Going on the increased popularity of the App Store and the want for increasingly smaller devices it’s almost a certainty that your next MacBook Pro will not have an optical CD drive. This will be a hard thing to accept from some of you close minded Microsoft boys, but you don’t need one anymore either!
The need for a CD installation of a program for example simply isn’t there, it’s messy, easy to lose/damage and extremely unstandardised. For each different program you want to install there’s an impossible amount of combinations of passkeys, installations, downloads etc that makes the whole process of downloading a new program a lot more stressful. What’s the answer to this? The app store of course! Whether your downloading a 69p game or the £400 logic music software all you do is go on the AppStore, click install and the rest is done for you.
Apple are adamant to make this way of downloading program’s the future, and with the huge resounding success of the AppStore in iPhone, iPad and Mac its time for them to take the next step and make all devices App Store only. I mean when have you ever found yourself wanting to put a CD into your iPad?
Apple are already committing to this, we posted last year how two of their biggest grossing software products Logic Pro & Mainstage are already made download only and there are no hard copy disks to buy anymore.
Next we have the issue of size, yesterday we broke the news that Apple are planning their new MacBook pro range to be significantly thinner, and the thickest thing in a laptop is the optical drive. Removal of this drive (as we found out with the MacBook Air) can enable them to produce a significantly thinner device.
Finally we have the fact it’s so much more environmentally friendly. When buying a software CD they insist on giving you a huge box to contain not much more than one disk and an unnecessarily long manual in 12 different languages. With the introduction of the App Store and download only all of this wasted material will be stopped.
So yes it’s extremely likely that your next MacBook will not have an optical drive, and if you read over the reasons above hopefully you’ll agree that there really is no need anymore. Apple knows it’s the future and so are getting away with disks already. The guys that are stuck in the past at Microsoft will no doubt continue to produce optical drive PC’s, until they jump on the bandwagon (just like they have with the app store) in about 5 years and get rid of them as well.
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Howard Richards is a London based Psychology student and technology blogger who specializes in the world of Apple. He sources and writes about the latest rumours and leaked pictures to come out on future Apple products. He is a keen twitter user so follow him to find out more!
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