The venerable Mac mini received a significant upgrade last month with latest-gen Intel Core CPUs and Thunderbolt connectivity. But one feature wasn't upgraded.
Among Apple's numerous launches the week before last -- including
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, a revamped
MacBook Air range plus the new 27-inch Thunderbolt Display -- you could be forgiven for missing one little (ahem) product announcement: the updated Mac mini.
The venerable Mac mini desktop, arguably the humblest product in the company's lineup, received a significant upgrade last month, joining the Sandy Bridge league with the inclusion of Intel's latest-generation processors, plus Thunderbolt, Lion and optional AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics -- and all from a pocket-friendly $699 starting point.
But perhaps the most significant factoid about the new Mac mini spec isn't what's been included but rather what's been
excluded. For the first time since Apple introduced its small form factor range in 2005, the mini ships
without an optical (CD/DVD) drive.
Apple's new Mac mini: there used to be a slot along that front edge...
Leaving off an optical drive is not uncommon in the portables realm, with netbooks (always) and thin-and-lights (frequently) forgoing the feature for reasons of space (and weight). But in desktops, where size and weight are not generally at a premium, cutting the DVD drive out is a bold, design-focused omission. We haven't seen this before in a mainstream consumer desktop PC*, and it's fair to say the APC office is a little divided on the topic.
(* Nettops of course are an exception to this, but in fairness, nettops aren't/weren't about delivering a full-blown, compromise-free desktop experience to the user; the new Mac mini, with its latest-gen Intel Core CPUs and 2011-era specs, is.)
Which is not to say that it's a surprise, either: optical disc use is on the wane; USB storage is cheaper and more capacious than ever; external hard drives have plummeted in price in recent years, while internal drive volumes have expanded; SSDs are
almost becoming affordable year on year; online storage options are comprehensive and affordable; the move to media streaming and the cloud generally is in full swing (if more so overseas than in Australia, with regard to entertainment options); plus anyway, Apple wants you to buy/rent/store everything via the iTunes/App/Mac(App) Store and
iCloud in any case.
But the move is a little surprising in that the Mac mini's size and form factor has long made it the closest thing Apple offers to an HTPC or media centre. Despite the move away from CD and DVD, a lot of people still use them (especially for home theatre in the living room). You can of course still connect an external optical drive via USB, but that's a fairly unwieldy option for a living room entertainment unit.
Of course, Apple has prior form for killing off disk formats. In the late nineties it stunned the industry by dropping support for floppies with the iMac G3. (Okay, so they might have been ahead of the curve on that one.) But what about this time? What do you think: has Apple rightly ended support for a redundant technology, or is killing off optical at this point a premature move?
