Why the All-new 2011 Mac Mini Doesn't Need an Optical Drive

The all-new Mac Mini desktop PC recently hit store shelves and to the surprise of many consumers, the new Mac Mini is lacking an optical CD, DVD, and/or Blu-ray disc drive. It appears that Apple is over optical drives and following are several reasons why you'll be able to survive without an optical drive on the new Mac Mini.

At $599-$999 the new Mac Mini desktop PC are loaded with great features like the Mac OS X Lion operating system and Thunderbolt support and is packing supped up Intel Core i5 processors and other hardware upgrades. Looking at the price of the 2011 Mac Mini and the great features and hardware that it features, it's shocking that the new Mac Mini did away with its optical drive.

It may seem a bit too forward looking, but regardless of if you perceive optical discs as being dead or on their last leg, the Mac Mini should be able to fair very well without the use of disc drive. As streaming and remote desktop services expand the use of the Cloud, owning software, movies, music, and other forms of data is becoming a thing of the past and renting over buying is becoming a new sweeping tech trend.

Most of the functions that discs served are becoming outdated (burning media, loading software, playing movies and music, etc.) and modern computer users are more likely to download or stream movies and music instead of burning them to discs, software is more commonly download from app stores instead of being loaded from optical discs, and even using discs to backup media is being phased out for more efficient methods.

Streaming services, remote cloud access, app stores, USB drives, and external hard drives have made optical discs somewhat obsolete. Apple is great at spotting future trends and are helping to bring on the end of optical discs by making a statement with the new 2011 Mac Mini. Within the last twenty years we've seen the end of D drive discs, 3 ½ inch floppy discs, Zip drives, and other popular storage units and circular discs are now being added to the pile of obsolete storage devices.