Tuesday, October 30th 2012
Old Technologies Like Optical Drives Were Holding Apple Back: Phil Schiller
Apple's new iMac and MacBook Pro owe their sleek, slim design to the lack of optical drives, a feature consumers found very much wanting, which can still be overcome using external USB optical drives. In an interview with Tom's Hardware, Apple senior VP of global marketing, Phil Schiller stressed the importance of letting go of optical drives. "These old technologies are holding us back. They're anchors on where we want to go," he said. "We find the things that have outlived their useful purpose. Our competitors are afraid to remove them. We try to find better solutions - our customers have given us a lot of trust. In general, it's a good idea to remove these rotating medias from our computers and other devices. They have inherent issues - they're mechanical and sometimes break, they use power and are large. We can create products that are smaller, lighter and consume less power."
On how newer media like Blu-ray don't quite make optical drives an obsolete component, given that it's fast taking over as the mainstream physical home video medium, Schiller said that customers have stopped asking Apple for Blu-ray drives, and that it comes with its own set of issues that make it unfit for desktops and notebooks. "Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology…So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks." Apple, with its iTunes service is one the leading digital content distribution businesses, including movie rentals and purchases.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
On how newer media like Blu-ray don't quite make optical drives an obsolete component, given that it's fast taking over as the mainstream physical home video medium, Schiller said that customers have stopped asking Apple for Blu-ray drives, and that it comes with its own set of issues that make it unfit for desktops and notebooks. "Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology…So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks." Apple, with its iTunes service is one the leading digital content distribution businesses, including movie rentals and purchases.
56 Comments on Old Technologies Like Optical Drives Were Holding Apple Back: Phil Schiller
It is time the optical drive went away. It is no longer needed and we all know it to be true.
There's no point in having a factory Blu Ray drive in a Mac, as it doesn't support BD playback anyway. Have to buy a 3rd party app. That said, I see no issue in going external for as often as these drives are typically used.
and I think the biggest one would be OS's .... imagin buying win9 on a flash drive... i know you can set them up that way but that requires a currently running PC... being able to purchase win9 on solid state would be amazing
Solid state storage is also pricey, even more than blu-ray.
Apple is being stupid, again. What about Apple Maps?
Not to mention the privacy policy of iTunes. Collect data from 13 year olds and up, location data included. And readily available for governments and third parties.
My ol' Unibody already had third replacement in 2 years :shadedshu
Hard to kick the market around though, it's pretty much up to the porn industry to decide.
Apple's products are like a car that drives for you.... Except it will only drive you to the Apple store.... when you pay it to take you there..... and costs 30% more than the other self-driving cars....
nothing stops you downloading windows 7 on a secondary/friends PC
Of course, that doesn't mean everyone should have to use optical drives. In this day and age, purchasing or renting digital should be an option. I can only imagine the people who've got a Blu-ray reader in their living room not wanting to watch movies on their computer.
For as often as the typical consumer uses their optical drive, they won't care that it's not built in. They'll just use an external when they need it, then shove it in a drawer or bag pocket when they're done.
I actually DO use my optical on occasion, and I still wouldn't have a problem with that.
"We try to find better solutions - our customers have given us a lot of trust."
I read that as
"We aren't bothered to find better solutions - our customers have given us a lot of money"
I'm sorry but your that argument is void. I like holding my copy of battlefield 3 in my hand and say. I bought this, i own this. Eventually we as customers/consumers are going to lose our right to say we "own" our digital copy. Thus eventually everything you have on your HDD won't actually be yours. you'll just be paying rent and be able to use it within your right to use it but you don't own it. Apple will probably do that and is pushing hard toward it. Apple users therefore lack the freedom to choose what they want and only take what is being offered to them.
Also this will be a financially clever move from Apple to do this because they'll charge you the price of a kidney for your external devices. Their excuse will be because it uses thunderbolt, its faster.
Similar to the iPhone thunderbolt connector (which is most cases is Thunderbolt-to-USB 2.0) basically nullifies its performance claims. Thus it can be argued that its false advertising and misleading to the consumers/customers. But they making money and they have the lawyers to back it up. And will probably just change the packaging details of your to include (thunder bolt speeds will require thunderbolt-to-thunderbolt connector).
All in All Apple is taking a leaflet from Nintendo and try to minimize manufacturing costs to include more accessibility into an all in one solution. Instead everything new thing for their product you'll have to buy seperately. Thus maximizing the profit margin on each possible device that you'll use on that product. Another thing I'd like to point out is that Apple will most probably use this to create ultra thin products to counter microsoft's Surface product because it has no optical drive.
But i Like nintendo and they quite fun (well they use to be cheaper but the Wii-U will be quite expensive mostly due to the tablet like controller, which can be bought separately surprise surprise, if you bought a wii-U bundle that excluded the controller).
Its all about profit margin's and beating the same quarter of the previous year. Nowhere is it customer centric. But that is how business works, it won't make sense to run a business if you not making money. If Apple continues to pursue this Their stock price will jump because investors will see it as another innovating way to double profits, due to customers not realising that there are better options other than a half eaten apple.
And if you compare it to Internet speeds, you should have an Internet of 800 Mbps to match a Blu-Ray, only one disc.
or, just play it from a digital media server we have more or less instantly, on any smart device in the house.
Games on the other side are better played from your hard disk, but having them in a disk is an advantage, and services like Steam let you backup your games in disks, as oposed to Apple's AppStore.
Also, if the AppStore or iTunes stop selling an app or song, it disappears from your list of content. Steam doesn't do that.
For almost a century, we have kept photo albums lying somewhere. Just a few people manage to have and keep film and video on varying formats, but at present, most of us are producing and storing hundreds of photos, videos, texts and other PERSONAL data, that many would want to keep for decades and some of that even to pass to future generations...
So far the "lying somewhere photo albums" filled the bill, but as we now behave, the sheer amount of data, and more importantly the retrieval system where we do it, is far from long term sustainable in safe terms in its actual form.
This has been debated extensively in academic and other relevant circles, and even The Library of Congress has recently renewed the way it stores data.
As I see it, people has not yet decided on a definitive storage format (or have not realized the need of it) and so we are ever migrating the data (mostly digital) from a holder (Flash, HDD) to another (a new HDD), which sometimes gets lost or has already started to get rotten in the vaults (film, tape video). In practical terms we keep on switching or losing until we realize -and the suppliers respond- that there is a good, solid solution available and ease to use.
So far, well stored Optical media (DVD, BluRay or newer) is the only solution with good enough parameters to ensure decades of data survival. Many 80s and 90s well kept CDs and DVDs remain at very good shape (despite claims that they would rotten within a few years of use) when stored at dry, low lighted environments. And -if anything- this is an area where manufacturers could easily release longer life competing products. It is a miracle that in these times of fear-sales everywhere, this market has been forgotten at large.
And then, why not buy an external Optic Player recorder, we will usually use once a semester or a year? The answer lies close to why we center the functions we seldom and often use, residing on a desktop home or office system, working together with mobile platforms, and all integrated... We don't want boxes of different gear disperse around the house. At much, we need functional, stylish libraries where to place the data along the books or other seldom visited info we want to have close and ordered.
Apple and actually ALL related manufacturers and sellers seem to have missed these ideas altogether. Short sight -again- I guess...