Margin Notes: Macs and CD-RWs: Has the pendulum swung too far?

Late last year, Apple acknowledged that they had "missed the boat" when it came to CD-RW drives and promised they would make up for this error in soon-to-be-released hardware. And so they have. Power Mac G4s, G4 Cubes, and iMacs now all ship with CD-RW drives. That's great. But did Apple let the pendulum swing too far to the other direction?

A look at Apple's Power Mac G4 line-up reveals that a DVD-RAM drive is no longer even an option. As even the SuperDrive cannot read DVD-RAM discs (it can only read DVD movie discs), this means that any investment made by current G4 owners in DVD-RAM media will be lost when they upgrade to a new machine - unless they buy an external DVD-RAM drive. And, as Apple does not include such a drive among its third party options, they will have to go elsewhere to find one. On the plus side, Apple still allows users to select a DVD-ROM drive instead of a CD-RW drive as the internal drive. This is desirable for those who already own an external CD-RW drive.

The situation is worse for the new line of iMacs. Here, there is not even an option for a DVD-ROM drive. Your only choices are CD or CD-RW. While we are pleased that Apple has made CD-RW an option, we don't think they should turn their back on those who would prefer a DVD-ROM drive. For example, my son has an iMac DV with an iSub in his dorm room. With this, he can rent DVD movies at the local Blockbuster and watch them on his iMac (hopefully after he is done studying!). He even has a Keyspan Digital Media Remote to access the DVD Player software remotely. But if he purchased a new iMac, he would instead have to get a separate TV and DVD player to match this capability - and still not have as good sound quality. The only other alternative would be to get an external DVD drive - an expensive option if your only use of it is to watch movies. Right now, he has access to a CD-RW drive when he needs one, so having the internal DVD drive works out better overall. We suspect many others are in a similar position. Apple could have solved this dilemma by keeping a DVD-ROM drive as a BTO option.

In fact, that's exactly what they did with the G4 Cube. Both CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives are available. However, in an odd pricing-strategy, the only hardware difference between the Fast and Faster stock G4 Cubes is an additional 64MB of RAM and the shift from a DVD-ROM to a CD-RW drive - for a cost of $300 (the CD-RW version does apparently include AppleWorks 6 and other software not shipped with the DVD-ROM version). However, you can get the Fast configuration, and spend the extra $300 on 128MB of RAM ($42 from DMS) and an external CD-RW drive (such as this APS FireWire drive for $250) and have a better setup for the same price as the Faster configuration.

An even better solution might be for Apple to offer a combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, such as the Ricoh or Toshiba drives. Maybe we will yet see this before the year is over.