Toronto Photography Meetup Group

The new 5mm-thin iMac has no optical drives. How do you feel about this as a photographer?

I know I can buy an external DVD drive to burn photo discs. But it adds costs and clutter my desk. After all, iMac was supposed to be all-in-one.

Smart move. The company prides itself on selling items that are smaller, thinner, lighter, and that's exactly what they've done. The average Mac user has no use for a DVD drive these days. Movies and music are all on iTunes/Netflix. Software can all be purchased through the App Store. USB drives and cloud storage are the preferred storage media to burning DVDs. The laptops (Air and Pro) haven't had optical drives for some time now, so it's a logical move.

For those that still need it, you've nailed the appropriate option on the head. Get an external and stick it in a drawer when you don't need it.

This is pretty much it. My laptop is my main computer and I think I've used the DVD drive all of twice in the 2-3 years I've had it. They're just not used anymore.

Not just the iMacs. The new MBPs are optical driveless. I somewhat recently (just over a year ago) bought a MBP. One of the reasons I chose it over an Air was due to the availability of an optical drive. In that time I've used it twice and one of those times there was a perfectly viable alternative. Of course some would have used it more and some less. For that frequency I do not worry about an external taking up space on a desk, for the amount of times I need it it could sit in a drawer out of the way waiting to be used. I suspect I'm not alone. And if you do use one often the option of a heartier external is better than the mediocre one Apple is going to put in there.

I bought PS and LR on discs a couple of years ago. If I buy a new iMac, is there any way to re-install these softwares onto the new iMac without buying an external optical drive?

What if I were to upgrade my LR 3 to 4, do I need to install my LR 3 on the new iMac first? Or can I go to Adobe website and download an upgrade version, without having to install LR 3 first?

What about if your friends/clients want your photos on disc? Give them on a USB stick instead?

Any advices are appreciated.

I'm not sure about the licences, that would be worth contacting Adobe to find out.

As for sharing there are several ways now. Online "Cloud" storage (Dropbox to name a great option) is one I use. It actually allows a client a faster easier way to back up or choose how they wish to back up. They can copy the file however many times they like and burn a disc. And, as you said a USB stick works too.

An external writer is not a bad option to have laying around as a fail safe. They're dirt cheap these days. Cheap enough that it's worth having it laying around just in case but not worth carrying around anymore for most people.

The Apple external DVD drive is only $79... which means you can probably get some other one from Canada Computers or Tiger Direct or somewhere else for about $29. Hardly a deal-breaker for a newer, faster machine with a better display.

I look forward to seeing how the new iMac monitor looks like. Apple claims that it reduces reflection by 75%. The current highly reflective glossy monitor is not ideal for photo editing.

external means 1 less usb port left

too bad the 21" models arent available until november and the 27's until december. you cant even price one out currently! its ridiculous.

but as too the OP's question I for one use my optical drive quite a bit and if they upgrade the external they sell to be USB 3 then i will totally end up buying one once i get my new iMac in the winter. seems nice to have externally as it frees up soo much space internally for other components/removes a bulk of space to make the new product thinner and lighter with always helps my desk space.

I recently bought a internal LG writer for $13 from Canada Computers... are there enclosures available for such internal optical drives? I've never looked. I'm thinking this can be done more than satisfactorily for <$30. Without looking this up is there a point of USB 3 for an external writer? I thought they had reached the max speeds they were going to for burning optical discs (specifically CD & DVD) with USB 2.

The lack of 1 USB port, and probably temporarily, is a tiny complaint. There is a plethora of ports in all sorts of devices and they're all daisy chainable, cheap hubs hubs etc...

The bigger complaint, for me, with the new Mac Books is that they are not upgradable at all. Flash drive and ram are soldered in so you get what you order FOREVER!!!!! Maybe not that dire but given how much Apple charger for RAM/Flash upgrades it's not a small complaint.

Apparently the RAM in new 21' iMac is not upgradable by users, but the one in 27' iMac is. Given this difference, I would probably order a 27' one. It would save me a few hundred dollars when I want to upgrade the RAM.

The question is will it work with the new Mac. I bought one of those external drives for my Macbook Pro where I removed the internal drive to make room for a second hard drive, and the external CD drive was dead...that drive is designed to only work with certain Macs that didn't come with internal drives.

Had to hack the OS in order to make the Apple drive work.

I purchased one of these cheaper external DVD drives and while it works fine, the transfer/burn speeds don't match the Apple one.
As I have only needed to use the drive once in the past couple of years, I guess I can't complain. However, if one was going to do a lot of CD/DVD work I would suggest getting the Apple one, or at least not the cheapest one that I can find.

DVD drives were handy for delivering images to clients but even that has been replaced with electronic file transfers. You can use DVD's for backup but that is now a distant second to a BR burner. Since Apple isn't a fan of the BR licence holder we will never see an internal BR drive as an option in any Apple store. I guess that makes optical drives obsolete at Apple.

Personally, I like where apple is going. Its a cleaner and greener design.