I think it's great they are doing that. I personally think a 17 inch laptop (their MacBook Pro model) is hideously large and looks ugly.
I prefer the smaller models and I'm definitely all for this.
Not having a drive internally is not a big problem. My Winlaptop strangely doesn't have an internal floppy OR CD. But instead I have an external Matshita DVD-RAM drive, that burns and reads just about anything under the sun. It's great. It boots up XP from a CD just fine, however Windows 2000 had a boot error and so I had to do a horribly difficult method (involved USB, NTFS, Free/OpenDOS and a lot of patience) but I eventually got all things sorted.
I mean heck, most computers can even boot USB Flashdrives these days. Internals are old news, Imo.
I just hope that Apple appropriately drops the price given what features will be missing. Might even look into one of these...
If you haven't heard, there's been some more rumors about Apple reentering the sub-notebook market. Though they've been around for some time, people are starting to think that Apple will introduce new 13-inch MBPs without optical drives and a bunch of battery saving and better performance stuff. It's all over the place.
I think that this was a smart move. You could get an external DVD drive anyway with better quality burning and reading than a regular laptop drive, not to mention HD DVD and Blu-Ray. More power on hand, more portability, and perhaps better performance? One big problem is large installs/downloads, disc booting and stuff, upgrades, etc. You'd definitely need an external or another Mac with Target FireWire mood to accomplish most of those. Still, this is a smart move for Apple. A better alternative for the MacBook for those who need better power/performance. Anyone disagree?
-BMF

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