Lone config file in Mac OS X SIGNALS DEATH OF THE DVD
Apple may or may not ditch optical drives from expensive gear
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An avid Mac OS X 10.8 rummager reckons Apple may give the boot to optical drives - a suggestion based merely on the contents of a configuration file.
The fanboi found the .plist file in the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion. The document refers to future iMac and Mac Pro machines and includes options for booting, say, Microsoft Windows from a USB stick - presumably because a DVD drive may be absent.
The config file is part of Boot Camp, which is used to start up Intel-powered machines with non-OS X operating systems. The file lists Mac models with EFI firmware capable of booting an operating system from USB storage.
This specific .plist in Mountain Lion mentions Macs that don't exist yet but will support booting from a flash drive, as well as Apple laptops that already ship without optical drives. Apple Insider speculates that a coming sixth-generation MacBook Pro will lack an optical drive. It also mentions a 13th generation iMac.
Apple is known for getting rid of storage devices it views as old hat, like floppy disks, long before mainstream Windows PC manufacturers do. The iMac has an optical drive built-in on the side of the screen. Were Apple to ditch it, the system enclosure could become thinner and lighter.
Software, film and music distribution on CDs and DVDs is waning in favour of downloading across the Internet. The switch to Blu-Ray hasn't really energised the optical drive market and an Apple optical drive kiss-of-death could be followed by the PC manufacturers, signalling, effectively, bye bye to Blu-Ray and DVDs as far as computers are concerned. ®
COMMENTS
Useful and cheap
I still find DVD drives good for chucking a lot of stuff on when you need something easy and inexpensive.
I suppose I could use budget flash drives each time but they aren't as handy to have stacked up by the dozen on one's desk.
So for me a DVD drive is still going to matter and I would rather not have to plug in an external one.
I can see how it would make for sleeker machines but I am not too keen to strip out useful parts in the cause of slimlining.
Dupe
Thanks Chris but this very same thing was already pointed out last week, right here in an El Reg article:
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/08/10/apple_files_reference_mac_pro_imac_updates/
In comments, it was also already said that the same plist file also lists other models WITH optical drives, so the whole speculation is based on, well, nothing. Two articles about nothing is maybe a bit too much, even for El Reg standards.
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