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Sometimes, it's worth taking a moment to note the end of an era, even when that ending might have happened a long time ago. Today, Apple announced that it considers the mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro obsolete. It was the last MacBook Pro to include an optical drive for playing CDs or DVDs.
This means that any MacBook Pro with an optical drive is no longer supported.
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Apple stopped selling the mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro in October 2016 (it was available for a while as the company's budget option in the Pro lineup), so anyone doing the math saw this coming.
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The exclusion of an optical drive in subsequent MacBook Pro models was controversial, but it's now clear that whether Apple was jumping the gun at that point or not, optical drives have fallen away for most users, and many Windows laptops no longer include them.
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That's a sign of just how irrelevant optical drives are for today's users, but this seems like a good time to remember a bygone era of physical media that wasn't so long ago. So farewell, mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro—honestly, most of us didn't miss you by this point.
[Do you still have a collection of Blu-rays/DVDs? Do you use an Optical Disc drive anymore?] I do.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by istartedi on Friday February 02 2024, @09:58PM (8 children)
Swing by a thrift store, pick up a CD for $1 or $2. It might be an artist you know, or you take a chance on something and it turns out to be good--then you donate it back at some point whenever you feel like it. One of the benefits of having an older car I suppose. Yeah, you can hear anything with more modern tech; but it's not the same experience. The thrift stores also benefit charities like local hospice, meals on wheels, etc. not some huge tech company.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday February 02 2024, @11:28PM (2 children)
I have an older car with a cheap aftermarket car radio that acts as a bluetooth speaker and I guarantee you I'm not giving a single cent to a huge tech company to listen to the music I like in my car.
But yeah, I'm not giving any money to Goodwill either, sadly. It's not that I don't like thrifting mind you, and I do like the idea of supporting them, but really I can't stand delicate physical media. I've spent enough years in my youth dealing with scratched LPs, bunched up cassette tapes and scratched CDs never to want to deal with them ever again. I'm old enough for vintage to mean "old crap that we're finally rid of" to me.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday February 03 2024, @12:21AM (1 child)
When I first got the car I had an MP3 player, Sandisk, remember those? It could play MP3s as well as receive FM radio and was thus a worthy successor to the ol' tape-playing Walkman. The car has audio in, and I played MP3s through it like that sometimes. The little Sandisk was about $100, and it broke after about a year--just started glitching and becoming unusable right after the warranty expired. I sort of said, "screw this" and never looked back.
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(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday February 05 2024, @03:37PM
I've had various SanDisk MP3 players of the years. None recently. They were all cheap junk and broke.
Which leads back around the very first MP3 player I bought. It was an iRock (Yes, there were things named i something, before the iPod.), and that thing lasted me all through College. What's more, that thing is still functional. Some of the rubber/soft plastic was that junk that just disintegrates (melting/turning into goo). Other than that it works just as well as it did now as when I bought it. It has a little rocker for changing the track, if you want to skip something (also functions as fast forward/rewind), it has some equalizer settings, and the thing sounds great. Sure a lot of that is down to "good headphones", but that doesn't matter if the player also sucks. It had 128MB internal and 128MB Smart Card memory expansion (which it still has and is still functional). Old flash media wasn't known for it's longevity and Smart Card is possibly "literally the worst" of the bunch. Yet I knew it was a little flimsy and I was poor (also pirating is bad), so I just had a few CDs worth of songs on it. But it was glorious, no longer was a I stuck with an antiquated (tape) system or a horrible on the go experience (CD). I could probably gift the thing to my kiddo, but some of the tracks aren't kid friendly. Kiddo has definitely listened to some of the tracks using that same MP3 player, but with me on the controls.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2024, @02:05AM (1 child)
Get off my lawn!
Vinyl is still best [lelandwest.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday February 05 2024, @03:41PM
Vinyl was the best, when it was new (maybe), it probably wasn't even best when tape was around. Though tape in it's own right was kinda horrible, you at least didn't need a huge/non-portable device to play it.
The ones that aren't lying to themselves know that they like it best, because of the imperfections. Not, because it's the best reproduction of the content. Which is where we get into CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/Flash Media/etc. and as long as the device you're using is good, there's no discerning between them. Except for possibly the load times, especially with CDs, but then that's not reproduction of sound.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by julian on Saturday February 03 2024, @05:06AM (1 child)
You can also get an old classic iPod, a new battery for it, and a converter card [iflash.xyz] that lets you replace the spinning HDD with a microSD card. It's a fun little project to upgrade it, and not that expensive. Popping it open is the hardest part but once the back plate is off everything is pretty easy to replace. One of the easier Apple products I've worked on. You can still pass those CDs on once you've ripped them and you can carry all the music with you forever
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Saturday February 03 2024, @12:17PM
It is good. Such a modded video ipod is still my primary audio player. Originally I got it because my car came with an "ipod dock" that only works with that generation of ipods. However with Rockbox installed and 1TB of SD storage, I actually have my entire collection on there with space to spare, and I carry it around with me.
The battery also lasts a lot longer than when it had a HDD, and it sounds better than my phone for music. It makes sense after all, being a dedicated audio player vs the jack of trades my phone has to be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2024, @10:48AM
The car without built-in bluetooth has a bluetooth to FM converter. The sound quality isn't so good, but it doesn't bother me and the best that car's sound system can get isn't that great either.