We’ve been looking at buying a new desktop computer. I’ve had our current one since Bible College & it’s starting to get a little slow, and more than a little senile.

I almost bought one a month or two ago, but was thankful I held off when Mac announced that they are rolling out the latest edition of the iMac.

…without an optical drive.

NO DISK DRIVE!!!!

Wow, what a bold move! Of course, the cynics will jump up & down, saying this is the way they force people into purchasing movies through iTunes instead of buying DVDs. Of course, I’m not so naive as to say that this isn’t a consideration for them, but I actually think this is a bold & wise move by the mac people for other reasons.

DVDs, even bluerays are yesterday’s news. Disks are too big, it takes nothing to scratch them & leave them worthless, and solid-state memory is getting cheaper and cheaper by the day. Why would you want a DVD if you can get something on a thumb-sized drive? (apart from advertisers, who, no doubt, appreciate the extra real-estate to advertise their wares….) Why would you have a big device with lots of moveable (read:breakable) parts that take up a lot of room if they don’t really do the job?

At some point in time the world needs to move on, and Mac is showing that they’re willing to do so.

Is it inconvenient?

Darn right! I am thinking about whether I need to rip all my DVDs to a hard-drive so I can still watch stuff in my study… but before I do that, I have to work out whether I am officially breaching copyright law by doing so. Australians, who were one of the lowest per-capita purchasers of videos were apparently the worlds biggest per-capita purchasers of DVDs! Will all of these collections be redundant? It is something to consider.

But I do think Mac is making the right move. As much as I treasure the memory of buying my very first CD (De La Soul’s “three feet high and rising” at Tower Records in San Fran), and my first ever DVD (Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” in bought in Melbourne) the truth is, the world has moved on & computers ought to as well!