Macbook pro retina display usb superdrive blu ray moves

#Macbook pro retina display usb superdrive blu ray moves software#
#Macbook pro retina display usb superdrive blu ray moves mac#

Will we miss SuperDrives once they're gone for good? It didn't take us too long to adapt to life without floppy drives. Without getting any sort of refresh, the $1,199 MacBook Pro is relegated to legacy model status and won't be long for this world. And I bet that won't be around for too long.

#Macbook pro retina display usb superdrive blu ray moves mac#

Now it's down to one last Mac with an optical drive: the entry-level MacBook Pro. Design plays into every decision that Apple makes, too, so excising the drive makes it possible for them to build slimmer and smaller devices as well. But Apple's decided the optical drive is just no longer mandatory equipment. That's not to say there's no need for optical storage anymore, and that's why Apple continues to offer an external USB-based SuperDrive (the Mac works with any number of cheap commodity CD/DVD burners available from online retailers, too). With hundreds of GB to back up, you're better off using an external hard drive. Even as a backup and archival medium, optical drives are coming up short.

#Macbook pro retina display usb superdrive blu ray moves software#

Fewer of us buy software on disc, we download it from the Mac App Store and other services. And the world has definitely moved in that direction - fewer of us rent DVD movies, we stream them from Netflix or rent them from iTunes and other services. When the old 'cheese grater'-style aluminum Mac Pro got discontinued earlier this year, that left two machines in Apple's product line with internal optical drives: both 'standard' MacBook Pros.ДЄpple envisions its customers as less and less dependent on optical media thanks to the increasing availability of fast Internet connections.

Then in 2012 Apple introduced MacBook Pros with Retina Displays and iMacs, all of which got rid of the drives. The diminutive MacBook Air was too slender to accommodate an internal optical drive, and for a few years, anyway, it would remain an anachronism - the one Mac that didn't have any internal optical storage.ДЇast-forward to 2011 and the Mac mini, which was refreshed mid-year and was the first Mac mini model (outside of Apple's server model) to lose the optical drive. SuperDrives remained a mainstay of the Mac product line until last year, but the first cracks in the armor appeared in 2008, when Apple introduced the first MacBook Air.

Floppy disks had been standard issue on computers for years - a common delivery medium for software installers and an indispensible tool for 'sneakernet' - the colloquial term used to describe physically moving files from one computer to another by copying them to a floppy.Д«ut Apple doubled down, pulling floppy drives from all of its machines, eventually replacing them with 'SuperDrives' - optical drives capable of reading and writing CD and DVD media. At the time, naysayers in the industry thought that Apple had jumped the gun. When Apple introduced the iMac in 1998, it shocked many for its absence of a floppy disk - indeed, the first Mac not to have a floppy disk drive as standard equipment, ever. It's a legacy product, as well - untouched since it was last refreshed in 2012. In the process, the company quietly put to bed the last remaining Mac computers that include an internal 'SuperDrive.'ДЇor now, the 'standard' $1,199 13-inch MacBook Pro - with SuperDrive - remains available to order through the Apple Store, but no mention of it is apparent on Apple's product web site (except for an unobtrusive link that I missed until it was pointed out to me). At Tuesday's iPad and Mac Event, Apple refreshed the MacBook Pro with Retina Display with Intel's fourth-generation 'Haswell' Core processors and other enhancements.