Why no optical drive in new Mac Mini?

The "Please, Apple, PLEASE" approach has never worked with Apple --people are still waiting and whining and wailing for the midrange, upgradeable Mac tower (a pretty reasonable request, by the way) after all these years.

So your options are either:

1) Buying an external

2) Swapping your brand spanking new Mini for last year's model

3) Getting a different Mac that still sports an optical drive

4) Dumping Apple altogether and getting a PC --you can even get a BluRay drive!

5) Seppuku

Your choice!

Wow, no wonder it was less expensive.

By leaving out the SuperDrive, Apple saves about $22.

I recently purchased a new 2010 model that includes the built-in SuperDrive. It does cost more than a 2011, but in my opinion well worth it.

Thank you! Your answer helped clarify my thinking about the mini and I realized that other than burning a few CDs of data files and archiving pictures of our re-build project. I too have not uploaded any software from a disc since owning this G4 ibook (now outmoded by Flash/Intel). I need a tidy, ultra compact system and I believe this might be it. Once it's up and running, an iPad will do for a laptop.

BTW, My Classic, which I loved so, is now in the Geffrye Museum in London. Perhaps this G4 Laptop will be in their display room of The Noughties.

I was thinking about replacing my old Power PC Mac Mini with one of the new Intel Minis until I found out that none of the new Mini models have optical drives.

Our old Mini is the family PC, wired up to the television, for watching DVDs checked out from the public library and casual web surfing with a Gyration wireless keyboard and mouse.

The New Mini without optical drive pretty much rules out one of the most important uses the Mini would serve in our family. I know it is possible to attach an external DVD drive - the external super drive for the MacBook Air will work as long as the Mini has at least Lion 10.7 installed. The problem is that the whole point of the Mini is to keep things simple. If I have to go hanging a bunch of accessories off the Mini, that kind of defeats the whole point.

I know tiny size is a virtue, but he old Power PC Mini was already only about the size of four CD jewel boxes. I don't think Apple would have lost too many sales if they had not shrunken the Mini from its former size and had left room for a DVD drive. I like having options; I don't necessarily like having to pay everything I want to view, having to do it through iTunes or Netflix. Other than running some software that is both available and small enough to download, the New Mini doesn't seem much better than an AppleTV box.

I will praise the New Mini in as much as it is now easy open to install more RAM. The old Mini was a real bear to disassemble, having to use a putty knife, when I added the Wi-Fi board and more RAM.

well, on my MacBook air, I hooked up an old IDE cd burner in a £10 IDE caddy, worked a treat.

All I wanted to do was install StarCraft II instead of waiting the couple of hours it would take to download from Blizzard.

turns out it took just as long to install it off the darn DVD with all the updates!

if you don't want to spend the $30(?) on an external cheapy thing then you can make your own from spares for a heck of a lot less!

I have found issues with Samsung burners and windows compatibility though (Boot Camp) but aside from that, I've not found a drive that hasn't worked.

good luck!

Who remembers the original iMac? It was the first computer to ditch the floppy and only came with a CD-Rom drive! There was no option for a CD-RW back then and Apple did just fine. Apple is ahead of the curve on this and the rest of the industry will catch up.

I just seems to be an odd decision, given the consumer niche where the Mac Mini plays. It appears that the intended market is home theater PC users and kiosk or dedicated audio/visual applications in schools. In both of these cases network connectivity has a better than average chance of being wireless. That is probably less than ideal if one wishes to experience full HDTV quality.

It would have made more sense to install a Blu-ray drive if demonstrating hipness and envelope pushing were the intent. I am not too excited about the idea of being required to upload all my content to the cloud when it is on a perfectly fine DVD sitting right in front of me.

I also like the idea of having a local optical drive so I can burn my content to a disc that I keep in my safe deposit box at the bank. Yes, I know the cloud is resilient and all, but I'm still old fashioned about having a physical backup of my backup.

Mixed feelings regarding this issue. I just bought a Mac Mini (New version without optical drive), and I thought about it carefully before I did it. My first thought was....I don't think I will need the drive anyways, plus the specs on this Mac Mini are much higher than my older Mac Mini (I gave away). Second thought was....Oh SH**, I need to install my Logic Studio again! No worries though, so I thought, I had researched the DVD and CD Sharing utility which seemed easy enough. Ok, so I bought the Mac Mini, set it up no problems. Needed my Logic installed, so I downloaded the DVD and CD Sharing utility for the PC (Enabled my drive on my laptop running Win7). Enabled it on the PC, clicked on Remote Disc in my Finder on the Mac, done, easy.....Logic Installing.....ERROR.....2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th attempt, ERRORS. Try Call of Duty MW......ERROR on 5 attempts. The Apple site discloses that the DVD and CD Sharing utility may not support Game DVD's or other copy protected media. HMM, so what the F now? Look for an external DVD drive, mostly for installing my software that I originally paid 499 for (now 199 through the app store, but that's another crappy issue). I have been reading about various external DVD drives, and from what I have seen I am quite hesitant to buy any of them. I myself do not applaud Apples efforts on this one. Yes, I and everyone else here can agree that one day DVD's and CD's will be irrelevant in our growing world of technology, but not yet. I think they jumped the gun on this one. Not everyone will have a second Mac or PC to share a drive with, and not everyone will afford or want to buy an external unit. The least Apple could do is produce a more reliable external drive for this purpose, from what I have read the "Super" drive isn't so super after all. So I now I sit here trying to decide which external drive I want to waste my money on. I can say one thing though, it will not be the overpriced "Super" drive from apple.

I am a Mac guy, even though I still use a PC sometimes. But this is one of many issues that are plaguing the Apple world right now, and I didn't realize it until my recent purchase of the new Mac Mini. Great computer though, fast and responsive, and as always small footprint.

Mac Mini w/OSX Lion 10.7.3

2.5ghz Intel Dual Core i5

4GB Ram

Radeon 6330M 256MB

"You might know more than me, but you don't know what I know"

@ negrodamustherealist,

My other resources were a MacBook Air and an iPad when I discovered my brand new mini was without an optical drive. I had already made the purchase of an external Samsung optical drive for $49 from Amazon. It works like a charm on both the mini and my Air.

If Apple had taken the space freed up by the optical drive and used it for like six empty memory slots nobody would care a whit about the missing optical drive! Just think about it... That i7 processor with 32GB of ram... Close your mouth and stop drooling on your shirt!

(Yeah, yeah, sure, another 24 GB of ram would cost more than the mini, but having 8 slots with 6 empty would also give different customers the ability to scale the price of the machine to their different computational needs.)

I've got multiple minis without optical drives, and one little external drive that moves from computer to computer as need be. Which in real life means that it sits on the one server that burns four dvds every month, and might get used on another machine once a year...

Our family watches a lot of movies that aren't yet available on streaming. We get DVDs from the public library or in the mail from Netflix. Obviously, an optical drive is virtually a necessity for our style of use. Maybe someday everything will be available for streaming, but we're not there today.

Yes, I know the cloud is resilient and all, but I'm still old fashioned about having a physical backup of my backup.

I don't think you're old-fashioned. I think you're very smart.

Remember, the cloud is someone else's server, in someone else's building, in another state.

http://gigaom.com/apple/itunes-in-the-cloud-and-why-this-scares-me-2/

Well, strike one on Samsung external slim drive. I did not get the one you did for 49$, rather the other for 29$. I was hoping for an instant fix instead of waiting for delivery. It did not function, no matter what I did I could not get Lion to see the drive. Samsung site was quite frustrating, I really had to dig deep to try and find support/firmware/software. The included software is for PC only, which I anticipated from the riviews about the drive. I just really thought my system would detect it at least. Returning it tomorrow, now heading to do some more research about optical drive solutions for my Mac Mini.

I might try the drive you have, I see it for 49$. I am wanting so badly to avoid the Mac "Super" drive.

Maybe someday everything will be available for streaming, but we're not there today.

GOOD NEWS!!

Technology experts are working on a movie storage system where YOU have physical possession of the movie!

This system stores the movie digitally on an optical disk system that will not be dependent upon a congested, complicated, and fragile network.

Because all of the data is stored only a few feet from your television, all the bottlenecks are removed. Performance and reliability are virtually flawless.

Further, the system will not utilize any form of security codes, authentications, or passwords. Once the optical disc is purchased it can be moved around freely at will, and can even be lent or given to friends and neighbors with zero hassles.

Yeah, I can understand the design ethos of the new Mini. Slim it down; use fewer resources.

The irony is the Mini has the ability to display a pretty good 1080p video image, but the ability to easily get that content to the Mini easily was taken away. Sure, the Mini has a high speed network port, but the two Internet Service Providers that serve my town offer performace of about 4-6 megabits/second, provided their networks are not congested. An Internet infrastructure like that isn't going to be doing much real time Blu-Ray quality streaming, even if what I am looking for is in the cloud. Somebody at Apple forgot to do a reality check on the public infrastructure's capacity.

Apple's official external SuperDrive is an $80 option. Hidden expense; inelegant solution.