No DVD drive in new iMac ???

babowa wrote:

I was being facetious - I've chosen not to use the cloud due to a) privacy concerns and b) I do not trust online servers - they will get hacked sooner or later, so I will not trust any of my information to a machine not under my control. A similar concern applies to Youtube or any other such site I've checked: although their terms clearly forbid downloads unless a download button is present, pretty much everyone downloads the stuff, so I will not upload anything unless I don't care if it is stolen.

I completely agree.

tjmch wrote:

With no disk drive in the latest iMAC is it 1984 again?

So if I upgrade to the newest iMac I Can't play my music CDs, can't record music I make in Garage band, can't burn DVDs of my iMovies.

It gets better:

Why is there no iDVD on my new Mac?

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3673

UPDATE & ADDENDUM:

But even though you can still buy iLife 11 that includes iDVD 7 from Amazon, Apple now make it difficult to install:

Poster jhb21939 posted this in another thread:

“when I attempted to load iDVD into a new iMac. A notice came up on the screen stating that the 'Authorisation Licence' had expired on 25 March this year (2012).

I contacted the Apple support team and eventually, I was told that the Licence had been withdrawn and could no longer be used.”

In other words Apple are now so adamant that we don’t use iDVD that they have tried to make it impossible to install.

In response, Old Toad posted this solution:

“You can still use it one all of your Macs. If you get an invalid certificate message just set your Mac's clock to sometime before early 2011 and run the installer. After you're done reset the time back to the correct time.” He added this comment:

“It began after iDVD and iWeb were discontued and they were dropped from the Apple Store. All I can think of is the certificate was set to expire after a certain time period after the intitial iLife disc was released.

I've been able to use the installer even without setting back the date. I just clicked on the Continue button and it would work as expected. For some it would not continue unless the date was set back.”

The latest anorexic iMacs just announced do not even include a CD drive! Proof positive that Apple virtually prohibit the use of DVDs - although the newly announced Mac Minis do include a Superdrive.

Yet, they still include iMovie! Heaven alone knows or understands what you are supposed to do with your newly edited masterpiece - except make a low quality version for YouTube?

so let's see now. imove and garageband are useless. idvd is disabled. and you need external hardware to burn photos from iphoto. i wonder if apple will soon eliminate the option to import cd's from itunes?

Interesting thread, but as ever, if we sit and think it all through, it probably will not be as bad as bad as we all imagine.

On the plus side the new iMacs will be smokingly fast - perfect for cutting film in FCP7 (sorry not letting go yet), rendering graphics and handling weighty apps like Aperture which slows my current system to a crawl. So looking forward to the upgrade. The new low-reflection screen is also a great idea.

The lack of an internal DVD burner is annoying, but not necessarily a bad thing. I have had lots of issues with the DVD drive on my MBP, thankfully it has never yet failed completely, but were it to go, it would be expensive to get an Apple near-Genius to replace it. Thankfully there are lots of external DVD drive options on the market, so one of them will run fine with the iMac. If the DVD drives were being pulled from the MBP range, I'd be much more concerned. The iMac is a desk top machine, so it does not need to be so all in one. But this does take us on the issue of peripherals...

Like many users, I seem to have stacks of FireWire , eSata and USB drives in my office and I am wondering how I will connect everything up via the available Thunderbolt and USB3 ports on the new iMac. I was looking at various expensive hub options (£170 for a Lacie eSata/Thunderbolt hub!), but the answer to this is that there are cheap-ish conversion cables out there to resolve these issues (esate to usb3 and thunderbolt to firewire)

See:

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=esata+to+usb3+adapter&oe=utf-8&rls=or g.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=11046375826561049004 &sa=X&ei=4GKdUKr9IKeb1AXmq4HoDA&ved=0CFcQ8wIwAQ

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MD464ZM/A/thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapter

Finding a fix and buying peripherals is nothing new though. The iMac has always styled itself as the 'ultimate all in one', but we all know that this is just marketing nonsense. No machine does everything you need it too fresh out of the box and creating a system that is optimal for your needs by adding external drives, usb hubs, external screens, audio monitoring and so on is just a fact of computing life.

I say we all re-convene in a few weeks and compare notes. I suspect we'll all be reasonably happy. That is if they ever bring these new iMacs to market! In fact now I come to think of it, where are these new iMacs? It's mid-November...c'mon Apple pull you finger out!

I can appreciate your possitive spin on Apple's new not all in one. However, for me having a desktop that has a good size hard drive, optical disc drive (I still use mine weekly with no problems for 5 years now), with built in monitor pretty much handles everything. All this without having to buy an overpriced Mac Pro. Thats the original concept, isn't it? My current iMac just might be the last Mac I will own simple because of the supid decisions being made by Apple. I used to praise the company to everyone, but not anymore. Now we get less for more $. Thanks Apple!

I have a mid 2011 iMac fully loaded with everything that Apple offered. It's fast and I'm happy with it. I welcome the new iMac and will wait to buy one. (The Mac the iMac replaced I had for over 10 years. I can now compress h.264 in the matter of a few minutes that took the old Mac hours to compress.)

I for one use Apple's iCloud sevices. I've never had any problems with it. I store TextEdit, Preview, Keynote, Pages and Number files there... (GoodReader files too.) It's very fast compared to DropBox. I can now find my Preview, Keynote, Pages, GoodReader and Number files without having to think.

I have never hid myself on the internet and don't use an alias. (I started using the internet back in 1990.)

David.

Your setup sounds perfect for you, but there are still millions of people that still need to read and burn CD/DVDs. To omit the optical drive because of a thinner edge is ridiculous, not to mention charging more for the machine.

Ask Apple for a $79 rebate so you can buy a SuperDrive. As far as I'm concern, DVDs and Cds are dead.

Every technology dies, I understand that. The question is when, CD/DVDs have quite a few more years. This is a move by Apple to improve revenue streams for their download services, plain and simple greed. No regard for customer needs.

As far as I'm concern, DVDs and Cds are dead.

So what do you do with the 1 - 2 hour movie master piece you've compiled? How would I get it to friends/customers here and there? They insist on getting a DVD of their wedding/party/whatever so they can watch it at their leisure. I would not trust that to any website (and they probably would not allow such mega files; in fact, I have to compress the trailers I make for Vimeo to allow it (maximum upload 500 MB per week) - my current project came in at 4.1 GB and I've got a total of 20 DVDs to burn. Besides, someone would download (steal) it - my stuff is not for the general public.

strange forum behavior - double post.... (deleted)

David M Brewer wrote:

As far as I'm concern[ed], DVDs and Cds are dead.

So, you'll buy all of your music and movies via the digital Apple store, paying higher prices in some cases and donate all the CDs/DVDs in your possession to the rest of we who died? I'll take them off your hands, since I have no intention playing them on my computer. That's for the CD/DVD players hooked up to my TV and stereo system.😉

Thanks Fred, I am just trying to be objective!

Apple gets more than it's far share of 'Mr Angry from Devon" mail from me and I appreciate everyone's comments about Apple not listening to/caring about their customer base. Look at the FCP7/FCPX debacle! They have dumped pro users for iPadders and iPhoners without question. Their profits are gargantuan and far from being the little computer company with great ideas that we all shouted for in the battle v. Microsoft in the 80's/90's, Apple has now become a corporate giant that dominates people's lives. Indeed, were it a government, we'd probably berate it and try to pull it down!

However, for me jumping ship, with the 1000's I have invested in Apple software, peripherals, projects and workflow down the years is very hard to do. Which PC to pick? Software that will run legacy projects?

So I am probably wedded to another Apple upgrade and my compromise is to keep my Apple protests small. I refuse to buy an iPad or an iPhone. Take that corporate giant!

...interestingly though, if anyone is looking to jump ship from Apple and buy a sort-of-equivalent spec PC version of the iMac, Dell now do an all in one machine, with a DVD drive.

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=d00x2s03&model_id=xps-on e-27-2710-aio&c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=ukbsdt1

This does look like a very tasty machine, but with the UK Tax it is roughly the same price as the 27 inch iMac. And there are other issues a) it only has 8mb of RAM and does not seem to be configurable to add more b) how much to spend stocking up on a whole new lot of software? c) FCP projects to Premiere or Avid? d) PC virus **** (my wife has had 2 virus attacks in the past year on her new Dell)...

Not sure that just of the convenience of a built in optical drive I am prepared for that much pain.

So perhaps the new iMac does start to make some sort of sense after all...?

How would I get it to friends/customers here and there? They insist on getting a DVD of their wedding/party/whatever so they can watch it at their leisure.

100% of my clients DEMAND a DVD. Most of them view online storage as technically inferior to a DVD.