

MacBook Air Apparent: I Have Never Used My Computer’s Optical Drive - wyclif
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/15/new-macbook-air/

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riobard
I use the optical drive mainly for reinstalling OS. An old habit carried over
from the Windows time. Later I discovered that OS X is probably the easiest OS
to install from alternative media. (It is probably also the easiest to run
from alternative media too. Tried portable hard drive and USB stick. Works
flawlessly.)

I did three clean installation of OS X 10.6. I tried both installing from DVD,
and installing from an image of the DVD residing on a partition of a portable
hard drive (created with the system default Disk Utility tool) via USB. The
hard drive option is much faster, quieter, and cooler (pun intended).

I am always wondering if Apple will ship an OS on a tiny USB stick instead of
a stupid DVD disc some day.

I hate optical discs and drives. Mechanical and fragile. I want to go all
solid state.

~~~
maguay
You can install Windows 7 from a USB flash disk (or external hard drive if you
wanted to) with the Windows 7 USB tool. Works great and installs much faster
than from a DVD. Even on my desktop, I haven't used disks to install software
in forever. Hey, you can even download a trial of Office, Photoshop, or almost
any major software, and then activate it with a key from a physical package.
Works great.

~~~
riobard
I tried that too on some PC's around. It's a nice feature given the need to
reinstall the OS more often... There are some compatibility issues with USB
booting on different BIOS, but other than that it is really helpful.

Now the next question is how do you run Win7 from a USB stick...

~~~
maguay
I've done it with XP back in the day, but never tried it with Win7. That might
make an interesting project...

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minalecs
First the Iphone is supposed to be for on the go, then the Ipad is supposed to
be in between the Iphone and the Mac Book Pro, now he wants something in
between the Ipad and the Mac Book Pro. Kudos to Apple for convincing people
they need all this.

~~~
grinich
I think this article is about what you _don't_ need. Apple has a long
tradition of omitting "features", which is applauded in hindsight but cause
quite a stir at the release.

(Examples: floppy and optical disc drives, modems, firewire and ethernet
ports, expansion slots, physical buttons, ...)

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ja2ke
"how will the iMac survive without serial, parallel, and ADB ports?"

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Keyframe
I vowed that my next computer will not have an optical drive in it.

As for MacBook, you can make some use of that space with optibay
<http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/>

~~~
whatusername
Or, you know, Buy a Thinkpad. My ultra-bay has had a hard drive in it for
years. But I can on the fly swap that out for the CD unit. Or a battery pack.
It's built to be useful and not just to look pretty.

~~~
sjs
Gloating about _your_ notebook of choice just makes you an asshole. I don't
want to swap out the components in my notebook every week, that's not a useful
feature for me. It's objective!

Instead of lame invisible magic scrolling areas on the side, what if I want a
large trackpad with lots of gestures, 2-finger scrolling & right-click? Or a
slot loading DVD drive instead of a shitty tray one? Backlit keyboard? Magnet
based power adapter so the dog doesn't drag my notebook off the table? LED
battery life indicator on the side? 1" thickness? 5-8 hours battery life? Or
just want OS X? And yes it looks good.

If you don't care about those things that's fine. I think it's even worth
sacrificing an eSATA port even though I'd like one. Different people are
willing to make different compromises.

As everyone says the CPU, memory and disks are the same now. Only difference
is software and other hardware features. I don't understand why people have a
mental block about looking at Apple's hardware objectively. "It looks good so
it's clearly not meant to be useful!" ... wtf?

Let me guess, the Vaio Z isn't useful either because it looks good and doesn't
have a swappable SATA bay. Even though you can get it w/ dual SSDs and a Core
i7. Give me a break.

~~~
whatusername
Apple do a lot of things right. But they optimize hard for the 80-90% rule.
Maybe even 95%. If you want to do anything in that 5-10% -- you have
challenges.

Woz wanted power and flexibility and options. Jobs wanted beauty and
simplicity and ease of use. There's nothing wrong with simplicity. In fact -
most of the time it's a benefit. But lets call it for what it is -- Apple's
design ethos will choose simple over flexible almost every time.

~~~
sjs
That's true. In the Sculley interview that was posted the other day a
recurring theme was that Apple is a design company first. I think that's good.
I like products designed for humans even though my inner geek likes to solve
puzzles (figuring out a bad interface is like solving a puzzle, it tickles the
same part of our brains).

Some lament the fact that you can't change hibernate/sleep settings without
running a few defaults commands in the terminal. I like that the machine does
something sane out of the box and I don't have to think about it. I just focus
on what I want to get done. Again, people care about different things. I care
less about tweaking & tinkering as I get older and lazier.

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jmm
So this is where _I_ groan over MG groaning about having to carry a couple
extra pounds in his purse.

And perhaps I'm missing some greater MG-context, but using the first person
singular pronoun that often in a speculative review of a device (or whatever)
is a bit off putting. Which is to say, whiny hyper-personalized reviews don't
really cut it for me.

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Groxx
A smaller Air would be awesome, and I think would be a better sale than the
current one. It's not quite comparable, but I still miss my 12" Powerbook
because I could take it frickin' _everywhere_. It was even smaller than almost
any book I carried (textbooks).

If they shrank it a bit more, they could start to compete more directly with
both ultralight laptops _and netbooks_ , but with more power than either,
rather than being just a smaller, lighter, slower, and more expensive laptop.
Though yes, part of the appeal of netbooks is how cheap they are.

My 15" I have now is nicer for _work_... but then again I can always attach an
external monitor if I _really_ want size. But in the vast majority of cases
where size matters, I'd prefer my laptop to be smaller so I can always have it
with me, and not use up most (or 110%) of the available space.

~~~
benologist
I agree ... I have a 13.3" and an old, broken 12.1" and I really feel the
difference. I also have an 11.6" and love the size but it's a netbook so it's
pretty crap.

A high quality 11.6" would be _awesome_ if the price is nice.

~~~
jesseendahl
When you say you feel the difference, I'm curious if you mean in terms of size
or weight or both. I ask because believe it or not the 13.3" MacBook Pro is
actually ~0.1 pounds (0.06 kg) lighter than the 12.1" PowerBook G4.

Sources:

13.3" MacBook Pro Tech Specs:
<http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-13inch.html> 12.1 PowerBook G4 Tech
Specs: <http://support.apple.com/kb/sp48>

~~~
benologist
I don't have Macs, I have/had PCs.

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b3b0p
They need to have a Macbook Air Pro

Ethernet

Better graphics card

I would kill for a 200+dpi screen on a 12 or 13 inch screen

With no optical the machine should be much lighter and the battery last
longer. Throw in built in 3g and I'll even splurge for the overnight shipping.

The optical is used so rarely offering a $99 external USB seems like the
perfect solution.

Edit: formatting

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yummyfajitas
It seems the author of this article doesn't have netflix.

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streblo
The first thing I see when I go to netflix.com is "Unlimited TV episodes &
Movies instantly over the internet"

~~~
w1ntermute
Of course, why would they want to clearly state that Instant only includes a
fraction of the titles available on DVD?

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yummyfajitas
On my queue, there are about 125 movies. About 30 of them have "Play" buttons.

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araneae
As I remember it, people were mostly annoyed that it only had one usb port. I
got my x61 2 years ago and never worried about the lack of optical drive, but
it has 3 usb ports I certainly could not do without.

In fact, the lack of an optical drive doesn't even make it on this list:
[http://apcmag.com/macbook_air_top_10_things_wrong_with_it.ht...](http://apcmag.com/macbook_air_top_10_things_wrong_with_it.htm)

~~~
jsz0
In my experience (as an MBA owner) people who buy it don't really carry around
a backpack full of USB devices to plugin. Kind of defeats the purpose of
buying an ultra-portable. Sometimes I dock it to a USB hub at home though.

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bensummers
I love my MacBook Air, and am dreading the release of a new improved one which
I'll be deliberating over buying for months.

That said, a little bit smaller and higher-res screen, 500g lighter, 4GiB of
RAM and a 3G modem would be almost irresistible.

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sabalaba
Well--for one I use optical drive to install linux and do recovery with a live
disk, but besides that, he's absolutely right. I think one USB optical spare
would be critical for a lot of geeks

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gamble
I would love a MBP that doesn't include an optical drive, but it isn't going
to happen for a while. The problem is DRM on DVDs. I'm perfectly capable of
ripping my movies, but without access to a DVD ripper that's as easy to use
(and included for free with the OS) as iTunes, the average person hasn't
figured out how to rip DVDs and still needs an optical drive to watch movies.
The Air is going to be stuck in a niche for a while, unfortunately.

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spenrose
The Air is what Jobs shipped when he couldn't ship the iPad yet, but wanted to
focus on elegant ambient computing.

~~~
robryan
As a tool for doing work though, people that spend most of there time working
on the go aren't able to really do this with an Ipad, sure the MBP is fairly
compact but to carry all the time the air definitely has a market.

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streblo
The last (and only) use I've had for the optical drive was to install the
operating system. Which makes me think that there's no use for the optical
drive at all once you'll be able to upgrade to Lion through the App store.

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sjs
I feel the exact same way, but I don't want to give up any specs. I like my
Core i7, 8gb, and 250+ GB SSD. Time will solve it but waiting can be hard when
you can see the future on the horizon.

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steverb
I seldom miss the optical drive in my netbook either, although occasionally I
feel the urge to watch a DVD. Fortunately with Netflix instant and Hulu I can
usually get my fix.

