No disc drive on the new MacBook Pro!!!

[Pinkpoison]

i love my 2011 Pro but when the time comes to update it i don't know which way i will go,Apple have taken away the disc drive leaving us with no choices,i'm really not happy about that at all......what are your thoughts on this folks?

 

[Gregoris]

i love my 2011 Pro but when the time comes to update it i don't know which way i will go,Apple have taken away the disc drive leaving us with no choices,i'm really not happy about that at all......what are your thoughts on this folks?

imo the disc drive is as dead as the floppy disc drive..

apple allows you to do everything with out the drive and anything you might need to download can be done with out a drive, in fact I cant think of any reasons why a disc would be needed unless maybe you have a tone of them with data on it you have saved but then flash drives or externals do the job much better. I would go for one with out the dvd drive

 

[Pinkpoison]

This means though that on top of spending a lot of money on your new pro you then need to buy an external drive,I'm not keen on iCloud for backing up,i know you can use memory sticks but I'm storing data on discs and it's working well,i still think it's a bad move on Apples part.

 

[Skimonkey]

This means though that on top of spending a lot of money on your new pro you then need to buy an external drive,I'm not keen on iCloud for backing up,i know you can use memory sticks but I'm storing data on discs and it's working well,i still think it's a bad move on Apples part.

I'd been thinking of a MacBook Air, Ivy...and thought originally that I would need a disc drive. I can honestly tell you I haven't used my disc drive on my laptop in about a year. So if I do need one, I will just buy a refurb external drive off of amazon if the time comes.

 

[Pinkpoison]

I'd been thinking of a MacBook Air, Ivy...and thought originally that I would need a disc drive. I can honestly tell you I haven't used my disc drive on my laptop in about a year. So if I do need one, I will just buy a refurb external drive off of amazon if the time comes.

i suppose i would adjust eventually but i like having my drive built in,it's one of the reasons i bought a Pro and not an Air,hopefully my Pro will serve me well for a few years yet.

 

[KevinJS]

I'd been thinking of a MacBook Air, Ivy...and thought originally that I would need a disc drive. I can honestly tell you I haven't used my disc drive on my laptop in about a year. So if I do need one, I will just buy a refurb external drive off of amazon if the time comes.

That's pretty much what I was thinking. I'll almost certainly buy a SuperDrive when I buy a Mac, but Carol's post made me realize that the only reason I ever throw a disk in the drive of my PC is to rip it, or very occasionally, to play it before I rip it.

Since I intend to buy 2 Macs this year, it makes sense to buy a drive. All I have to decide now is which one to get first. Air or iMac.

 

[Pinkpoison]

Since I intend to buy 2 Macs this year, it makes sense to buy a drive. All I have to decide now is which one to get first. Air or iMac.

i suppose as the Pro won't have a drive anymore i will look again at Air when the time comes,if my Pro is still working i will keep it and use the drive.

 

[willerz2]

Well if you're worried about internal storage, you can always swap it out for a new hard drive. The ones we use at work run a choice of ~500G SSDs or 1/1.5TB WD ones. If you need more space for archiving, just grab a standalone external HDD. But I agree with cloud services for long term support. We're throwing as much of our app work into the cloud and it's a pain to maintain it.... There quite a few Macbook Pro users that just ditch the optical drive and replace it with a second HDD since discs are starting to phase out. They try to make storage as simple and portable as possible but sometimes the good old DVD is more effective than cloud services and flash drives.

 

[mwhartman]

Ivy, unless you want a retina display you can still get a MBP with a disk drive. The new retina display MBP does not have a disk drive.

As already mentioned, Apple has all downloads available via the Mac App store. I believe you had a concern about band width so that may be a consideration. Since Apple no longer releases new OS on a CD, If I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion I would need to do so via the Mac App store.

My wife has a Mac Air. She loves it. I've not have any issues with updates. The Air is much faster than my MBP (2009). I have 4 Gig of ram and 250 GB HD. The SSD in the Air allows faster boot up and shut down as well as processing.

I do have a tera byte external HD that I use to back up both laptops and an old iMac.

When my MBP dies, I plan to go with an Air.

Hope this is helpful.

Mike

 

[Pinkpoison]

Ivy, unless you want a retina display you can still get a MBP with a disk drive. The new retina display MBP does not have a disk drive.

As already mentioned, Apple has all downloads available via the Mac App store. I believe you had a concern about band width so that may be a consideration. Since Apple no longer releases new OS on a CD, If I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion I would need to do so via the Mac App store.

My wife has a Mac Air. She loves it. I've not have any issues with updates. The Air is much faster than my MBP (2009). I have 4 Gig of ram and 250 GB HD. The SSD in the Air allows faster boot up and shut down as well as processing.

I do have a tera byte external HD that I use to back up both laptops and an old iMac.

When my MBP dies, I plan to go with an Air.

Hope this is helpful.

Mike

yes thank you Mike it is,thanks everyone,hopefully i won't have to decide for quite a while yet.

 

[Skimonkey]

Ivy, unless you want a retina display you can still get a MBP with a disk drive. The new retina display MBP does not have a disk drive.

As already mentioned, Apple has all downloads available via the Mac App store. I believe you had a concern about band width so that may be a consideration. Since Apple no longer releases new OS on a CD, If I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion I would need to do so via the Mac App store.

My wife has a Mac Air. She loves it. I've not have any issues with updates. The Air is much faster than my MBP (2009). I have 4 Gig of ram and 250 GB HD. The SSD in the Air allows faster boot up and shut down as well as processing.

I do have a tera byte external HD that I use to back up both laptops and an old iMac.

When my MBP dies, I plan to go with an Air.

Hope this is helpful.

Mike

That was very insightful! Sure helped me!

Thanks, Mike!

 

[Pinkpoison]

i think by the time i want to update there will be no disc drives on Apple laptops at all so i would certainly consider Air if thats the case.

 

[Skimonkey]

i think by the time i want to update there will be no disc drives on Apple laptops at all so i would certainly consider Air if thats the case.

Would it make you feel better if I told you that my laptop I currently have is from 2006? That's when I bought it so it may be older than that. It freezes a lot with less then 1GB of RAM!

 

[Pinkpoison]

Would it make you feel better if I told you that my laptop I currently have is from 2006? That's when I bought it so it may be older than that. It freezes a lot with less then 1GB of RAM!

that has stood you in good stead then,it certainly doesn't owe you a penny,it sounds like you deserve a new one

 

[Skimonkey]

that has stood you in good stead then,it certainly doesn't owe you a penny,it sounds like you deserve a new one

Both my laptop and desktop served me well when I returned back to Graduate School back then! So yes, I am thinking of the MacBook Air. I toy around with needing a full drawn desktop though, so that is what is stopping me at this point.