Computerworld’s Seth Weintraub thinks optical drives are going the way of the Dodo bird. He predicts the MacBook Air and white MacBook will get Secure Digital (SD) slots with their next updates (will the WhiteBook get another update?), and that SD may replace built-in DVD drives entirely on the next generation of MacBooks. Why Otherwise Explain SD Bootability? Why otherwise, Weintraub reasons, would Apple bother going to the trouble of explaining how to configure a bootable SD card, which it recently did in a Knowledge Base article . He deduces that the SD card is now a key element in Apple’s MacBook strategy, destined to replace optical drives on most Apple laptops going forward, which would logically mean system install/software restore data along with application software eventually being shipped on SD rather than optical media. Those who really need DVD access would still be able to buy external USB Superdrives, like the one available for the optical drive-less MacBook Air. This concept makes good sense to me, a nascent SD card fan. I mean, as Weintraub challenges, which would you rather have on your laptop — an easily rewritable, silent, 32GB SD card the size of a postage stamp that can hold about the same amount of data as eight DVDs, or a big, heavy, noisy, vibrating, power-sucking spinning disk with media that scratches easily, and which gobbles up about one-quarter of your computer’s internal volume? “Optical is Over” “It is a no-brainer,” declaims Weintraub, “optical is over.” I think he may be onto something here. Indeed, I’ve always thought CD and DVD ROM optical storage were second- or third-rate technology. They’re agonizingly slow. I absolutely revile having to boot from a DVD or CD and go to great pains to avoid it
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Are Optical Drives Going the Way of the Floppy?
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