There are still going to be plenty of complaints about Apple’s decision, particularly when it comes to people with ingrained DVD and CD habits. Even burnable DVDs are on the way out, with cheap ubiquitous flash drives coming in ever larger sizes (Apple’s success with flash storage in iPods and iPhones has sped this change).Īnd let’s not forget that Sony, when it gave out free games to PS3 users as an apology for the extended hack-related outage of its PSN, made them available as over-the-air downloads…proving it can do this on an industrial scale, and with no need for Blu-ray discs, even for its iconic Little Big Planet title.
Remember that Apple’s the biggest music vendor in the U.S.–and the new wave of streaming music via services like Rdio and Spotify is already challenging the iTunes model. The CD has all but been replaced by digital formats already. Downloads and streaming movie options from market leaders like Netflix and Apple itself are growing in popularity. Other big computer firms, such as Asus and HP, having seen the runaway sales of the Air, are following with near-clones of the Air that also lack an optical drive.Ĭonsumeres aren’t using DVDs so much any more, and media companies are depending on those sales less and less. And don’t forget they offered a large point of ingress for dust and liquids in an era when all the ports on laptops are slowly being sealed up (no interchangeable battery flap, few peripheral connections–in favor of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi–and even a magnetic power connector that’s “sealed”). They take up space inside the slender frame of a laptop that’s probably better served with more disk space, or a bigger battery. DVD drives are bulky, eat up power when running, and generate heat. It all makes sense, from a portable computing point of view. Only the bigger iMac all-in-one, the MacBook Pro range and the Mac Pro desktop workhorse still support internal optical disk drives. The hot-selling MacBook Air, which has no disc drive, is now a consumer-level flagship machine. Apple has stopped selling boxed copies of several software titles including iLife ’11, it was reported today, and is re-routing buyers to the Mac App Store instead. The slot for a DVD, CD, playing-and-burning Superdrive is gone, and the Minis sport boosted internal hard drives instead. The latest Mac Mini is as smooth and shiny as can be, with an almost uninterrupted surface.
Other computer and content companies are burying the format too. When the computer maker refreshed its computer offerings this morning it hammered another solid nail into the DVD’s coffin. Apple‘s killing the optical disk format, bit by bit–just as we suspected.
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