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Hmmm.... I'm not sure about the lack of an optical drive. Now if they include an external one in the box, so that I can plug it in when I'm at home or my office, then we can talk. But if I have to go buy one separately, that would be a problem. I don't use the drive all that often, but for ripping CDs, watching the occasional DVD, and, most importantly, installing software(!) I really need that drive sometimes.

Yeah, but it won't be a zune

Wait a minute, doesn't Apple already make a 13-inch notebook??

Oh yeah this is definetly true. since Apple always announces their products with very good details well before release!

The crystal ball says:

A portable Mac, that's light and thin as possible:

- External Optical Drive option (at additional cost).
- Solid State hard drive.
- Built in Camera.
- Touch Sensitive Screen, flip screen that turns into tablet PC. Similar navigation UI as iPhone but without the phone functionality.
- Hideaway, folding ports.

Not having an internal optical drive is no big deal. Those that are worried are probably thinking of a device very similar in form and function to existing laptops. But, as with the difference between a normal cell phone and the iPhone, this new rumored device will perhaps be used in a way not seen before. It won't need an optical drive.

So we'll have to wait and see. At least it's fun listening to people whine about the product already, even though it hasn't even been proven real or shown to anyone outside of Apple's close circle.

Hey apple pals,

I believe SJ is telling us time is ripe for his next vision: spinning discs are about to die. The future of media is via network transfer to your home base (be it purchases or rentals, as is being hinted in iTunes right now). RIP - CD/DVDs.

applejuice

One more reason to slap Leopard on to my 12-inch Powerbook.

"I don't use the drive all that often, but for ripping CDs, watching the occasional DVD, and, most importantly, installing software(!) I really need that drive sometimes."

Other than software installs, that other stuff is desktop activity. If this product is for real, it is for people on the go that value size and weight over maximum hardware features. It's not for me, but there will be a lot of people for which this product would hit the sweet spot.

Nice, but what anyone who uses a Mac in an office could tell you is REALLY needed is a mid-range tower for about $1K. Not hard at all for Apple to do, and any cannibalization of the iMac would be small relative to the total increase in sales. With Leopard, and especially Leopard Server, Apple seems to be making a push into small business and corporate environments. For those environments, this is the gaping hole in the Mac line-up.
P.S. Love my MacBook Pro!

Applejuice, I agree, and didn't SJ say as much with the new iMovie? It's all about sharing video online.

Aside from a very few movies I'd want to own, I'd just as soon rent from iTunes (720p HD, please!) And if I can buy from iTunes as well as rent, then why do I need a DVD drive? Almost all the software I buy these days is just downloaded, and usually a few bucks cheaper than having a CD shipped. There are some issues to be addressed, like restoring a crashed system, but I bet those can be overcome with a generous application of ingenuity.

Optical drives will die a slow death, just like floppies. Optical may still be used in some specialist markets, but heck, even movie studios are starting to distribute movies digitally to theatres, by net and by mailing out big fat hard drives with the movie on it. All we're waiting for is good saturation of high-bandwidth access, and your average consumer will have even less need for an optical drive.

Optical media is already dead.

That's why there will not be any Blu-Ray or HD-DVD drives on any Mac Pro. The HD format war is over before a winner has been declared.

Optical media is SO 1990's.

Think Different.

I have an inside source at apple mark my words, they are definitely working on this.

@MZ

As crazy as it sounds, I actually agree with you. Apple was first to kill the floppy, and now they may be first to kill optical media.

Jobs really downplayed iDVD by saying "if anyone STILL wants to burn a dvd...."

Furthermore, with iTunes store, iPods, iPhones, and other portable devices all in sync, who really needs removeable media anyomre?

"Other than software installs, that other stuff is desktop activity. If this product is for real, it is for people on the go that value size and weight over maximum hardware features. It's not for me, but there will be a lot of people for which this product would hit the sweet spot."

I don't know- plenty of folks use their laptops to watch DVD's while on a train or plane. If I'm at home, I'll watch a DVD on a big screen TV versus a laptop display any time, but on the go, a laptop display is better than a portable DVD player. Also, lots of people use laptops as their primary (if not only) machines these days, so some sort of optical drive is almost mandatory. Not necessarily built-in, mind you. And don't forget, there are plenty of games that still (!!) require the media be present in order to run. Kind of stupid, but they exist. And while a subnotebook wouldn't be ideal for many games, I'm sure plenty of travelers would enjoy having the ability to play a game once and a while, especially when crammed into a plane.

"RUMOR: Ultra-thin, ultra-light Apple Mac subnotebook coming in January"

Wasn't this supposed to happen last Tuesday?

And Tues, Oct 9?
And Tues, Sept. 4?
And Tues, Aug. 7?
And a dozen other times this year after the iPhone hype died down a bit?

"The 13-inch portable... will mark the Cupertino-based Mac maker's re-entry into the sub-notebook market --"

LOL.
Apple already has a 13-inch portable:
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?nnmm=browse&mco=7B723640&node=home/shop_mac/family/macbook

How about a 12 incher???

For everyone whining about the missing optical drive:

That's why you have networks! Or better yet, that Mac exclusive, Target Disk Mode! Transfer the data to and from the lightweight computer to your heavyweight desktop computer.

Sheesh!

Optical drives will soon be dead.

Or at worst you can have a portable one around the home or office to share for the odd occasion it's necessary...

This MacBook sounds like the sweetest thing...

"Furthermore, with iTunes store, iPods, iPhones, and other portable devices all in sync, who really needs removeable media anyomre?"

Anyone who wants to backup their data, store it offsite, but still maintain control of it, for one. Of course, flash drives count as removable media for this. Time Machine in Leopard is great, but if your house burns down, you're still screwed. If you keep off site backups, you may not be. Removable media of some sort is less expensive than using an online backup service, at leats if you look at the long term.

Anyone who wants to send large files, or large amounts of files, to a remote user is another market. Email is far from ideal for this, and not everyone has a fat pipe to the internet. Just look at just about any rural area in the US. I believe the stats are something like 20% of the U.S. population lives in what's considered rural areas, and the telcos and cable companies are notorious for basically not serving these locations well, if at all.

Then there are the old-timer's who don't want to watch home videos on their computer screens- they'd prefer a DVD player connected to their TV in their living room, instead of the computer in their den or office.

And let's not forget software publishers. Last time I checked, Apple didn't offer a download version of Leopard, or any of their software for that matter, other than QuickTime.

Sounds perfect to me. I'd love to switch to a Desktop power machine at home and a super slim, ultra portable, no Optical, long battery life, flash based Sub-notebook, Multi-Touch tablet for travel.

Manufacturers of Windows sub-notebooks and Tablet PCs have been shipping them without optical drives for a long period of time. I'm talking years. This is only new in the Apple world.

"- Touch Sensitive Screen, flip screen that turns into tablet PC"

Wont see it. People are already doing it and it looks and behaves clunky. Steve will not rehash a design that's tired and akward like that. If we get touch capability it will most likley be in the form of a giant iPhone-like mac.

that we learn nothing from history.

Remember all the crying when floppy drives went away? How many of you want one of those too?

How interesting is it that my MDN Magic Word is

PROGRESS

Actually it'll be 6-1/2 inches with a zero-edge screen that opens up to another 6-1/2 inch screen, giving you 13-inches of joy on both sides. Or a multi-touch virtual keyboard on one half if you wish to do some typing. Thus [the M/W] fulfilling Stevie's teasing remark: "Oh, there's some great things we're working on...."

If they pull this off the stock's gonna zoom.

Do any of you think the Macbook Pro will be updated at Macworld Expo as well???

Anyone who wants to backup their data, store it offsite, but still maintain control of it, for one. Of course, flash drives count as removable media for this. Time Machine in Leopard is great, but if your house burns down, you're still screwed. If you keep off site backups, you may not be. Removable media of some sort is less expensive than using an online backup service, at leats if you look at the long term.

Anyone who wants to send large files, or large amounts of files, to a remote user is another market. Email is far from ideal for this, and not everyone has a fat pipe to the internet. Just look at just about any rural area in the US. I believe the stats are something like 20% of the U.S. population lives in what's considered rural areas, and the telcos and cable companies are notorious for basically not serving these locations well, if at all.

Then there are the old-timer's who don't want to watch home videos on their computer screens- they'd prefer a DVD player connected to their TV in their living room, instead of the computer in their den or office.

And let's not forget software publishers. Last time I checked, Apple didn't offer a download version of Leopard, or any of their software for that matter, other than QuickTime.

_________________________


I understand these are reasons people currently use and may think they need optical media.. However, there are already ways to solve all of these problems.. Some people will be forced to change their ways. It's natural progression.

I firmly believe optical media is on it's way out. I also believe Apple will be among the first to remove these drives from it's products.

As Jobs said "Apple Tv is the DVD player for the 21st century."

Nice if it's got oomph and fits on a seat-back table-ette.

Don't mind losing the optical so long as there's a good and cheap plug-in available.

Solid state memory nice but only if it's comparable in size with the HDs aboard today's laptops.

I think the end of the optical drive is near. I hardly ever use mine, and when I do, it's out of shear laziness or boredom.

I say this whole HD DVD / Blue Ray disc debate is a waste of time too... I choose neither. Apple TV, fast internet connections, better compression, and a well engineered peer to peer structure can eliminate the need for optical drives on the consumer end. In the professional sector, better use of FTP and the like should come into play.

I can't fathom using Fed Ex to send a CD somewhere ever again. It's even environmentally sound to use the internet for data transfers.

How about Greenpeace writing about Apple pushing to eliminate the manufacture of optical disks, and the shipping that goes along with it.

If anyone is known for setting the tone for what's coming next, it's Apple. Remember the elimination of serial ports and floppy drive on the iMac? Here we go again...

USB Optical drives are available already. Don't need a built-in optical drive. I rather have a second hard drive, which I can use with Time Machine (I can partition one disk, but then if the disk drive fails, Time Machine cannot help me).

I was holding back on getting the little ASUS eee pc in case the new Mac was truly light and handy, but this 13 incher is no smaller than current Mac stuff, really.

EEE here we come.

I rarely use my optical drive, but I think I'd only need it on my desktop machine. A subnotebook could do without.

13" wide screen with a correspondingly shallow keyboard/palmrest area would be a smaller form factor than the MacBook (especially with the narrower screen bezel typical of Apples pro laptops) and different but not necessarily larger than the 12" PowerBook and Comet models were.

Ditching the optical drive would be a bold move, but going with a hybrid HD system (32GB NAND with the OS on it for boot and system speed paired with a 160GB iPod-style HD for capacity) would be the real attention-getter.

"anyone who uses a Mac in an office could tell you is REALLY needed is a mid-range tower for about $1K."

YES! This is so true!!!

One more thing...

If they aren't going to go with the iPhone touch screen it would be nice to see similar functionality incorporated into a larger trackpad. If they can't get that to work well why not a built in clickwheel-style interface for FrontRow functionality without having to bring the remote along?

although more expensive (compared to DVD) it would be nice to have a USB thumb drive install OS X. They can't make the system depend on having another system to install the OS or to install anything else, that will not do. It will most likely ship with or be an option ( bus powered optical drive ). Touch screen? Maybe the long rumored tablet Mac... all just rumor but fun to think about it.

Screw the sub-notebook, where is the new Mac Pro?

In the short term, it would be great if Apple offered a single slim peripheral that included an Superdrive and additional storage (hard drive or Flash drive) - the latter for Time Machine.

Hard drives, DVDs, CDs etc all connecting via the new Airport Extreme-2. No main computer required.

We haven't seen wireless this good.

Serving media on it's own - thx to miniaturizing osx once again.

499.99 broadcast base.

120.99 connecting reciever to free each device you desire to connect remotely.

Time Machine looking better out of the box.

This is exactly what I'm looking for to change my old (but light, thin and really portable 12" -no optical drive- Compaq Evo N410C). So, great news!.

regarding this rumor: i'm thinking of something like the Newton but a bit larger and more like the touch but expanded, like a Newton2.

regarding the removal of optical devices: how else will apple distribute 10.6? leopard is already a dual-layer dvd. that kind of size does not download well over the internet unless you're using something like bittorrent and have lots of seeds. and even then it will take a while and how will apple control distribution? apple genuine validation anyone? internet registration?

people talk about appletv. i don't have one. does it do 1920x1200 hi-def?

people talk about youtube. the quality of youtube cannot compare with a brdvd on hdtv.

if apple is serious about killing its advancements into film editing and production (final cut studio) then they'll continue not putting blue-ray in their equipment. sure, the big studios have other methods of distributing the mastered brdvd image but most of us must burn our discs. and many people are waiting for br disks to drop in price -- they'd really help with backing up stuff, regardless of how well time machine does.

i don't see the mass removal of optical as happening soon. for smaller devices like the Newton2, it makes perfect sense, just like you wouldn't expect to be able to put a dvd in your ipod touch.