Apple plans not to include any optical drive in its MacBook and Ultrabooks are likely not to have one as well. This could be the start of the gradual obscurity of the whirring drive. Apple is set to releast the new 15-inch MacBook Air without a drive.
The 15-inch MacBook Air was supposed to be released in 2010 but it encountered problems with the hinges. The company plans to release it next year and would feature Intel’s Ivy Bridge processor.
At the upcoming CES 2011, at least 50 Ultrabooks will be on display. All of them would not have any optical drives. This is because the required thickness for an Ultrabook would not be able to accommodate the bulk of an optical drive.
Optical drives could have died faster if only computer manufacturers didn’t listen to focus groups. Toshiba, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and others test their design concepts with focus groups, who most of the time would say that optical drives are needed.
Apple has always been different from the rest. The company believed that consumers don’t know what they want until it was offered to them. This is the case of the MacBook Air, which it first released in January 2008.
