lange@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange) (03/27/90)
In article <7409@goofy.Apple.COM> dwb@sticks.apple.com (David Berry) writes: > > I'd still suggest a CD-Rom player... > David W. Berry A/UX Toolbox Engineer > dwb@apple.com This leads me to a question which has almost certainly been asked before: Why is Apple pushing CD-Roms and not Erasable Optical drives? If I were Apple, I'd be *embarrassed* trying to hawk this limited, expensive, and dead technology when NeXT sells optical drives that can do everything CD-Roms do and "a whole lot more." Sure, after you've spent hundreds of dollars on a CD-Rom, you can have access to SpInside Mac, AU/X, and maybe another CD with a dictionary and thesaraus (both are nice). But then what? There is *no way* that I or probably most other (non-developer) Mac users are going to spend the $600 dollars or whatever it is just to do that. On the other hand, I definitely *would* consider spending the $2000 that NeXT charges for an erasable optical drive. Now *there* is something useful. Who couldn't use a 300 Meg removable drive? With that, the availability of software on CDs from Apple and elsewhere would just be the icing on the cake. Surely Apple could either contract with Canon or some other optical manufacturer to sell their own optical drives, or at least bless an optical standard for the Mac and distribute their CDs on it. What's the story? - Trent Lange ********************************************************************** * College Basketball Fever: Catch it! * * Yeah, I mixed my slogans. So what are you going to do about it? * **********************************************************************
mcguffey@muvms3.bitnet (Michael McGuffey) (03/27/90)
In article <33521@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, lange@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange) writes: > In article <7409@goofy.Apple.COM> dwb@sticks.apple.com (David Berry) writes: > > Why is Apple pushing CD-Roms and not Erasable Optical drives? > > If I were Apple, I'd be *embarrassed* trying to hawk this limited, > expensive, and dead technology when NeXT sells optical drives that > can do everything CD-Roms do and "a whole lot more." Erasable-optical disks cannot store 500+ MB per disk without someone turning the disk over or buying an expensive Juke-box to do it for them. Erasable-optical disks cannot (as far as I am aware) be pressed in high volume at a cost of around $2 per disk, but must be individually recorded ala Magtape and Floppy diskettes at a very high cost. Why distribute data which will, for the most part, remain stagnant and Read-Only on an expensive erasable medium. Particulary when most data comes with quarterly or even monthly updates. I will give you the "a whole lot more" statement. :-) > Sure, after you've spent hundreds of dollars on a CD-Rom, you can have > access to SpInside Mac, AU/X, and maybe another CD with a dictionary and > thesaraus (both are nice). But then what? There is *no way* that I or > probably most other (non-developer) Mac users are going to spend the > $600 dollars or whatever it is just to do that. Try looking in the latest Educorp catalog at the pages and pages of clip-art, clip-sounds, databases, books (The Whole Earth Catalog, The Guiness Disk of World Record), photography, Med-Line, etc., available on CD-ROM. Add to that the vast amount of data distributed by the Census Bureau, Dept of Agriculture, and others on CD-ROM. Most applications for this data exist on MS-DOS compatible PC's, but with the coming of Statistical Visualization software such as SAS Institutes' JMP, the market is opening up to the Macintosh environment. > > On the other hand, I definitely *would* consider spending the $2000 > that NeXT charges for an erasable optical drive. Now *there* is > something useful. Who couldn't use a 300 Meg removable drive? > With that, the availability of software on CDs from Apple and elsewhere > would just be the icing on the cake. > The current price from Pinnacle Micro for a single Optical Disk System with controller for the Mac is around $5200 (government and university price is around $4150.) @quantity 1. Media is around $250 ($230) per disk. Media was expected to drop to the $50 price that NeXT is/will asking, but that has yet to come true. I suspect that NeXT and/or Canon used the drive and disk as a loss-leader for that big infusion of capital that gave Canon sole Asian marketing rights. (This is purely a guess on my part!) I was told during a Marketing show that Steve Jobs REALLY wanted the drive for his machine and took a drive before any quasi-standard had emerged. Hence the Canon drive may be on his machine, but it is not compatible with the Sony drive/disk or the other major player whose name escapes me at this time. > > Surely Apple could either contract with Canon or some other optical > manufacturer to sell their own optical drives, or at least bless > an optical standard for the Mac and distribute their CDs on it. > They have blessed an optical standard and do distribute their CD's on it. Theirs. > - Trent Lange -- michael PS: Although it may not sound like it, I really do like the erasible optical concept, especially when one drive (such as Pinnacle's) can float from Mac to PC to VAX to Sun with only the purchase of an additional controller card. But I believe things have their place, and the Erasable-optical is just not suited to the distribution of large amounts of data. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael McGuffey, Senior Software Applications Analyst Phone: 304/696-3212 University Computer Center FAX: 304/696-3601 Marshall University BITNET: mcguffey@muvms3 Huntington, WV 25755-5320 Internet: mcguffey%muvms3@wvnvms.wvnet.edu
mketch@pawl.rpi.edu (Michael D. Ketchen) (03/28/90)
In article <33521@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> lange@lanai.UUCP (Trent Lange) writes: | This leads me to a question which has almost certainly been asked before: | | Why is Apple pushing CD-Roms and not Erasable Optical drives? | | If I were Apple, I'd be *embarrassed* trying to hawk this limited, | expensive, and dead technology when NeXT sells optical drives that | can do everything CD-Roms do and "a whole lot more." The reason is that CD-ROM is a cheap, efficient way to send large amounts of extremely non-volatile data to just about anybody. You can buy all the Adobe fonts on a CD-ROM and then pay to have the ones you need unlocked. Companies like Microsoft can package large quantities of software (ie. Microsoft Office) into a nice little bundle with lots of room for bells and whistles that just wouldn't get added in a floppy distribution. Now, I'm sure you're sitting there saying, "Why can't they do that with an erasable optical disk?" The key words are found in the second line of the above paragraph: non-volatile. Even though the word 'optical' appears in the name 'erasable optical drive', it's still a magnetic disk. The 'optical' part comes in because the drive uses a laser to heat the disk surface, making it easier to change the data on the disk very accurately, and hence giving the incredible amounts of information on the disks. However, it's still magnetic storage, and thus is subject to random change. CD-ROM, on the other hand, stores its data via tiny 'pits' burned into the surface of the disk. This is extremely non-volatile, and is very similar to the way WORM drives work. The big difference is that once a CD-ROM master is made, it is extremely easy to press out as many copies of it as are needed. With erasable optical technology, the disks would still have to be copied the old fashioned way. | ... | | On the other hand, I definitely *would* consider spending the $2000 | that NeXT charges for an erasable optical drive. Now *there* is | something useful. Who couldn't use a 300 Meg removable drive? | With that, the availability of software on CDs from Apple and elsewhere | would just be the icing on the cake. Feel free to buy one. There are several on the market now, with an average storage of 650Mb of data per disk. The problem is, there are also several formats floating around. CD-ROM is standardized, making it nicer for mass distribution. | Surely Apple could either contract with Canon or some other optical | manufacturer to sell their own optical drives, or at least bless | an optical standard for the Mac and distribute their CDs on it. They already do bless an optical standard: CD-ROM. And while they could come out with their own erasable optical drive, I don't think they will. See each of the three optical storage media has a best use: CD-ROM for mass distribution, erasable optical drives for daily or weekly data backups, and WORM drives for long-term archiving of data. None are anywhere close to the speed of today's hard drives (which can be purchased in sizes comparable to those of the optical technologies), so hard drives will remain the standard for regular use in most computers. | - Trent Lange | | ********************************************************************** | * College Basketball Fever: Catch it! * | * Yeah, I mixed my slogans. So what are you going to do about it? * | ********************************************************************** - Mike -- |XXX| __/\__ |XXX|--------------------------+-----------------********========= |XXX| \ / |XXX| Michael D. Ketchen | This space ********========= |XXX| /____\ |XXX| mketch@pawl.rpi.edu | for rent... ================= |XXX| ][ |XXX| mketch@rpitsmts.bitnet +-----------------=================
jordan@Apple.COM (Jordan Mattson) (03/28/90)
Dear Trent - Perhaps because media for eraseable optical drives in quanity is around $50.00 a unit, whereas you can press CD-ROMs in quanity for around $2.50 a unit. Do people just have tape decks at home? Or do they have CD players and tape decks? Each unit has its place, and if you want a cheap way to get a lot of megabytes of information out, then CD-ROM is the way to go. -- Jordan Mattson UUCP: jordan@apple.apple.com Apple Computer, Inc. CSNET: jordan@apple.CSNET Development Tools Product Management AppleLink: Mattson1 20525 Mariani Avenue, MS 27S Cupertino, CA 95014 408-974-4601 "Joy is the serious business of heaven." C.S. Lewis
gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (03/28/90)
>In article <33521@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> lange@lanai.UUCP (Trent Lange) writes: [...] >| Surely Apple could either contract with Canon or some other optical >| manufacturer to sell their own optical drives, or at least bless >| an optical standard for the Mac and distribute their CDs on it. > >They already do bless an optical standard: CD-ROM. And while they could >come out with their own erasable optical drive, I don't think they will. I agree with most of what you said Mike, but have to disagree here. It's quite probable that Apple will come out with an optical disk (or some other large capacity read/write medium). The new Canon OD drives under development are rumored to be 20 ms access time. That sounds improbable, but in all likelihood they'll be quite fast. One of the reasons that Next can offer the OD technology so cheaply is that some of the controlling hardware is built in to the Next. I'd look for Apple to do something similar with OD or some other technology in the next coupla years. Robert ============================================================================ = gft_robert@gsbacd.uchicago.edu * generic disclaimer: * "It's more fun to = = * all my opinions are * compute" = = * mine * -Kraftwerk = ============================================================================
drc@claris.com (Dennis Cohen) (03/28/90)
I think that Apple is pushing CD-ROM as a distribution technology. The cost of production is under $2/CD (including materials) for CD-ROM vs a wholesale cost in excess of $50/disk for EO, before duplication. Since Apple, like most American companies, lists everything for about 5x cost since that means that things like MPW and A/UX only include a $10 cost component for that piece rather than $250. This seems to be borne out in the latest APDALog, where the MPW C + Object Pascal Update Bundle is $50 on CD and $100 on floppies. This would imply a cost of about $225 on EO. I agree with the assessment that EO is a better storage technology than CD; however, I think that CD is a better (read, more affordable) distribution technology. Now, what I would really like is to get an EO drive that could READ CD-ROMs (treating them like locked volumes). That would be the best of both worlds. -- Dennis Cohen Claris Corp. **************************************************** Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed above are _MINE_!
paul@taniwha.UUCP (Paul Campbell) (03/29/90)
In article <0LF#BW_@rpi.edu> mketch@pawl.rpi.edu (Michael D. Ketchen) writes: >In article <33521@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> lange@lanai.UUCP (Trent Lange) writes: >| Why is Apple pushing CD-Roms and not Erasable Optical drives? >| >| If I were Apple, I'd be *embarrassed* trying to hawk this limited, >| expensive, and dead technology when NeXT sells optical drives that >| can do everything CD-Roms do and "a whole lot more." > >The reason is that CD-ROM is a cheap, efficient way to send large amounts of >extremely non-volatile data to just about anybody. You can buy all the Adobe >fonts on a CD-ROM and then pay to have the ones you need unlocked. Companies >like Microsoft can package large quantities of software (ie. Microsoft Office) >into a nice little bundle with lots of room for bells and whistles that just >wouldn't get added in a floppy distribution. There is another important issue here - manufacturing capacity. There is a whole other industry out there building CDs - this drives the media cost through the floor. There are big factories set up to take a digital tape or disk and press them out by the thousands. And it's cheap - did you know that they already make CDs for less than vinal - the record companies are making a mint since they can get away with charging you more (think about it - they have a legal monopoly - no one else can come out and release a competing copy of the Stones at a lower price - I think Nader could win lots of friends with a price fixing suit here :-). You can spin CDs for under $2.50 each (plus mastering costs - in the $1000 range) for quantities around 100 units - the only catch is that not every machine has a CD drive in it - so you can't depend on it. Think about all the really LARGE applications that are not practical with 50 floppies you can just bet that 1 of them is a dud .... Paul -- Paul Campbell UUCP: ..!mtxinu!taniwha!paul AppleLink: CAMPBELL.P "The current plan is to replace the flag with one with alternating vertical black and white stripes of varying widths - this is thought to better represent the country's system of government ..."