Apple's product line is trending back to the bad old days. Next: Retina Display Printers!

Finally new iMac. 27" not available until December Really thin the damn thing. 4 USB3 ports, but no optic drive. Why including it if they can charge you for a superdrive >D

Who still uses that frequently? At work we do (but we have a separate superdrive) but at home..I hardly ever used mine in the MBP. I actually replaced the optical drive in it about a week ago for the normal HDD and where the HDD was at I put an SSD. Good bang for the buck

Love the glare-reduction in the new screens though! That was what I was (among other things) waiting for. With Photoshop the glare really sucks. So, I have until December to save up some cash

i will not miss the ipod connectors one bit.

they were not that bad when the connector had some meat on it, but then they shortened it and it was awful.

almost as bad as the deer park water bottle caps. *&$#@#*!

Probably update my iPad2 to the 4 after the holidays. Absolutely no interest in the iPad mini. Probably upgrade the 11" MBA in the summer. May go 13" rMBP, need to check it out in person first to see if the weight is acceptable.

Well, I'm pretty upset with Apple about the new iMac, because I do use an optical drive a lot to I rip all my new CDs into lossless and rip my DVD movies into iTunes. Maybe it's good to omit stuff to lighten up a portable, although it's been a pain in the ass with my retina MBP. But I see ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT from a thinner iMac with no optical when it still uses up the same amount of desk space as before. I want to write to Tim Cook with HEY APPLE, IT'S A FREAKING DESKTOP COMPUTER, WTF?

I've been dying to upgrade my 2006 iMac since January, but we held out for an update due in May, and waited and waited, and now I wish I'd had spent the last 9 months using a better Mac. But at this point I'm not buying an 18 month old iMac design, so Apple has me by the balls. Fricking stupid SuperDrive hanging off the back and all. Bastards.

I was hoping it would help, but ranting about it doesn't make me feel any better.

you'll buy it, and you'll velcro the superdrive to the back

That's funny because I just said that to my wife a minute ago.

Or you could just by the refurb MBP on NewEgg right now and network the two together. Or just use it for ripping.

Well, I'm pretty upset with Apple about the new iMac, because I do use an optical drive a lot to I rip all my new CDs into lossless and rip my DVD movies into iTunes. Maybe it's good to omit stuff to lighten up a portable, although it's been a pain in the ass with my retina MBP. But I see ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT from a thinner iMac with no optical when it still uses up the same amount of desk space as before. I want to write to Tim Cook with HEY APPLE, IT'S A FREAKING DESKTOP COMPUTER, WTF?

I've been dying to upgrade my 2006 iMac since January, but we held out for an update due in May, and waited and waited, and now I wish I'd had spent the last 9 months using a better Mac. But at this point I'm not buying an 18 month old iMac design, so Apple has me by the balls. Fricking stupid SuperDrive hanging off the back and all. Bastards.

I was hoping it would help, but ranting about it doesn't make me feel any better.

Thunderbolt display and a Mac Mini and a BackPack shelf?

http://www.twelvesouth.com/products/backpack/

Edited October 24, 201213 yr by Hopstretch

Well, I'm pretty upset with Apple ...

"And for those who are still are stuck in the past, yes, you can get an optical drive; we offer a great [$79] SuperDrive that plugs into USB."

Stuck in the past, indeed – he's referring to a past in which you could easily install software from a third-party CD or DVD rather than from Apple's online Mac Store, or watch DVD-based movies rather than ones downloaded from the iTunes Store.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/23/new_imac_line/

i need the CD drive to rip the free CDs from RMAF

Were you also pissed when they stopped putting floppy drives in systems?

I buy between 70-100 cd's per year and use my 2009 iMac to transfer them into the iTunes library. Although it will take more desktop space an external optical would work fine or as stated I could just get a refurbished iMac and save money.

Were you also pissed when they stopped putting floppy drives in systems?

"Perfect sound forever", motherfuckers!

for heavy duty ripping duty, I'd use an external drive anyway, the drives they put in the imac/macbook wear out, and are kinda slow. Get a usb3 external bluray drive and rip away.

for heavy duty ripping duty, I'd use an external drive anyway, the drives they put in the imac/macbook wear out, and are kinda slow. Get a usb3 external bluray drive and rip away.

That's a pretty lame excuse. The stuff they would have put in there is shit, so buy something else. I get not having an optical drive in a laptop that you're trying to make as portable as possible but to not even have the option of an internal drive in a desktop computer is at least odd. I don't dispute that we're probably 3 to 5 years away from abandoning most forms of physical media but we're not there yet.

With fast I/O ports, external optical drives (and storage) seems like the smarter way to go. But maybe I'm just an Apple apologist.

I want apple to keep pushing the boundaries of their casework, and I find it silly for the process to be held back by something like a disc drive.

I do use mine, but if you are in the disc market you can afford an external.

Other than ripping cds and dvds, I haven't used an optical drive in years. And given that most people buy their music online and don't rip their movies, I don't see it's really that out of the question that they don't do optical drives anymore. You could have made the same argument about the need for floppies when apple abandoned them, too.

And it's not just apple's optical drives that are crap. Any laptop drive (which is the form factor for a device like the imac) isn't going to stand up to heavy duty ripping duties.

I'm on the fence now about my planned Kindle Paperwhite purchase. Currently I have a 2nd gen Kindle that I use. A lot. But obviously night reading is a pain, and keeping both the Kindle and book light charged is hit or miss. Plus, the book light throws a ton of light elsewhere, which can bother the wife. Plus, one always seems to need a charge when the other is charged up. The iPad Mini wouldn't be as ideal for a reading device (I strongly prefer eInk to LCD), but it is far more capable for the relatively small difference in price (3G Kindle Paperwhite vs. 16 GB WiFi iPad Mini). And I'd still have the Kindle for most reading situations... Hmmmmm...

Same situation here. My 2nd gen Kindle never got used as much as a should because of the lack of an acceptable night lighting solution. Trouble is though an eInk fan too, also a Longform/Longreads addict, so jumping between devices.

Same situation here. My 2nd gen Kindle never got used as much as a should because of the lack of an acceptable night lighting solution. Trouble is though an eInk fan too, also a Longform/Longreads addict, so jumping between devices.

Paperwhite looks like a nice device, but even the mostly positive review at Ars Technica gave me pause—uneven lighting would annoy the shit out of me. From the review:

I might wait for the next iteration, but then again I'm particularly sensitive to (and annoyed by) such things...

As uneven lighting as that last line and single edge is, it's probably optically more uniform than any other current nighttime solution (including a real book and bedside lamp/book clip light), no? Well, maybe not LCDs burned into your eyes, but that creates its own optical effects.

My Nook Glow has a similar issue but it doesn't bother me at all.

The Nook makes night reading a real pleasure and cuts way down on glare & eye strain vs other backlit displays.

The Paperwhite has some nice features that I wish my Nook had but the lack of a microSD slot on the Kindle is a dealbreaker for me (if I didn't already have a Nook).

I like to load them books on!

Were you also pissed when they stopped putting floppy drives in systems?

I wasn't pissed when they dropped floppy drives, because I had already been using CD-R and for a while and it was a logical move. But right now, with music CDs and DVD video's still being sold in high numbers, it seems to be the wrong move to drop built-in optical drives in a large desktop computer just to make it thinner without reducing footprint.

Heck, the MacMini footprint got bigger when they dropped optical drives. I can maybe understand it if they were able to reduce the footprint on the desk with this move. I just think they need a better reason to drop the optical drive than to give the iMac a 5mm edge, or to make the Mac Mini 1/2" less tall (while making it wider).

I don't buy much music online, unless it's lossless. Most of my music comes from CD's I buy from Amazon.com. I use the iMac as a music server, with an external 3TB drive holding everything I rip. We do buy fewer DVD's these days, but I still have hundreds of DVD to finish ripping into iTunes with Handbrake.