Apple may be focused on reinventing the phone with the iPhone, but that doesn’t mean that it has forgot about it’s notebooks. Recent Apple’s patent filings show that they put their R&D types on one insurmountable problem that limits the possibilities of ultraportable laptops to get thinner and smaller. And that problem is – ” Where to put the Optical Disc Drive? “
Apple thinks that it has found a much better place to put the Optical Disc Drive: at the bottom of the MacBook:
Think about it. How often do you really need the optical disc access? And when inserting or taking out the disc you stop other things you are doing on your Mac Book anyway. So is it really that much more trouble to close the lid, turn over your notebook and then insert the disc?
Great idea…so long as there are no cables attached. Under the keyboard would have been better. Maybe.
Great, something else to overheat on the macs.
I can’t believe that even apple would do something this stupid!!
Nice coherent analysis, Mike.
Umm … I personally really don’t like turning over my computer while its still running – there’s the risk of dropping it (in this case, dropping it on its screen … cringe). There’s also the hard drive running which you want to be careful with. There’s likely a good reason that someone hasn’t done this before
5 there’s the risk of dropping it
True, but they also play-up the “sudden-motion sensors” they incorporate [IBM introduced??].
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/design.html
MacBook Pro helps protect your data if it detects a fall, by parking the hard drive head during fast changes in orientation.
Games are written which have you tilt the entire laptop, to control on-screen events – using the motion-sensors as input devices….
http://wxs.ca/tilt-mania/
Shouldn’t we be moving away from optical discs in portable devices? With thumb drives approaching DVD capacities, are they really necessary anymore? And with increasing hard drive storage capacities, most things can be transferred via Bluetooth, Ethernet, or WiFi. I don’t see their future usefulness for Apple to go through this much trouble.
I agree with #1. Under the keyboard is the best place for these drives. This design would be an annoyance if you like listening to CDs.
Haven’t an opinion one way or another; but — “someone hasn’t done this before”? If they had, Apple wouldn’t be granted as elemental a patent.
I’m with #7. USB solid state storage is much more convenient than CDs and it matches the CD in capacity. Does it match DVD storage yet?
I guess some people watch their Netflix discs on laptops, though my wife paid about $60 to get a very light, portable DVD player she prefers for that when traveling. Anyhow, I can’t see flipping a laptop over to insert a CD or DVD as an improvement.
#10 – Your wife paid $60 for something that only a few years ago cost hundreds of dollars and wasn’t half as good.
While not really on topic, its just amazing to me how cheap some of these things are. A few years back I wouldn’t have bought a portable DVD player no matter how much disposable income I had. Today, it’s almost an impulse buy that makes sense if you have a need for such a device.
I bet this is another excuse for Apple to force users to buy newer software just because the Optical drive is in another place.
I think this more clumsy engineering from Apple. I access the optical drive frequently and this would be a deal killer for me. It doesnt surprise me though, as someone who has to repair this crap, just as they put the hard drive in the most inaccessible place in the laptop, taking 1-2 hours to replace. I havent seen a PC laptop in years that I wasnt able to pull the hard drive in 20 seconds. What part of the computer is most likely to fail? The hard drive.
Everyone thinks it going to be on the bottom just because it drawn that way. The patent Drawing just has to be -kinda like- -not exactly like- the real thing.
I bet it’s going to be on the back of the LCD.
They are just showing it on the bottom, but it’s really just going to be on the outside.
I was thinking along the same lines as RoeBoeDog. Put the optical drive on the lid. I use my laptop as my primary machine, and flipping it up to change discs would be a pain in the rear. On the other hand, I close the top quite often and it would probably be more convenient than a side-opening drive. With a little practice, swapping discs could be done with no closing at all by reaching around the back of the screen.
With the unit closed, and plugged into a flat-panel TV via an HDMI cable and using a remote control, it would be pretty darned close to being a stand-alone PVR/HTPC. Hmmm.
I think that is VERY clumsy engineering. Try turning the thing upside down while working on an airline tray table.
If they are that obsessed with thinness (and I am not sure why they should be – weight is a more salient factor with a laptop), they should just dump the internal optical drive and make it a USB add-on, like they did with floppies.
Under either scenario, it is another good reason to just rip the DVD to your HD …
My first impression is that when you’re inserting a disk, 100% of the time you’re using the keyboard and screen.
But I won’t totally dismiss it. This is what prototypes and focus groups are for.
Sometimes counter-intuitive stuff works — but it has to be thoroughly tested and tried is this where so many companies fail.
How many times have you bought some product like a coffee maker or a potato peeler that was absolute garbage right-out-of-the-box and you wondered if the designer ever tested the design, even once?
I just love geeks who never worked in sales or marketing. Folks, 16, 13 — the reality is that laptop users don’t use the optical drive especially often. They load their fave CD’s onto the HD for traveling — and most brains aren’t going to survive more than one movie on an airplane unless you’re flying to Singapore.
At home, I’m hooked into my wireless network for music, anyway — picking up tunes from a NAS standalone.
From what I read around the industry, my situation is a lot closer to average — which is what sales and marketing folks at Apple will push.
As far and sales and marketing go, they are probably demanding this.
18 may be right — most pople may not use their optical very often.
But what always amazed me was how much an external optical drive is a complete non-starter for most customers. Customers across the spectrum — retail, corporate, SMB, education, etc. — consider an internal optical drive to be absolutely essential.
It doesn’t matter that they only use it once a month, and it would be just as easy to have an external drive sitting in the drawer most of the time.
When designing a product, it’s important to consider what a person will use; it’s more improtant to consider what features will get them to buy it. If customer wont’ buy a machine without an optical, you have to put it in. And most people won’t buy without the internal optical.
It’s like the hot tub in my 80+ unit apratment building. It gets used, maybe, a couple times a week. But the reason they have it is it makes it easier to sell an apt to a new tenant and charge higher rent than the building next door. People will choose the building because of the hot tub, even if they never use it.
People don’t buy because they need something. People buy because they want something.
Lets have all drives in a separate box accessed by bluetooth. Keep it in the case only unpack the keyboard/screen.
Downside two boxes and patteries Upside very lightweight laptop.
18. “I just love geeks who never worked in sales or marketing. Folks, 16, 13 — the reality is that laptop users don’t use the optical drive especially often.”
my point is not only that it IS awkward, but also that it LOOKS awkward. Not exactly consistent with Apple’s image.
And as #19 notes, you know how it is with capabilities – you want it there, even if you are not going to use it. That’s why people who only browse the web and check e-mail still buy powerful PCs. A lot of the people looking at that are not going to think, “Well, I hardly ever swap disks.” They are going to think, “God, that’s awkward. How am I supposed to do that with the laptop on a tray table or perched on my knees?”
Putting it under the keyboard sounds like a much better idea. I wonder if the problem with that is that they would have to shield the motherboard while the keyboard is open, and that could create cooling problems.