Comments on: Apple’s Remote Disc feature: What’s the deal?

By: reuben g

reuben g — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:59:43 +0000

Hang on a minuit. This is a cutdown laptop, why the hell is the price so damn steep. Get a MacBook, cheaper better. 4hr battery/5hr. The iBook G4 was claimed to be 6hr by Apple and could last 4h30 to 5 at a stretch………. A DVD writer only uses power when it is being used……. why omit it! It is to persuade people to buy movies on itunes, and the cost of making the laptop is less the DVD drive. What happens if you need to burn a DVD/CD on the fly? What happens if you need to connect to a wired network?

By: Doug Aamoth

Doug Aamoth — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:43:06 +0000

Hey Chris. This information came straight from the mouth of one of Apple’s product managers at Macworld. We specifically asked if you can watch a DVD from another computer’s drive and if you can play a game that needs to read the disc for loading and/or copy protection from another computer’s drive. The answer to both questions was “no”.

By: chris

chris — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:32:56 +0000

hi! where did you read that Remote Disc can’t play DVDs or CDs, etc? i can’t find any details specifying that it works at the file level, rather than the block level (macs mount DMG and ISO files easily, after all).

By: Andrew Ruess

Andrew Ruess — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:30:02 +0000

I was thinking about this too and glimpsed the genius behind the design decisions (genius if you are an Apple shareholder).

With no optical drive for movies, now you can use this really easy interface in iTunes to rent your movie over the web and watch it like that. The removal of the drive supports their business model of digital media-less content delivery.

I think for people that do not need their optical drive often and prize mobility above all else, this device will do well… I’m tempted to buy it. =P

And I don’t know the last time that I played a game on the Mac that makes you keep the CD inserted. They all tend to fully install to hard drive now, right?