Q: No DVD drive in new iMac ???

justamacguy 

Here is a "more than real world test".

http://www.zdnet.com/torture-testing-the-1000-year-dvd-7000023203/

Some independent tests show that the bottom surface of the M-disks are "unusually soft"   Hmm, not good.

Taiyo Yuden produced ‘Super Cyanine’, a chemically stabilized version of the original Cyanine dye designs, while TDK offers media that uses ‘metal-stabilized Cyanine’ dye, leading to similar shelf lives as Taiyo Yuden’s media. Taiyo Yuden states their Super Cyanine dye is chemically stable for at least 70 years, and TDK states their metal-stabilized Cyanine is also stable for 70 years.

Not good:

M-discs are ~0.07 millimeters thicker than normal DVD media. These discs will not load into the slot loading drive of my Macbook

zBernie2 wrote:

 

I also have a lot of relatives who do not access Flickr, Facebook, etc.  For them I burn DVD's of family photos.

 

The fact of the matter is ther are still $billions in sales of software, music, and movies, on optical disk.  Apple was premature in removing the drive, but they don't care, they simply want to push people to purchase content from them.

 

Personally I love being able to rent a movie for $1.20 at Redbox, and then watch it in my iMac, without having to run out and pay $80 for an external drive.

Again, you don't have to pay $80 for an external drive.  They can be had for under $30.  Here's an example...

http://www.amazon.com/External-Stylish-SDRW-08D2S-U-BLK-AS/dp/B006HUMYCO/ref=cm_ cr_pr_product_top

Here are reviews from folks using it with their iMacs...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-content-search/results/ref=cm_srch_q_rtr/?que ry=imac&search-alias=community-reviews&Go.x=-1728&Go.y=-374&idx.asin=B006HUMYCO

That's just one example...there are many, many others to choose from, both more and less expensive.

If you're happy with your exisiting iMac and it does everything you'd like it to do, great.  But if <$30 is holding anyone back from buying a new iMac...well...

Just so I am clear: the new iMacs and MacBooks are missing iDVD, a FireWire hookup as well as an internal drive? Sounds more like a do-it-yourself kit.

internal SSD or HD are still present

external Superdrive DVD burners are USB plug and go.

nothing could be simpler.

SSD and the hybrid drive is good. Does that apply to MacBook Pro and Air? And is iDVD but a memory?

Pro current use SSD

Air uses PCIe  SSD  (same as current Air)

HD still used in non-Retina Pro and base model Imac

There are 1000 options other than IDVD,   such as TOAST which most people use.

I can't believe this thread is still going on.

if People are too dumb to live without decade old computer technologies like firewire and superdrive then they don't deserve to use one of the new macs. get a typewriter..

justamacguy wrote:

The real fact is that nobody really knows what the average life span is because nobody has been around long enough to see what it is under natural conditions. All of the test that are done are based on artificially aging the discs.

Very true. But it is well established that organic dye based optical discs degrade over time because of the effects of temperature, humidity, & exposure to light. (This includes "gold disc" & similar reflective metal types, which refers to the reflective layer below the dye.) Most accelerated life tests don't include exposure to light, but a very carefully conducted one by the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake did.

In that test, the M-Disks were the only ones that didn't fail. But more significant, at least to me, were the results of the prescreening done to get samples that had acceptably low initial write errors. The researchers discovered that every brand of drive tested did relatively poorly with some brands of optical media & that no brand of media, not even the highly regarded Taiyo Yuden & Verbatim ones, worked well with all of them. In fact, variations among same-model optical drives were also significant.

That suggests that users need to be careful about selecting the most compatible brand of discs for their particular optical drive, & that the best one won't be the same for everyone. It also is further confirmation that for maximum reliability it is important to verify each disc after burning it, significantly increasing the time it takes to make archival quality backups.

Since it is relatively time consuming to burn discs to begin with & their capacity is relatively low, I strongly doubt that most users will consider them a practical alternative for their large scale or frequent backup needs.

And, to your last comment, “…you will have to buy an external drive anyway.” That is what worries me with Apple.

Please note that all the optical drives currently available capable of writing to M-Disks are tray loaders that work only in the horizontal orientation; there are no slot loading ones that Apple could fit into even much thicker iMacs. The same goes for optical drives that support faster than 8X burn speeds. A lot of users want that -- it is one of the complaints many have about Apple's "SuperDrives," & why they end up buying a higher performance external burner.

So basically, Apple can either include an optical drive in a slightly thicker new iMac that will satisfy the needs of relatively few users & quite possibly will become obsolete as better optical technologies emerge, or do what it has done, which is include no optical drive at all, without in any way preventing users that want one from choosing one of the many external drives that will fit their needs better than anything Apple could provide.

That doesn't worry me at all.

macdaddy  

if People are too dumb to live without decade old computer technologies like firewire and superdrive

You fundamentally do not understand. 

Regarding LONG TERM ARCHIVING of important data,

......hard drives are sitting on the ground, and DVD professional optical storage is somewhere out in space by comparison.

This has nothing to do with "living without",.....rather the wisdom to know what is BEST regarding data protection

"decades old" technology doesnt mean anything.

Processor speeds improve, RAM, etc.  But optical storage of data is still KING for longevity & against corruption

You can live without health insurance too,...the wise do not.  

Same thing with professional optical data archives.

Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection

It's true that more and more people are purchasing content on-line.  But there are still $billions in software, music, and movies, sold on optical media.  I purchase almost all of my childrens movies on DVD, so I can pass them down to my son.  Why purchase a movie from Apple and be limited to Apple's ecosystem?

I also sometimes rent movies at Redbox, which you cannot beat for $1.20.  Optical media is far from dead, Apple just wants OM to be dead so they can sell you content on-line.

As far as being screwed by Apple, Apple often does things that are user hostile.  For example, there is not one USB port or SD card slot in a convenient location on the new iMac.  All are located on the back of the Mac!  That's real user friendly.   Apple does this to reduce manufacturing complexity and increase profits, while screwing the end user.  Every other all-in-one has USB ports and card slots in conveniently accessible locations except for the iMac, which is another reason I'm refraning from buying one.  If I wasn't such a big fan of OS X, I'd switch back to using Linux for a desktop OS on different hardware in a heartbeat.

OS X is the main reason I keep doing business with Apple.  Hopefully they won't screw that up like they did with iOS 7.  Frankly I've had it with Apple's heavy handed blunders, and I'm gravitating away from them.  For example, I purchased my 4 year old a $129 Nook HD.  I bought myself a Nexus 7, and I just traded in my iPhone 4s on a Moto X which I love.   In tablets alone I saved about $450 compared to purchasing two iPad mini's at $800.  I plan to put the money saved into my son's college fund, not Apple's bank account.

I can't believe people are brainwashed by Apple to believe that optical media is antiquated.  Just because you don't use is not a good litmus test.  There are still $billions of dollars of software, music, and videos, sold on optical media.  So, you rent your movies from Apple for $4.99.  I rent mine from Redbox for $1.20.  You do the math.

We use optical media to archive a variety of data at work.  This thread doens't even discuss the blunder of ommiting the optical drive from the iMac, and how that would impact the Mac's acceptance in an office environment.    I can just imagine the conversations after purchasing iMacs for an office:

"What do you mean no one can read DVD's?  This means we have to purchase external drives for everyone?"

"What do you mean you have to turn your Mac around just to plug in an SD card?  There's none on the side?"

Ive repaired and fixed many superdrives, .....they are and were a pain due to:

A: dirty laser lens (not the drives fault but the user!)  {user fault}

B: people sticking stuff in them they shouldnt {user fault}

C: mechanically theyre rather complex as a slot loader is

D: people complained about it not burning X brand of DVD blank,..not knowing that NO DVD burner can burn all the 100s of types of junk-O dvd/cd media out there {user fault}

E, F, G, H...

The superdrive (any internal cd/dvd player/burner actually)  is the "noisy pesky neighbor" of computer repair headaches.

The truth is about 70% of people dont know all the ins and outs of care and use of DVD/CD player/burners. (as mentioned above).

People that need it for burning DVDs can buy it, ..externally as USB

everyone else doesnt need DVD movies much anymore and gets such media by download.

But the US Govt., military, the E.U., big business etc. are all heavily invested by endless 100s millions into optical storage.

Other than Joe Blow downloading movies via Itunes or Netflix etc,......there is utterly NO end in sight for the importance of optical data storage.

No govt. or big business or military on earth is storing solely its vital stuff on magnetic media. A giant EMP (electromagnetic pulse) would wipe away billions in data in a second.

Some people think "online" or "the cloud" as different than hard drives, but they're all on 1000s of hard drives in nameless server farms.

And is iDVD but a memory?

Although Apple no longer includes it, it is still available as part of the retail iLife 09 or 11 versions - check online sellers including ebay. I use Toast (as well as iDVD) and it is great for burning, but neither it nor any other app I've tried comes anywhere near what  iDVD offers with its customizable menus and themes. I would not consider creating a DVD without giving it some stunning menus, themes, and transitions in iDVD. And no, there is NO other app that can do what iDVD can do.

PlotinusVeritas wrote:

A: dirty laser lens (not the drives fault but the user!)  {user fault}

Actually, as you might already know, the fans in many iMac models unavoidably draw air in through the optical drive slot into the drive because the drives are not sealed in air-tight chambers. In less than "clean room" environments typical of homes & offices, that can & often does draw in & deposit airborne contaminants on lenses & moving parts like the carriage that moves the laser across the disc.

Obviously, there is nothing users can do about this.

While it might be practical to clean the lens without opening the drive, the same isn't true for the carriage, loading mechanism, etc.. Worse, abrasive contaminants can eventually cause enough wear on the moving parts that they no longer work reliably. Once that happens, the drive needs to be discarded because cleaning won't help.

And of course, these slim slot loading drives have very delicate parts easily damaged by people not skilled in their repair so most users have no safe way to keep them clean to begin with.