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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, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday February 02 2024, @11:20PM (8 children)
If you need a CD drive, you can find very good external USB ones.
Just like floppy drives. Incidentally I have one right here on my desk that reads at 2x and powers itself from a single USB 1.0 port. Amazing!
The point being, laptops are better off with as few heavy and power-hungry things built in as possible if they're not needed regularly. With USB 3.0, you can literally dock a modern laptop with one tiny USB plug, and pretty much connect any number of power hungry external devices as needed when you're on the road.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Saturday February 03 2024, @01:03AM
That's the route I went. I have more than one because of the asinine region blocking DVD discs where it's impossible to get media in all the languages I'm interested in with just one drive. (Or a bunch of hassle making one region free)
I mostly just use official media for video and CDs only if I can't get a quality lossless copy.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Frosty Piss on Saturday February 03 2024, @02:51AM
RMS is reading your comment from his attic hideaway at MIT, spinning in his grave - as he picks fleas out of his beard and pops a floppy in the drive to watch some Anime porn.
(Score: 3, Troll) by Tork on Saturday February 03 2024, @02:54AM (3 children)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2024, @05:08AM
Aren't they all? ;-)
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday February 03 2024, @07:05AM (1 child)
Haters gonna hate :)
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday February 03 2024, @07:11AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday February 03 2024, @03:10AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Insightful) by loonycyborg on Monday February 05 2024, @11:54AM
Strictly speaking modern variant of CD is bluray, but it didn't get to be part of default set of pc devices because it's now lot more specialized than before. BD is strictly format for distributing movies, with other uses being even more niche. While CDs also were in widespread use for software distribution, and archival with writer CD drives. Now most of those uses are handled by network or USB flash/HDD/SDD.