Why does Apple need a BluRay SuperDrive?
On the recent, certain demise of HD-DVD as a video protocol, TUAW blogger Mike Schramm ponders the future of Apple products and Blu-Ray, wondering whether Blu-Ray gear will hit the Apple lineup soon. In pondering these thoughts, it immediately became evident that, as Schramm himself notes, the MacBook Air is without a drive, and if my speculation is correct (the Air is actually a precursor for the whole MacBook line), then we may not see embedded Blu-Ray drives in future MacBooks anytime soon.
Portable computers are inevitably moving towards solid-state hard drives, as eventually all computers will down the road. Similarly, it makes sense to de-complicate a portable machine by removing unnecessary moving parts, especially when their use is downplayed by an ever-increasing wireless world. With more and more products using the airwaves for communication, and as broadband becomes more ubiquitous, it makes less and less sense to bother with physical media. While there is undoubtedly a purpose for physical media in the realm of physical movie purchases and large software packages, most all homegrown data can easily be transfered via the internet, a local intranet, or those failing, small USB data drives.
It even makes sense for Apple to cut the optical drive out of the equation, so as to focus sales of multimedia on the iTunes store, and away from brick and mortar locations that sell physical media. To support a variety of customers, Apple will undoubtedly still sell external drives, be it conventional SuperDrives or Blu-Ray equivalents. Nonetheless, for both Apple and ultra-portable consumers, it just doesn’t make sense to keep unnecessary bulk attached to one’s computer when this weight can easily be shed into a laptop bag or nearby home office or hotel room.
We may still be a generation of MacBook replacements away, but it seems like a pretty sensical thing to move away from optical drives, and who better to do it than the computer company who first believed that floppy drives were obsolete as well?
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