Q: No DVD drive in new iMac ???

You can use an external drive, but software is increasingly being delivered by download, and I don't see that trend reversing.

The CD is going the same way as the floppy

I'm in agreement this was a horribly bad idea on Apple's part. Maybe not from the marketing/finance end, but from a tech standpoint, this is what makes customers finally go elsewhere for their computer. It seems more then apparent to me that the optical drives weren't taken out because of tech problems. It was done from a standpoint of price gauging the loyal customer. 75% of the working world still have need for use of an optical drive, even with online downloads, flash cards, cloud storage etc.. Now the consumer is forced to pay for music and movies through iTunes. No one should have to repay for computer programs they already own. An optical drive should be provided for this alone. With the exhorbitant amount Apple charges for their computers, they can afford to throw an optical drive in there. They should charge less money if they don't want to include them.

Friends with laptops like watching movies on planes. Bad enough to take it out of laptops, but desktops? Why bother streamlining when you lose practicality? People aren't taking an iMac on a plane or to a client, so who cares if its 5mm thinner but now I have to go purchase all these external options which completely defeats the purpose of an all-in-one desktop! This is where it seems like a financial move to me. In the 90's, I was in college for animation. At the time, my University used Macs with OSX 9 and lower. They crashed all the time and were horrible until Apple installed the Unix based platform. I never bought a Mac until they switched to OSX10. It's been a dream until as of late. Apple seems to be sliding the slope back down to their pre OS Unix days. They need an optical drive, speakers should be on front of monitor along with SD slots. At least 1 FW port. And a USB adaptor should be included if you need more ports. I was literally about to purchase a 27" 3.4 ghz retina display iMac but didnt purchase when I saw there's no optical drive available.

Apple, just like anyone else deserves to be scrutinised and criticised, particularly when they play dirty and try to manipulate the market and insult their customers as they have done here, as well as committing appalling design crimes!

Bluestar_dragon wrote:

 

I'm in agreement this was a horribly bad idea on Apple's part. Maybe not from the marketing/finance end, but from a tech standpoint, this is what makes customers finally go elsewhere for their computer.

And yet, Apple just recently set an all time company record for the most Macs sold in a single quarter, & did so during a period when overall PC sales were flat.

That is a pretty strong indication of how "the market" (IOW, customers) actually has reacted to this.

There are good technical reasons for not building optical drives into iMacs. That's been discussed to death in this now very old topic so I won't repeat any of it again. Suffice it to say that if you really need an optical drive to use with current or recent iMacs there are many external USB-connected ones to choose from, some as cheap as $30, & the market seems OK with that.

Apple, just like anyone else deserves to be scrutinised and criticised, particularly when they play dirty and try to manipulate the market and insult their customers as they have done here, as well as committing appalling design crimes!

Is that Godwin warming up?

So wait......you're telling me that I'm NOT going to be able to continue using my 5.25" floppy disks any more? This is an outrage.......I need to relax......calm down...pop in an 8 track......ahhhhhh

Oh! Because you want an optical drive then everyone has to pay one and you seem to think that is fair. Personally I don't see it that way.

Besides it is not only computers that are dropping optical drives like hot potatoes, automobiles are doing it also. So are you going on a crusade against them also.

Still , but this H.265/HEVC is not very common , and for discs collectors, BD and DVD are more prefer.

For Disc collectors... use a USB Drive. For Movie collectors, this is not a problem.

Quite frankly I don't know why this issue has generated so much interest.  I use two Mac Mini's professionally and it's the easiest thing going to just plug in a remote Liteon or iomega disk drive. With the ease of a usb connector lead I'm generally ready to record or play within a couple on minutes.  On a personal requirement I have loaded my collection of over 250 CDs on a £16 Liteon drive and all into iTunes.  The absence of an internal disc drive is no longer an issue.  Life evolves as we're now finding with the HDD.  Now we're looking at SSDs.  It's evolution!