Q: No DVD drive in new iMac ???

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.

I just finished a project in NTSC (20+ DVDs so far and counting), am now putting the same thing together in PAL for several people in Europe (two of them do not even have computers - but they DO have DVD players and TVs) so I can send them there (as Christmas presents). On the other hand, here is a different (and much easier and less work for me) thought: send them a TXT message "ur xmas gift is on utube" - frohe Weihnachten!

This is probably a continuation of Apple's quest to control everything about its products. They will ask you to bring in your DVD's to the Apple store so they can transfer them to your computer through icloud maybe. Then they will start forcing other companies to provide everything (movie rentals, software, music, etc) through the App store or Itunes. Someone in there thinks he is the new Steve Jobs and wants to carry on Job's philisophy, but I think he is actually doing ****. This is going to be ahead of its time like when they had DVD slots instead of trays. Im predicting an epic fail but I can't wait to see how they answer your questions. If I am right, I should run Apple; they need a new Steve Jobs.If I am wrong, Im buying the new iMac.

Crossed my mind yesterday evening.   Now we know why Apple would only supply Lion and Mountain Lion via download and or App Store.  

Some kind of practice run before removing the DVD facility?

Not sure if it's a practice run - but they are determined to do it one way only and are genuinely surprised when someone tells them (as I just did) that they a) do not have a lightning speed connection and b) they have monthly bandwidth caps which is something quite a few ISPs have or are implementing - probably a bottom line thing for them: if you use more than your cap, they charge you extra. As for connections, I decided to use recovery yesterday after a logic board replacement which resulted in several hiccups and some tense troubleshooting. So, the recovery - download only - took just over 3 hours for a 4 +/- GB file (plus approx. 25 minutes for the install). The movie project I just finished came in at 4.2 GB - aside from any other concerns, would I actually waste 5 + hours to upload the movie (5 hours is a guess, but may actually be a low estimate since upload speeds are much slower than downloads)? I think not.

Your clients are living in the past.

Proably the single most ignorant statement I've seen in a long time.  The client is the one that makes the demands, unless of course you're apple then they will dictate.  DVDs are still alive and well, since much of the country has no access to broadband and many poor people wth no computer at all. 

davidfromcornwall wrote:

 

Your clients are living in the past.

That's shamefully pompous, not everyone in this word is as cutting edge as you, nor would they want to be.

davidfromcornwall wrote:

 

Your clients are living in the past.

You're not paying attention. MOST folks don't have the wherewithal to always use the Internet to meet those demands. Nice if you can afford it, but, IMO, it wastes bandwidth, time, and electricity for no obvious good reason (surely contradicts the greenie mantra implied by your image).

"We just rented our billionth DVD," said Chris Goodrich, head of public relations for Redbox, which offers DVDs for $1 at distinctive kiosks found in shopping centers, grocery stores and fast-food outlets.

"Last year we were installing a new kiosk every hour," Goodrich said. "Today there are locations so busy we're adding a second kiosk. And we've just started carrying Blu-ray discs.

"So it may be sexy to talk about electronic delivery, but right now consumers still prefer the portable, physical disc that they can carry from room to room or household to household."

Officials for Netflix, say they expect to be delivering discs for at least the next two decades.

"Sorry, honey, that cloud storage service where I put the video of our wedding/son's first birthday/daughter's first dance recital just went bankrupt."

baltwo wrote:

 

Many people are still living in the present.

I have mentioned before on this thread that I don't think that the lack of a DVD drive on the new iMac is a huge issue, but this does not mean that DVD as a format is dead - far from it. As I type I have just had another request from one of my clients in Africa for another shipment for DVDs from our latest film project on the Nile. Now of course I am not going to burn several hundred DVDs here in my office - I outsource that to the replication house, but the masters are created on our system, so the need for DVD authouring and burning is very real.

Apple does need to try and understand that while the world moves at a million miles an hour in Cupertino, the rest of the planet often lags far behind. The thought of many users in Africa (population set to be 1 billion by 2015) all being able to download vast files from the web, is just ludicrous. At best in sub Saharan Africa, boradband is 3kbps right now with a bandwidth cap.

Apple has to understand that the machines that Apple produces are used by creative producers who actually manufacture product - we are not just consumers sitting about on our iPads wonder what else we can buy from the mother ship. If Apple had bothered to factor this in to their thinking, the DVD drive would still be available on the new iMac.

The fact that the DVD drive is absent from the new machine is not something that is insurmountable for a producer (external USB DVD writers are $75), the belief that DVD is dead shows some seriously woolly thinking!