Being CS

A Terrible Mistake

Apple is widely believed to release a new G5 powered iMac at its upcoming Paris Expo, to be held on August 31. As with many Apple products, rumoured specifications of the upcoming iMac have been all over the web for a while. When it comes to rumours there are few websites that tend to be as accurate as ThinkSecret. But according to this ThinkSecret article, the new iMac's Education priced model will not come with an optical drive:

Experts Think Secret has spoken to believe one of the reasons for the decision not to include an optical drive on the educational model is to not only keep prices down, but to fulfill a request by many schools not to include the drive. Some schools have told Apple that they have experienced increased security problems from having optical drives in their Macs. Many schools have deliberately locked down their optical drives to prevent sharing and copying of copyrighted material.

I really hope that this rumour is false, because selling a computer without any drive (Apple has not included floppy drives in its products for several years) is one of the most ridiculous ideas a company trying to build "the center of your digital hub" could do.
A computer without drive cannot be updated with a new Operating System, and makes updating software impossible for highschool students who are not blessed with a high-speed university Internet connection. It makes playing CDs impossible, and therefore requires students to by a costly stereo system if they want to play their legally bought CDs. It makes it impossible to watch DVDs, which means that students would have to purchase both a TV and DVD player instead of watching DVDs on their computer which comes with a widescreen flatscreen. It makes it impossible for students to transfer any songs from CDs to their iPods, making them more likely to buy an oldfashioned CD player. It makes it impossible to make backups, making students liable to loosing all their data in case of a harddrive failure. Finally, it makes all iApps, with the exception of iPhoto (which it severly cripples), completely useless: iDVD without DVDs, iMovie without the ability to distribute movies, iTunes without ripping or burning, GarageBand without being able to make CDs.
I would be astonished if Microsoft or any PC maker could ever come up with a better reason not to buy a Mac. Please Apple, if the ThinkSecret article is true, you must rethink this terrible mistake before it is too late. This would only make Apple look like a crony of the RIAA, and risk Apple's intitiative to retake its lead in the education market. If there is one extra feature that any modern desktop machine needs, its is an optical drive. Not including one, even in the cheapest personal computer, is a terrible idea. Many Mac users spend a lot of time convincing their peers to get Macs, this would make all their efforts completely futile.

Posted by Can Sar at August 22, 2004 06:27 AM to category Apple & Mac OS X | TrackBack