Apple Bids Farewell To The Optical Drive

Last week Apple released the Mac Mini; which did not have any DVD drives. Shane Richmond said that it was the beginning of the end of the optical drives. Apple has updated some of its computers in the recent weeks. Both the Mac Mini and the MacBook Air have got significant upgrades with the addition of Thunderbolt ports. Though there are some interesting additions, the removal of some applications was specially telling.

Macbook mini

There were changes in other laptops as well, like Apple removed some of its trusty old laptops and just left the Pro and Air in the MacBook range. The optical drive has been completely removed in MacMini. This means that neither the Mini nor the Air have the optical drive anymore. If one wants to play a CD or a DVD or save data in them then he needs to buy a £66 super drive. Though the MacBook Pro has an optical drive currently, it is clear that Apple believes that the drives are surviving on borrowed time.
Many people still believe that it is too early to remove the disc. Apple has always been familiar with these reactions and not been deterred in the past. In 1998 when Apple removed the floppy drives from the iMac many were not happy with this decision and then gradually Dell removed the floppy drives from their machines in 2003.
If the people who use the optical drives are still not a minority then sooner rather than later they will be. The need of an optical drive will decrease gradually and we will be witnessing more and more people to switch to the MacBook Air for their day to day purpose.
So what about those who require the optical drives? Most of the software launched these days is available as downloads. The latest version of Apple’s OS X operating system for the Mac is available as a download only product. When it will be made available in the stores then it will be available in a USB stick and not in a DVD.
Despite all these facts people may still believe that Optical Drives are important and they might be right, but if one is an Apple user then there are still computers available in Apple stores with the optical drive. The chromebooks made by Google are also available on the web and come without an optical drive.
So the days of Optical Drives have been numbered and users should be ready to work without them.