Apple killed CDs today

Stop. Take a deep breath. Before you realize the meaning of my headline, read the paragraph below. Of course, CD-, DVD-discs and Blu-ray devices will still exist for some time as “vehicles” for digital data. But you shouldn’t mistakenly hope for the best, because with their developments Apple quite effectively blocks the oxygen on optical discs, which in the near future can repeat the fate of floppy disks.


A week earlier, I expressed my hopes that Apple will transfer some of its features to the MacBook Air. After analyzing the situation, I realized that in my MacBook Pro, I had never used an optical drive in all my life, but at the same time, the presence of this node as such makes my laptop too large. And I came to the conclusion that the best way out of this situation would be to purchase a MacBook Air. And I am sure that the same thoughts sooner or later will not occur to me alone.
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I know what you thought: why has the MacBook Air, which has been on the market for several years now, has not dealt with CDs yet? This is actually the case, but earlier in Apple’s laptop there were a few key points missing.

First of all, the Airs of the first generation had a weak bundle, which at that time was rather expensive. Now this problem is not. Secondly, in order to install something from a CD on a MacBook Air, an intricate PC synchronization system or an additional USB device was required. This moment is also not relevant now (although it still occurs in practice).

After receiving the box from the MacBook Air and opening it, you find only a “zero” CD inside. Apple typically includes at least 1 DVD in the package so that you can reinstall the operating system in case of system crashes. Now this disk is not there either - it is replaced by a super-thin memory card with a USB interface. This card, packed with the manual, is all you need to reinstall the system if necessary.

This approach says a lot: CDs have been replaced with DVDs (due to their greater capacity), but flash memory cards, such as Apple supplies with its new Air, are far superior to DVDs in terms of the amount of information stored on them. Of course, the cost of their production is still quite high, but Apple has already found a way to make them work in life. I suspect that in the near future we will be able to see more and more similar cards, for the manufacture of which there is much less plastic than on a regular USB flash drive, and even less so than on a standard CD.



But this is only part of the future.

The second half is a potentially more interesting feature announced by Apple. This is a Mac Apple Store. As long as the manufacturers did not give out any details, it seemed that this storage would work in much the same way as the App Store, designed for devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It was supposed to have free and paid applications, the ability to download one-click, automatic updates.

What exactly will not be here is optical discs.

Up until today, the vast majority of software has been distributed on CDs and DVDs. The Mac App Store has a great opportunity to change this tradition. Each useful application can be found in repositories distributed throughout the Internet. I note that the introduction of this practice has been expected for a long time.

Many of the companies tried to store their data distributed. Some succeed, others do not. But in any case, none of them has anything similar to the repository offered by the Apple developers. In fact, this segment is huge.

At first glance, it seems that the development of the American company is similar to what Google offers us with its Chrome Web Store or Mozilla with the Open Web Ecosystem, but this is only a web application. We are talking about our own applications for the Mac App Store, which will work on your computer. In this case, despite the fact that they will be distributed, you can run them on your device as usual. Agree, this approach is quite interesting.

Applications will be distributed, in connection with which optical discs will become unnecessary and will disappear as a class.

With the launch of the iTunes Music Store seven and a half years ago, Apple began to destroy the CD. Today we see the final battle, in which there will be no survivors.