allow media content to play on the Mac from downloads, Firewire and WiFi? Why not allow backups directly to external USB drives, iPods and such?
Take a look at what has been said about this idea:
A quote from myself, a week ago in answering another blog – “From now on, CDs are essentially dead, thanks to Sony and Friends. Probably DVDs as well. Forget the Blu-Ray format too. Apple would probably do well to forego including CD/DVD players/burners fairly soon on their computers. What will take their place? iPods, MP3 players, flash drives and Memory Sticks.”
A quote from Applle Matters James R. Stoup: “When Apple finally releases the new, Intel iMac it won’t have a disk drive in it. No CD drive, no DVD drive and no HD/Blu-Ray drive. Those technologies will be obsolete. What it will have is the next generation of Bluetooth and wireless technology. It will have plenty of ports to dock an iPod, flash drive or other portable media drive.”
A quote from Digg.com – “CD players to become obsolete? By linking a USB port to a car’s entertainment system the car maker can offer customers audio and video options unavailable in most other models. That means a customer can play music loaded onto a memory stick in the car … as if it was the car’s CD changer…”
The nice thing about all this is that there will probably not be a war between Blu-ray and the HD-DVD format. People who want to rent movies can already download them from the internet from reliable (and legal) sources. Instead of a carousel of DVDs in a player, you can store hundreds of movies on your hard drive for instant access. Before long, you will be able to buy new movies as a download rather than on DVD. If you don’t believe this, look at what is going on with Apple’s new Video iPod.
The basic problem with all compact discs is the fact that they have a limited shelf life – years instead of decades. Unless you back them up on a hard drive or solid state memory, eventually they will become unplayable. Recordable compact discs have even less reliablility and shelf life, so you might want to be looking for a better media to store your doctuments and photos, in the near future, before you lose any of your irreplacable data.
I guess the big question about all this is, when will Apple come out with a solid state computer? One that doesn’t even have a hard drive, but instead relies on solid state memory? (Wowser! A computer with no moving parts!) I predict that it will be far less than a decade from now. You can also reliably bet that it won’t have any compact disk drives either.
So take it one step further. Why should Apple, or any computer maker, keep on making both laptop and desktop computers, if they are all solid state? A laptop then would be as powerful as any desktop computer, so why have two design formats? Perhaps all computers in the future will essentially be laptops.
You will probably see Apple come out with a solid state computer once chip memory approaches 40 to 60 GB in capacity, which may not be long now.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Regards,
Roger Born
“Perception, not possession is 9 tenths of the law.”
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