Door creaks and girl farts: computing in the real world
A few weeks ago I dissed the expensive new Apple MacBook Pro for trading a downgraded component spec in return for a pretty display and solid-state memory. In passing, I gave an example of this downgrade: the lack of a CD drive. Several readers helpfully commented that they hadn’t used CD media in ages and wouldn’t miss an …
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Re: Can you still get Spangles?
Sadly no. Some Gort decided that they belong in the past.
Re: Can you still get Spangles?
Why not phone up the factory and see if they will make them just for you - when they stop laughing put the phone down. I suppose it worked for Wispa.
Re: Can you still get Spangles?
They did make a brief comeback some years ago - I still remember an excited Gaby Roslin sharing the news on the Big Breakfast, which probably gives you an idea of how long ago. Wouldn't give them to a baby though - choking hazard and all.
Re: Can you still get Spangles?
I remember trying them. Bought them in Woolies, and think it was in the 90s. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, they were horrible.
Re: Can you still get Spangles?
Why not phone up the factory and see if they will give you the source -erm recipe, etc, etc
Re: Can you still get Spangles?
You can over here in The Netherlands, I think. I snatched some from a baby this morning on my way from the airpiort.
"Surely I can’t be the only person who doesn’t like it when manufacturers take things away from me just because it’s easy for them to do so."
It's not necessarily because it's 'easy' - but what do you do if 95% of your customers never or very rarely use a CD/DVD drive but 95% of your customers would benefit from a faster CPU, better screen etc. which drain more juice - so require a larger battery. It's certainly a lot easier to have an external CD/DVD drive for the few times I may need one than cart around an external battery or AC adapters I may not otherwise have needed.
Having an external drive with a reliable connector is a decent solution. Of course, when we're also hearing that such standard connectors as Ethernet are vanishing as well, we can wonder just what the designers are smoking.
Who wants a crappy mechanical spinny-plastic-disk interface taking up so much space and making clunk-noises in a piece of high-density techno-loveliness? Especially when it might get used once a month at most? Nobody. Apple have it spot on (again): If you need to get files off a CD, do it over a network, or use a USB stick. The retina MacBook isn't aimed at people who still want to drive around in a Ford Escort. Get with the programme.
Further to this point, should we even be putting data onto mediums such as CD any more except for backup? The use case of the girl wandering into the office with a bunch of 'files' could have been solved far more eloquently if she had utilised the correct format for this transfer of data. A USB stick would have much greater breadth of compatibility with devices (many tablets have USB ports, phones have adapters, all desktops/laptops/tanktops have USB) and it is re-usable. It sounds whoever supplied her with the files runs an office ill-equipped for modern (and I mean the last 15 years) use.
If it' was the IT manager's colleague, then she is bone-idle enough to not notice that not a single CD drive exists on any of the machines that presumably she has seen every working day and has no excuse.
If she was the author's colleague.... well, you know what they say about assumptions...
USB stick assumption.... I've had incompatibility issues loads of time, why can't the manufacturers get together and actually have ONE standard that works between all OS's, even if its just for file transfer...
Sure Fat32 works, but NOT if you want to work with files over 4gb!!!
"Get with the Programme"
I can reliably inform you that I will never, ever, "get with the programme" if, as I suspect, this consists of being a douchebag hipster who owns a high-spec Macbook so that he (or she) can use it for nothing more than sitting in a trendy cafe arseing about on FaceBook. That is a programme I want no part of, thank you very much.
Re: "Get with the Programme"
Bitter - may I suggest a job as a barrista.
Once a Moth Is Often Enough!
If you had to build anything for a business user, you'd know that if they needed something once a month, then you'd need to deliver it. Omitting the optical drive from a flashy ultra-compact is one thing, omitting it from a business workhorse is quite another. It's still common enough and no other technology has replaced it completely.
But the manufacturers and vendors that deem themselves big enough allow themselves to dismiss such pedestrian reasons. Newer tech makes better marketing material and pushes margins up and omitting older stuff, making the new devices difficult to use with the 'old' ones, forces the users to replace kit more often - sometimes even that which for all intents and purposes still does the job more than adequately.
Re: Once a Moth Is Often Enough!
We buy PCs with perfectly good CD drives and USB ports. Our IT bods then install the security software that prevents us using them
Re: Once a Moth Is Often Enough!
Yes, but how often are Moths? Is there a timetable? Do they only come out at night? Are they compatible with Butterflies?
We must be told!
CD vs USB - please infect me!
Try infecting me with a virus when I transfer files around a room full of computers on a CD, whereas a USB stick......
Some of us work in the real world that means outside the North America and Western Europe and where the chance of an meeting an infected computer is about 1 when you have a room containing more than 2 computers. And yes of course you can make your USB stick non-writeable and then one of the participants flicks the little switch to turn this off while they are waiting for their turn.....
There is a big world out there people and it is not populated by the latest and greatest, but by the cheapest and most easily fixed.
Re: Assumptions...
@Uncle Slacky, I've always known assumptions to be "the mother of all fuck ups", but I did spend an unhealthy amount of time watching Under Siege 2.
I'm possibly missing the point of this article though - it ends with the author smugly noting that pretty much no other PC in the office had an optical drive (and nobody to date had noticed), and using that fact to cane the latest Mac that has no optical drive, thus joining the same gang as the PCs in the office.
In short, if you want a laptop with a CD drive, buy one. But might want to consider there are plenty of people who don't use one. No product is going to make everyone happy.
Is it me...
or are there a lot of snarky barista types on here today?
I'll have a black coffee, with milk- when you can spare a minute from pouting.
I see your mistake there
You used "Mac" and "business" in the same sentence.
Regression
"The retina MacBook isn't aimed at people who still want to drive around in a Ford Escort. Get with the programme."
It's clear to me. Apple is regressing into a toy-maker. Fisher price for adults. Their best succes a fucking MP3-player their second best succes; a mediaplayer with a phone. What's next?
A game console? See and behold the new Nintendo DS... euhm... macbook "pro"....whoahahahaha!
Re: "Get with the Programme"
The idea of a retinal display is a good one, but it looks as though the compromises needed to get them into a Macbook limit the system usability. Going by what a friend says, Apple does things in a different way to the general PC world. And the Apple way suits his needs.
Looking at the comments as a whole, some people don't seem to realise that there are alternatives to doing things the fashionable way.
And nobody has seemed to mention SCSI.
quite a lot of people, actually
"Who wants a crappy mechanical spinny-plastic-disk interface taking up so much space..."
Well, there are people, in real business you know, who have to follow procedures on deliverables, i.e. delivery on tamper-proof media (software, documentation) for archival and audit trail. Internal CD or DVD is quite useful for them. Especially when your USB ports are turned off by policy.
However, it's not that useful for Mom&Pop or Two Garage Geeks type of enterprise you are probably more familiar with. On that I agree.
Re: quite a lot of people, actually
"Who wants a crappy mechanical spinny-plastic-disk interface taking up so much space..."
Anybody who buys music from a shop?
Yes I know, it might be hard for those up in a Jovian orbit to realise that some of us might visit the real world on occasion. You know, where shops are made of bricks and mortar, and have physical products in them. Including CDs, and DVDs!
And no, streaming shite and buying the right to download an MP3 is not an acceptable substitute. Not unless you're paying my traffic bills.
Re: "Get with the Programme"
No problem for me, I sit in a less trendy pub with my Macbook arsing around five virtual and two physical machines. And although my Macbook still has an optical drive, I don't have any media with me.
Re: quite a lot of people, actually
Macbooks WITH optical drives are still available. It's not that they produce just on laptop, you know.
And in a parallel Universe in a small country named Germany the authorities demand electronic delivery of data, in Microsoft formats! No Macs are harmed in the process.
In the real world, doors creak and girls fart.
Which is why we have hinge oil and vagisil.
And honestly, if you're out of the house with a phone that's down to it's last 15% of charge, then you *should* be carrying around a charging cable in your bag.
Re: In the real world, doors creak and girls fart.
> hinge oil and vagisil
I have it on good authority that these are the same product, in different packaging.
Re: In the real world, doors creak and girls fart.
"Which is why we have hinge oil and vagisil"
I understand the part about hinge oil, but how does Vagisil prevent farts?
Re: In the real world, doors creak and girls fart.
hinge oil? was that a typo or did you deliberately use an "H" instead of an "M" ?
Re: In the real world, doors creak and girls fart.
"I understand the part about hinge oil, but how does Vagisil prevent farts?"
Turn off Safe Search in Google, and type 'fanny fart' (probably not recommended while at work).
Re: In the real world, doors creak and girls fart.
40 bucks buys a compact external usb dvd writer, 50 bucks buys you a decent external battery for tablets and phones.
Apple made a choice, most likely after considerable research and thought. As much as I dislike them, they have come out with a damn fine product. The choices they have made are not resulting in the end of the world, no puppies have been harmed, if you need a dvd drive, buy an external one. If your phone goes flat carry an external battery. Those of us that actually work in the real world rather than being paid to write about pretending to work in it come across problems all the time, we just figure out solutions. Like how canon's wireless transfer system is expensive and overrated, but wireless usb dongles are cheap and do the job better (wireless live view). Do I berate canon? Does it mean they make crap products? Hell no, just some thought required. Then again, thinking is hard, bitching is easy.
WD40
This stuff works on hinges, minges, ir sensors, optial drives, rusty parallel ports, dongles and baristas. It cures ALL problems! Get with the programme and squirt some will ya!
For music alone, long live the CD...
In the real world I like the music I buy to sound the best it can, nothing like a big fat .wav as far as Im concerned.
Granted this then gets broken down to a 320kbps mp3 for mobile use but at home on the system, I want it all.
apples fault entirely of course, you dont need to buy CD's when you can DL from the horror that is itunes.. apparently....
Re: For music alone, long live the CD...
I'm guessing you have super ears but I do not reckon most people could hear the difference between a 256kbps AAC (from the iTunes store) or 320kbps MP3 or original CD.
Many people would like to think they could but a best upgrade would probably be a cotton bud and reversal of the effects of age.
Re: For music alone, long live the CD...
Maybe not super ears but your right, most probably couldnt, or dont care.. they were happy with 128k for long enough....
With a decent separates system lossy files really are obvious & Im not ready to give up the happy feeling I get from the physical ownership of music just yet either.
Re: For music alone, long live the CD...
The Apple solution is so good they are now letting mere mortals use FLAC on some dev-i-ces.
Re: For music alone, long live the CD...
> you dont need to buy CD's when you can DL from the horror that is itunes..
Or vice versa- you don't have to use iTunes! Buy the CD for less than the iTunes download, and rip it at home- to a lossless format if you want, and listen to it on a Cowon or Sandisk portable player.
But even having said that, it is possible to download (or buy on DVD-A discs) music of higher (technical) quality than CDs, since it can be 24bit 192 Khz.
Re: For music alone, long live the CD...
OMG 'happy' feeling - yes owning a round piece of plastic makes me feel so special and happy! Listening to music is good - owning physical music is pretty crappy. Yes I'm sure there are people who just love to slide their vinyl records out and listen to it in analogue glory - for the 99.99% rest of us we would probably rather have the convenience of our own playlists and being able to carry around our entire music collection on our phones.
Re: For music alone, long live the CD...
World would be a boring place if we were all the same right?
Re: For music alone, long live the CD...
Happy feeling? More like the kind of brainwashing that HiFi nuts go through to convince themselves that they can hear the difference between a £5 and a £50 digital interconnect.
I've got a decent separates system with a dedicated HiFi grade DAC (96k 24 bit), and though I can easily spot the difference between 320k OGG files and 256k AAC, I'm damned if I can hear the difference between FLAC and 256k VBR AAC.
Re: For music alone, long live the CD...
"With a decent separates system lossy files really are obvious & Im not ready to give up the happy feeling I get from the physical ownership of music just yet either."
Ok, makes sense, but you wouldn't burn MP3s to CD so you can hook up your macbook to the system and play the CD from there, would you?
Because a CD is such a good solution compared to a simple USB memory stick? After all, one fits in a pocket or onto a keychain, the other doesn't. One can effortlessly store 10-12 times the amount of data as the other and do so in a smaller package. One is considerably faster than the other and can be easily rewritten as often as required, without having to wipe and rewrite the whole thing every time.
And as noted by a previous poster, this is why we keep a USB CD/DVD for the occasional times when needed.
Of course, this is before a cretinous laptop manufacturer decides that you don't need USB or that you only need a single port or the ports that are there are not the normal size...
Dunno about that, my PC has a nice blu-ray drive which would need a pretty big USB pen drive to catch up to it in size, but on the other hand, a PC is for entertainment purposes whilst a Mac is for office work... wait, that advert......
>whilst a Mac is for office work
You mean MS Office on OSX still has menus and is usually found on a 16:10 screen?
I've seen USB sticks up to 128-256Gb and of course small USB hard drives at 1Tb+
How big did you say your blu-ray was... oh not that big - never mind.
Apple have not 'ditched' gigabit ethernet but most offices offer 'wireless' access these days which usually suits mobile workers better. Apple provide a pretty cheap (and tiny) USB or Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter - think the USB one is about £15-20 and the Thunderbolt one about £20-25 - you leave on in your computer bag should you go to somewhere that does not have wireless. It's no big deal unless you are just looking for fault.
I'm sure in 5 years time you will still be wanting a wafer thin laptop with super battery life but packed with every bit of legacy tech (CD drives, IR etc.) - pretty sure on the new Macbook Air it's SO thin you could not even plug an ethernet port in - what then? Ever heard of the saying 'wanting to have you cake and eat it'?
I hardly think £15-25 is "cheap" for an ethernet adapter. If anything, Apple should have used a smaller proprietary connector for ethernet which is identically electrically to an RJ45 one and then supplied a free RJ-45 to smaller connector adapter - this is what telly makers are doing to allow massive SCART sockets to be connected to their itty bitty flat panels. Having everyone in an office work from wireless sounds great until you realise that the contention of a WLAN with many people on it makes it slow and increasingly useless.
I don't agree with everything Mr. Dabbs says, but he is kinda right. Apple have a history of removing "old" hardware just a little too soon. Those of us who remember the original iMac also remember that Apple did a roaring trade in overpriced USB floppy drives and probably made them much more money than if they just inserted one inside the thing in the first place
You are just tight - £15 on a £1500 laptop is 1% and the fact is I bet only 5-10% of owners ever need to buy one.
Adding a 'smaller proprietary connector' would have also drawn criticism (probably more) and have been an extra cost only a few people actually need.
Wireless these days is far, far better - most people on a wireless network will be just loading / saving small documents, picking up email and browsing the web - of course in your power office where you are flinging around huge CAD drawings. I'm not going to say it's a quick as wired as it's not but there is a simple solution - get the adapter if your workload requires it.
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