Q: No DVD drive in new iMac ???

zBernie2 wrote:

 

It's hard to believe there are so many brainwashed in this forum.  Having an SD card slot on the back is not a problem?  Not havinging a single USB port in a convenient is not an issue?

Its not an issue for me. I couldn't give 2 hoots if its at the front, back side wherever. If I really need to be plugging and unplugging USB devices every 5 minutes then I'll get a USB extender that just exposes a handy row of ports in a bay right in front of my nose.

On the other hand I do appreciate a design that maximises the space available to the component I spend all day staring at - i.e. the screen area. So I suppose that makes me a natural iMac customer (or "cool aid drinker" as you put it).

It occurs to me that you might not be which makes me wonder why you waste your time trolling on Macforums when you're a natural Dell customer.

I also don't get all of the angst over rear ports or lack of an internal optical drive. Both are easily (and cheaply) fixed, otherwise, purchase a computer that fits your needs better.

Evidently some folks do not research and evaluate major purchases prior to purchase.

The talk about optical being junk or obsolete is merely your own personal bias. If people here would do a little research they would find out the facts.

As for reliability of slot vs tray loaders there is no difference. Depending on the manufacturer MTBF may differ, but within companies there is no difference. HP rates their drives to 60,000 power on hours no matter whether you purchase slot or tray. If you are having funciton, scratching, etc. issues learn how to run the device. I'm sure if slot loading devices were less reliable Apple would not be offering that in their external drive.

Optical drives are not outdated technology. Unlike removable magnetic media (floppies, ZIPs, etc.) which became obsolete because of their ability to expand with storage demands, opticals have not. Opticals continure to grow in storage capacity while remaining backwardly compatible. The current consumer disc is at 50 gig with 500 gig storage under developement.

For archival storage (writing data and placing it on the shelf for later reference) opticals have the longest shelf life (10.7 years) and the lowest price point.

The only drawback to optical in it's current form is the write speeds. But as those who claim you can adapt to usb and SD ports on the back of the machine... you can also adjust to the slow write speeds. Just set your archives writing when you leave work or go to bed and they are done in the morning.

zBernie2 wrote:

 

It's hard to believe there are so many brainwashed in this forum.  Having an SD card slot on the back is not a problem? 

Not at all

Not havinging a single USB port in a convenient is not an issue?

They are in a convenient location

There are too many geeks in the apple forums who drink the apple juice.

Now, as usual you are resorting to insult

zBernie2 wrote:

It's hard to believe there are so many brainwashed in this forum.

Yes it is, & you are one of them. You obviously have no experience with any of these new iMacs, yet you have made up your mind about them based on a single omission that is easily overcome by any of a dozen products, a misconception about the difficulty of accessing the ports, & from what I can tell a total disregard for any & all the substantial improvements they have incorporated vs. previous iMacs.

Worse, you base all this on comparison with products that (probably like the new iMacs) you have never even seen. If you think a feature list & a picture or two tells you everything you need to know about how user friendly or well executed a product is, then I feel sorry for you (& wonder why you ever bought any Mac in the first place).

I strongly suggest that you 'try before you buy' to avoid disappointments. You may find that those Dells & HP's aren't as great as they seem. If not, get one! I'm pretty sure Apple will survive without you.

justamacguy wrote:

 

The talk about optical being junk or obsolete is merely your own personal bias

That remark was based on it:

- being the only remaining mechanical device with moving parts thats built-in

- being the only remaining "occasional use" peripheral thats built-in

- the fact that even SD cards the size of a postage stamp are approaching the same capacity

justamacguy wrote:

 

The only drawback to optical in it's current form is the write speeds

That isn't the only drawback at all.

The main drawback as far as having it built in is the design compromise that has to be made to the entire product - casing, dimensions, specifications - in order to accommodate a 20 year-old component whose size is now huge in relation to the diminishing PC housing (at least in the case of Macs).

Product makers define markets as much as follow them. One of the most logical, no-brainer, design desicions that Apple could have made was to bin the optical drive. In a market full of diversifying peripherals, all that should exist in the main box is stuff that EVERYBODY uses ALL of the time, not that some people use some of the time.

justamacguy wrote:

The talk about optical being junk or obsolete is merely your own personal bias. If people here would do a little research they would find out the facts.

I have done my own research, & it isn't based on any company's nearly meaningless claims about MTBF's -- particularly those that don't take into account the different operating conditions among the cases they are placed in. (It should not take much thought to see why a unit that lives in a hot, inadequately cooled computer case or one that draws lots of airborne dust into the mechanism won't, on the average, live as long as one in a more friendly operating environment.)

AIO's use slot loading drives because they are lower profile than tray loaders, allow for vertical orientation, & especially because they are cheap. Take one apart & you will see why. There isn't room in them for sturdy mechanical parts so everything is just strong enough to do the job, with very little design margin for wear & tear. And they all are intended for low power portable or bus-powered applications, which greatly limits how powerful their motors, servos, & solenoids can be, further reducing their ability to clear jams & withstand wear.

If that doesn't convince you, ask yourself why no commercial duplicator uses slot loaders, nor does the vast majority of entertainment system disc players. They are compromise design, used only when nothing more robust will work.

As for learning how to "run" them, there is nothing you can do besides learning how to insert the discs properly -- everything else is up to how sturdy & well made the device is, how well it is cooled, & how resistant it is to airborne environmental contaminants.

It is true that DVD's are not an obsolete medium; however, they are rapidly losing ground to the alternatives. It isn't hard to see why. Electronic delivery of commercial content is surging because of its 'on demand' convenience & near zero storage space requirements. USB thumb drives have become such cheap commodity items that they now average just 1¢ more per GB of storage capacity than DVD's, offer vastly faster read/write performance, are easily pocketable, scratch-proof, & even may outperform burned DVD's for long term data retention depending on storage conditions -- research "DVD data rot" to see what I mean.

But all that said, the most important thing to remember about all this is just because the new iMacs (& Mac Mini's & Retina MBP's) don't have built-in optical drives does not somehow mean you can't use one if you still want or need that capability. The sky is not falling; Apple isn't putting a gun to your head to stop you; there is no plot to force you to rely on the iTunes Store, Netflix or any other vendor for commercial content. You can chose from dozens of optical drives with a wide range of capabilities at price points from around $35 to $200 or so & get exactly what fits your needs. You aren't stuck with an 8x 'superdrive' that can't read (much less write) Blu-Ray discs or burn truly archival quality M-Disks, or whatever other advanced optical technology will emerge "real soon now."

So yeah, I heartily approve of your suggestion to do a little research.

Sorry... BluRay is not a 20 year old component. It is compatible with the 20 year old component. And the optical is still evolving.

It's ridiculous to think that Apple can't find enough room behind a 22 or 27 inch monitor to enclose an optical disc. The so called thin iMac is an ego trip for Apple's engineers.

If the only thing that should go in the box is what people use every day, then the iMac should just evolve into a dumb terminal, like the old VT-52s. It should just be a screen and a network connection. We don't need USB or SD. Just do everything in the cloud and pay Apple for the use of it… Just pay Apple $100 dollars per year for 50 gig of storage. Or, you could put that 50 gig on a $2 BluRay disc.

More options is better… or maybe I better give Leatherman a call and tell them they are putting way too many options in their multi-tool.

justamacguy wrote:

It's ridiculous to think that Apple can't find enough room behind a 22 or 27 inch monitor to enclose an optical disc. The so called thin iMac is an ego trip for Apple's engineers.

Its not that they can't, its that their customers don't want them to - or at least this one doesn't.

Whatever the future is, it definitely ISN't built in optical drives. Better to lead the way than follow.

I bought an enclosure for a sata hard drive and the cheapest cd/dvd drive for a pc desktop. I opened the enclosure and connected the power and sata connection to the corresponding ports on the cd drive, and connected the enclosure to my mac via USB in the usual way if I had installed a hard drive in the enclosure instead of a cd drive. Bang, it worked, and it cost me nothing compared to the apple usb cd drive.

It looks a bit like the terminator did near the end of the movie with wires and aluminium showing, but the cost justifies it

Yes... I know about data rot on organic dye optical disc. However, the study completed by the Library of Congress confirms that optical discs will, at a minimum, perform at 95% data integrety up to 10.7 years. Most opticals will retain data for 20 to 40 years. (page 17 of their report http://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rt/NIST_LC_OpticalDiscLongevity.pdf)

Don't put your faith in a thumb drive. People think they are indestructable, but their long term storage is only a third as long as the worst optical disc. About 2 to 3 years. And that is just sitting in a safety deposit box.

You may not want them... but the customers I deal with do. And as long as there is a market, I will produce them.

justamacguy wrote:

 

Yes... I know about data rot on organic dye optical disc. However, the study completed by the Library of Congress confirms that optical discs will, at a minimum, perform at 95% data integrety up to 10.7 years. Most opticals will retain data for 20 to 40 years. (page 17 of their report http://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rt/NIST_LC_OpticalDiscLongevity.pdf)

 

Don't put your faith in a thumb drive. People think they are indestructable, but their long term storage is only a third as long as the worst optical disc. About 2 to 3 years. And that is just sitting in a safety deposit box.

Then use paper and pen, there are examples extant that are thousands of years old, handily consigning the archival properties of the DVD and the flashdrive to the trashcan.

Sell your computer and seek out proper archival methods.

Paper and Pen??

Ridiculous. Everyone knows that you can't beat a carefully chiseled stone tablet for longevity.

Klaus1 wrote:

 

Paper and Pen??

 

Ridiculous. Everyone knows that you can't beat a carefully chiseled stone tablet for longevity.

You're right of course, DVD is but a fleeting cloud in comparison. I bow to your acuity.