Q: No DVD drive in new iMac ???

I'm wondering if Apple has considered that some of us have been working on Macs for a long time and have stuff archived on cd and dvd. I'm not talking about junk like music and movies. I work at an ad agency and have hundreds of disks full of Illustrator and Photoshop files. Clients are depending on me to have that stuff when they need it - usually on a short time frame. Do they want me to load all my hundreds of disks of files to the Cloud? Can they guarantee their server won't be down on the day I need something?

Of course not, don't be silly .

Your clients are depending on you to be smart enough to buy an external cd/dvd burner.

I think it is a sham they have removed the optical drive when i get a new iMac i will have to add something else to the clutter on my desk. i dont want all my things in the cloud.

The SuperDrive in iMacs weren't very reliable and they were, commonly, prone to failures more than once within the first five years of operational life of an iMac.

Besides if you pay for a optical drive with a quality, robust enclosure, you can do what I do, sit your iMac right on top of the enclosure of the external optical drive. This is actually a plus for me as it raised the iMac up to a more comfortable eye height for me and the iit's footprint is minimal since it is right under my iMac's desk stand.

Works wonderfully and looks fine being there.

This thread just never stops. Get over it people. Apple is not, suddenly, going to go back and try to install an optical drives in newer iMac models to come.

This is the way it is, now. iMacs will no longer have bulit-in optical drives.

The external optical drives that are out there, now are about as thin, I think, as you are going to get. Some of these new optical drives are really thin now, but not thin enough to go inside the ultra-thin, almost iPad-like, screen thickness of the new iMac design.

Wait, wait, waaaaiiiit a minute, "The SuperDrive in iMacs weren't very reliable and they were, commonly, prone to failures more than once within the first five years of operational life of an iMac." If this is the argument for taking the optical disk out of the iMac, then we should also take the hard drives out too. Hard drives have a much more common failure rate than every 5 years. And the argument that putting an optical drive in the iMac would screw up the cooling of the machine is bogus too. There is no reason the machine can not be designed to cool adequately with one in it... or Apple better find more qualified engineers. Thin doesn't matter for a desktop. The only reason to make the iMac thinner and lighter is so it is easier to spin the machine on your desk to get to poorly placed ports on the back to plug your jump drive in. They should go back to the old iMac layout with the SD slot on the side and at least one USB plug there. Using the new iMac becomes a cabling nightmare. Is the machine fast? Yes. Is it a poor design? Yes. Trust me. I know. I'm trying to live with one. So far the best hope is a thunderbolt device like the Echo 15 is the only hope for minimizing cable overload. It better be out the middle of June as promised. Apple needs to come out with an accessory tower to thunderbolt to the iMac so you can have all your peripherals in one location without the extreme mess it is trying to connect now.

If you want to redsign the iMac why don't you tell Apple rather than Apple users?

www.apple.com/feedback

justamacguy wrote:

 

"If you want to redsign the iMac why don't you tell Apple rather than Apple users?" I have... along with 20,464 other users and the silence is defennig. If you would like to join us you can sign up to at:

 

<Link Edited By Host>

That link is a request for a new MacPro, I fail to see what that has to do with iMacs.

Personally I am very pleased to see the optical drive removed. And have given that feedback to Apple.

justamacguy wrote:

Hard drives have a much more common failure rate than every 5 years.

Not in my experience. I still have old HD's I extracted from long dead Macs & all of them except one still works fine. OTOH, I do not have one Superdrive built into any of my iMacs that doesn't have some sort of problem, ranging from not being able to read disks when they are first inserted to not reliably ejecting them.

And the argument that putting an optical drive in the iMac would screw up the cooling of the machine is bogus too. There is no reason the machine can not be designed to cool adequately with one in it...

Yes, that could be done, but not without significantly increasing the noise the higher capacity cooling system generates. You have to check out one of these new iMacs in person, preferably in a quiet room, to appreciate just how quietly they run. If you run one really hard for 30 minutes or so, in a very quiet room you might just barely be able to hear the fan, but probably not.

The other design problem with this is the more heat producing things you put in the case, the more air you have to design the cooling system to be able to draw into it to cool them. Not only is that noisier, it draws in more dust, so you have to design the system to be able to handle that without clogging up anything & producing a hot spot that would significantly increase the risk of component failure. That means using bigger & more complex air ducts & shrouds, & bigger case vents with larger unobstructed openings ... which in turn allows more operating noise to radiate from the case, even when the extra cooling capacity isn't needed.

You also have to make sure that any optical drive you put inside the case is well sealed to prevent the cooling system from drawing dusty air into it through the disk insertion slot. That in turn means it will heat up more when in use (because the heat producing parts like the laser are sealed off from cooling air). And that in turn limits the maximum burn speeds you can use (because the faster the burn speed, the more powerful the laser has to be & the more heat it generates). If have ever wondered why Apple has never offered faster than 8X Superdrives, that's one of the reasons.

Do you see where this is going? Every design decision is a compromise among mutually conflicting goals. You can't maximize them all; the best you can do is carefully balance the compromises so everything is within acceptable limits. That's what good design is all about.

So... what I want is a computer that is super quiet, with limited hardware options, that restricts my productivity and clutters up my desk with accessory cords.

A Mac mini then.

R C-R wrote:

 

Yes, that could be done, but not without significantly increasing the noise the higher capacity cooling system generates. You have to check out one of these new iMacs in person, preferably in a quiet room, to appreciate just how quietly they run. If you run one really hard for 30 minutes or so, in a very quiet room you might just barely be able to hear the fan, but probably not.

 

The other design problem with this is the more heat producing things you put in the case, the more air you have to design the cooling system to be able to draw into it to cool them. Not only is that noisier, it draws in more dust, so you have to design the system to be able to handle that without clogging up anything & producing a hot spot that would significantly increase the risk of component failure. That means using bigger & more complex air ducts & shrouds, & bigger case vents with larger unobstructed openings ... which in turn allows more operating noise to radiate from the case, even when the extra cooling capacity isn't needed.

My 2007 iMac is super quite (I never hear it) and has none of the problems you describe and the optical has been perfect and used regularly for 5 years now.

The issues you describe, the reasons for Apple changing the design, Apple should have dropped the price. Fewer components, simpler design, lower failure. Oh and my imac is plenty thin.

i have a 2009 24in iMac unfortunatly the optical drive went wrong not being able to eject a disk but it was replaced under apple care and have been happy with it ever since. in the end i want to upgread to a faster machine for CAD and was looking into doing this but i am disapointed it no longer has an optical drive.

i agree you can have a seperate drive but as others have said "that no longer makes it an all in one machine".

brianfromsurbiton wrote:

 

i have a 2009 24in iMac unfortunatly the optical drive went wrong not being able to eject a disk but it was replaced under apple care and have been happy with it ever since. in the end i want to upgread to a faster machine for CAD and was looking into doing this but i am disapointed it no longer has an optical drive.

 

i agree you can have a seperate drive but as others have said "that no longer makes it an all in one machine".

Define 'ALL IN ONE'?

If you type in do a Google search for ALL IN ONE MACHINE. You will come up with the new iMac long side Window computers for sell.

My iMac doesn't have enough HD memory. I have to hang external drives off it (of course a smart person would remove the external HDs when not in use). My 27" screen isn't big enough or has the real estate I need. I have to hang two other monitors off of the iMac (a 30" monitor would solve this... yes, 3 inches makes a difference). I have to have an external box to digitize old VHS tapes or watch my cable TV on it. (Macs use to have a video inputs). My mid-2011 27" really doesn't fit my needs so I have to improvise. Does this bother me, no.

Never use DVD drive.... what a waste of space that could hold another HD.

David M Brewer wrote:

 

Define 'ALL IN ONE'?

 

My iMac doesn't have enough HD memory. I have to hang external drives off it (of course a smart person would remove the external HDs when not in use). My 27" screen isn't big enough or has the real estate I need. I have to hang two other monitors off of the iMac (a 30" monitor would solve this... yes, 3 inches makes a difference). I have to have an external box to digitize old VHS tapes or watch my cable TV on it. (Macs use to have a video inputs). My mid-2011 27" really doesn't fit my needs so I have to improvise. Does this bother me, no.

You sound like a prime candidate for a Mac Pro that is customizable, not a iMac.

Fred Jorge wrote:

 

David M Brewer wrote:

 

Define 'ALL IN ONE'?

 

My iMac doesn't have enough HD memory. I have to hang external drives off it (of course a smart person would remove the external HDs when not in use). My 27" screen isn't big enough or has the real estate I need. I have to hang two other monitors off of the iMac (a 30" monitor would solve this... yes, 3 inches makes a difference). I have to have an external box to digitize old VHS tapes or watch my cable TV on it. (Macs use to have a video inputs). My mid-2011 27" really doesn't fit my needs so I have to improvise. Does this bother me, no.

You sound like a prime candidate for a Mac Pro that is customizable, not a iMac.

Wish I could... Your talking big bucks ($$$) in a Mac Pro where I can have it much cheaper with an iMac.