How Come No One Noticed There Was No Mention of DVD in the New MacBook?
So when we got the news from Cleve and his source about the new laptops, the first thing we asked ourselves was how is Apple going to squeeze all of the laptop internals into such a thin Package? Battery optimization?
Context & Ripple Effects
The ultrathin-MacBook thread goes back at least to December 2006, when Infinite Loop picked up rumors of an ultrathin MacBook Pro and the obvious engineering problem was where the internals would go. This week 9 to 5 Mac's source Cleve revived that thread with a more specific detail: the new laptop's spec reportedly makes no mention of a DVD drive at all.
First-order effects
- If the omission holds, buyers of the next MacBook lose built-in disc reading and burning, and Apple gains the internal volume it needs to hit the unusually thin package its source describes.
Second-order effects
- External optical drive makers gain a bolt-on accessory market on Apple laptops, and a disc-less MacBook pushes movie and music purchases toward iTunes — at a moment when Steve Jobs is already clashing repeatedly with Hollywood studios and the labels, and when Apple is reportedly weighing iTunes price increases.
Third-order effects
- If Apple treats the optical drive as optional rather than essential, the baseline definition of what a laptop must include starts to erode for the whole industry, accelerating the shift of media distribution from discs to downloads.
The trend: Laptops are shedding built-in optical drives as thinness becomes the defining spec, pulling media consumption toward download stores like iTunes.