No DVD drive in new iMac ???

In many ways I agree with you on the new iMacs, I'm glad I have a i7 2011 model, but to go to android? The iPad is still the best Tablet around as I see it, and many others do too, and as for not having a Optical drive, yes disappointing but the built in superdrive was never spectacular, and always varied in quality, some had 2mb cache some had 1mb it was pot luck on noise and how fussy they were with the media they used. For the sake of what in the UK is £20 you can get a 24x burner that's so much better and you can keep it tucked away, in fact many iMac users used separate burners anyway. Overreacting is pointless, OS X is a great OS, iPad is a great Tablet, see how long you will get updates on your android device unless you get a Nexus. I would not say an Android tablet is suitable for a child so young either, better off with a iPad mini 😉

killhippie was reading my mind.

I've never had a problem with the old iMac built-in Superdrive, but there's an increasing amount of users who don't even use an optical drive anymore. In that case, isn't it better to have a faster, more reliable, modular drive. With the new iMac, you have the best of both worlds.

I'm waiting until next year's Retina iPad Mini. Until then, I might stay with the iPod Touch 5, which is still the best mp3 player out there, lets you watch TV shows and movies, has Siri.

No, there is no DVD or cd drive. I just got off the phone with apple as we had a new 27" iMac built from the ground up. It won't be here until sometime in January. I was worried about it not having a drive for such thing so I went and bought the new USB SuperDrive. I got it from best buy which they currently have it on sale for $69.99, $10 less than retail. After buying it and reading all kinds of things saying the USB SuperDrive isn't compatible with the new iMacs I decided to call apple. I found out that the new USB SuperDrives are compatible with the new iMacs. They have to be the new updated SuperDrive to go along with the new iMacs but they said its 100% compatible! I hope this helps!

No CD/DVD burner or video connectivity for home computer users? It's not a laptop, for Chrissakes. Now I can't recommend an iMAC to my aunt or my parents. I'll have to learn and teach them to use Windows 8. Looks like Apple have finally started making fatal errors.

josephfrometobicoke wrote:

No CD/DVD burner or video connectivity for home computer users? It's not a laptop, for Chrissakes. Now I can't recommend an iMAC to my aunt or my parents. I'll have to learn and teach them to use Windows 8. Looks like Apple have finally started making fatal errors.

I rather doubt that not having a CD/DVD drive built into the new iMacs will appreciably affect Apple's bottom line. I received my new 27" iMac a couple of weeks ago and am enjoying it immensely.

I wondered if my SuperDrive, purchased for use with my mid 2011 MacBook Air (which my wife now uses) would work with the new iMac or if perhaps at two years it was too old.

I plugged it into the USB ports on my new iMac and then suddenly realized something. I don't have and CDs/DVDs readily available to test! All of my CDs have already been ripped into iTunes audio tracks and all of my DVDs have been stored on my hard drive. The physical CDs/DVDs have been placed into storage in my attic with other items I don't use very often.

I then thought about things for a while and realized that I never send/give CDs/DVDs to my family/friends, I always use a portable USB flash drive for such things. A 4GB flash drive is very inexpensive and much more useful than a DVD. I just don't use DVDs at all anymore.

I finally decided to dig a CD and DVD out of storage just for testing. It worked fine so I guess I'm set if I ever actually need to read/write a CD or DVD disk using my new iMac.

DVD drives that work fine with the new iMacs can be purchased from many sources for as little as $30. To me it is the height of folly to move to what I consider to be an inferior system because of a $30 expense, but to each his own.

crh24,

I still use my 5 yr old DVD drive in my iMac weekly, as millions of others do, as well goverment agencys and business'. If you have no use for it, fine. I find it more economical to burn files/media to CD/DVD than to put is on a flash drive. Maybe you are in a higher income bracket? Most of us were waiting for Apple to finally include a Blu-ray drive and no one expected it to cost more. Apple will lose business. This is not the same issue as the floppy which was replaced buy the CD.

I am amazed at how easy it is for Apple to brainwash people into believing that

optical drives are somehow antiquated. There are still many $billions of

dollars in sales of CD''s, DVD's, and software, all available on optical drives.

How about RedBox? You can't beat video rentals for $1. Myself and many others

I've spoke to often use the optical drive burn videos and photos to disk and

send them relatives. Optical drives are also still widely used in the

enterprise, so Apple has effectively shot itself in the foot regarding making

headway into the business market. The vast majority of people in various

threads agree that it was premature of apple to remove the optical drive.

Nobody cares how thin the iMac is, because you only look at it from one

perspective anyway. And placing the flash card reader on the back was sheer

insanity! Couple this with the fact that there is no consumer replaceable RAM

on the 21.5" model, and this makes the new iMac so dysfunctional, I would not

even considering purchasing one!

In summary, eliminating the optical drive was a shortsighted blunder by Apple,

in an attempt to limit choices and push consumers into purchasing content from

Apple. Instead they are pushing consumers away from them.

zBernie2 wrote:

I am amazed at how easy it is for Apple to brainwash people into believing that

optical drives are somehow antiquated.

It's not so much about brainwashing - it's about a company deciding what the future's going to look like and how they want their products to look against that background.

As far as portable media are concerned, mechanical components with moving parts are history. You don't have to look very far to see that - their capacity is miniscule, they are plagued with reliability issues and their use is diminishing.

I agree that DvDs and even CDs are handy and will be in use for a long time, but it's a good time to get rid of them as standard in the new machines. Some people say it's "premature" but the question then is - "premature to what ?" - what defines the point at which they become obsolete ? One answer is when hardware manufacturers stop including them as standard. Apple is the Worlds largest so there you have it - it's official - DvDs are history ! 🙂

indigopete wrote:

but it's a good time to get rid of them as standard in the new machines.

I would gauge a good time based on wether people still need them and they do. Try giving a video copy of a bride's wedding on a flash drive and see how well that goes over.

I'm not going to download rented movies for $6 when I can pop in a Redbox that looks and sounds better. DVD's maybe history but when, are you going to soley rely on dowloaded content? I don't know people that do.

"I was expecting blue ray next, not the elimation of the dvd drive."

Exactly. I would have bet money the new ones would play Blu-Ray.

I was just getting ready to order the new iMac, when I thought, "Wait, the new version of iTunes is so hated and so messed up, so let me check and see what people are saying about the new iMacs before I buy one." Well, I'm certainly glad I did.

My jaw dropped when I saw the name of this thread, and then I find out there's no firewire either. Astonishing.

We're getting a vivid picture of where things are headed in the post-Steve era, and it isn't good.

And in case you're reading this, Apple, I will NOT be buying a new iMac. There's no point if my devices have been rendered useless, and I can't even play a DVD.

Fred Jorge wrote:

I would gauge a good time based on wether people still need them and they do.

If they did that then nothing would ever move on. You talk as if they had stopped supporting the technology - as if it's some kind of a catastrophe. They haven't and it's not.

As a software developer, I still need DvD / CD readers very occasionally. But I can totally see why Apple want to stop building them in - it's a technology which is reaching the end of it's cycle. I'm not saying they're not going to be around for a while, but if you're designing new machines you need to drop deadwood to where possible and optical drives are a prime candidate given their age, unreliability, high cost (in terms of physical space vs capacity) and diminishing use.

So lets just recap that for all the doomsayer - catastrophe - Apple's "Biggest Mistake" - merchants:

[1] - AGE: This is a 40 year old technology and 25 years since it was introduced in PCs

[2] - COST: It takes up a huge amount of space relative to other components while storing a measly 8 Gb at the maximum. Read-Write speeds are agonisingly slow

[3] - RELIABILITY: It's now probably the most unreliable component in the whole machine given that everything else has no moving parts, meaning the majority of "machine" returns and faults will actually just be optical drive faults rather than something more generally wrong with the machine

[4] - POPULARITY - Despite the acknowledged dependency by many, their use is simply plummeting. People don't use PC-based DvD drives anything like they used to. Most have DvD players connected to their TVs sets for a start.

Given that background - Apple would be positively neglegent if they didn't start thinking about getting these things out of the machines (while still supporting them as external devices).

The main reason people are complaining on here is because Apple are removing something they got used to - nothing more.

After a spell of faffing, spitting and "jaw dropping" they'll adapt to the new paradigm as always and forget there ever was a problem.

I agree completely. I remember *exactly* this sort of reaction when the first iMac (Bondi blue G3) came out: "No floppy drive? What are these guys thinking?"

Who uses floppies now? The DVD is long past its' use-by date. I'm eagerly waiting for the next generation of WiFi infrastructure to take hold - that's where the next big advance is needed, IMHO.

[4] - POPULARITY - Despite the acknowledged dependency by many, their use is simply plummeting. People don't use PC-based DvD drives anything like they used to. Most have DvD players connected to their TVs sets for a start.

Yes, of course I have several DVD players; however, in order to use them, I have to produce a DVD first. Which is what I use my Macs for and 3 burners (2 internal, 1 external). I don't buy movies - I make movies.

I also use the burners to burn music CD's (or do purchase them); I prefer listening to world class symphony orchestras on a good quality (surround) system, not through earbuds attached to tiny devices which can cause injuries and do not produce acceptable sound.

I do agree that the built-in drives were never ideal, but what can you expect from a super slim laptop style vertically installed drive where media can shift 1/100th of an inch. That is why I've had an external FW burner for years; also comes in handy when I need to copy one of my movies from one DVD to another - I simply use both drives at the same time.

@ rjg30:

The DVD is long past its' use-by date. I'm eagerly waiting for the next generation of WiFi infrastructure to take hold - that's where the next big advance is needed, IMHO.

It is your prerogative to trust the cloud and/or WiFi with your information - I do not. I would no more trust any online server with my work or personal/financial information than I would send $1,000 to the recently deceased Nigerian prince who left me 900 million dollars. Any server can and will be hacked into at some point. I prefer having my information safe and under my control, not some entity in the ether cloud. I will also never publish my work online for anyone to download (a.k.a steal). Unless you receive it as a gift from me, you do need to pay me.

I do not. I would no more trust any online server with my work or personal/financial information than I would send $1,000 to the recently deceased Nigerian prince who left me 900 million dollars.

I thought the $1,000 was just for taxes and bank fee's. Ah, man

Yep, I can see that DVDs have their uses today.

But I was alluding to the upcoming 802.11ac and 802.11ad WiFi standards, not cloud services. That is clearly where technologies like the MacBook Air are headed. I welcome anything that'll get rid of the rat's nest of cables lurking behind every computer I own. I'm expecting high-capacity WiFi-enabled TV's, set-top boxes, NAS SSDs etc. to become widely available around 2015. CDs and DVDs will go the way of the wax cylinder - it's just a matter of 'when', not 'if'.