3DTVs: A revolution in Entertainment
January 24, 2008 2:15 PM PST
MacBookAir Remote Disc doesn't work for watching DVDs, playing/importing music
Thursday, January 24th
Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, one of the lucky few to already have his hands on the optical drive-less MacBook Air, tested the notebook's "Remote Disc" function -- which lets you "borrow" the optical drive in a nearby computer -- and found that it doesn't work for:
"Installing Windows on your Mac, for watching DVDs, or for playing or importing music."
As previously confirmed with Apple, the MacBook Air is the first Mac to support wireless network booting (netboot). This functionality works in conjunction with the "Remote Disc" feature, allowing the MacBook Air to boot from, for instance, Mac OS X Install discs that are inserted in other computers' optical drives.
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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Don't anthropomorphize computers.
They hate that.
Unless you are an idiot then you would have realised there must be limitations in the Remote Drive feature else they wouldn't have bothered telling us about the external drive that is available. He wasn't hiding anything, just not pointing out the flaws - which to be honest would have been an idiotic thing to do, who points out the flaws in something if they are trying to sell it. The MacBook Air is an incredible piece of engineering, not having an optical drive is really not that important - Plenty of computers don't have Optical drives - PDAs, iPods, Tablets to name just a few.
The MacBook Air is a niche product, even for Apple. It is strictly intended as a <i>secondary</i> machine to take a subset of your work on the road in a lightweight, powerful package. It may not be right for you, it will not be right for most of us. However, for its designed purpose the machine is an elegant solution. Just because it is not perfect for you is no reason the cuss about it. Such statements are inflamatory and speak of a horrendously narrow view of the world at large. I have no problem with you ranting about how this particular feature disappoints you or even a discussion of what you think are the products flaws in general. As for this statement, though, don't waste my time showing off your ignorance.
Back on point, I am not disappointed in the inability to watch DVDs with this feature. Such an ability is not typically a business function and in any case is only a necessity for copyright protected material. Non-DRMed media can be converted to a standard file format (MP3, MP4, AVI, WMV, MPG, MOV and so on) on your main workhorse. The ability to stream DRMed media could be considered a huge work around for such protections and may be legally tenuous as a way to break copy protection which is, under the DCMA, a Federal act of piracy and thus illegal. Since you can still transfer other types of media files (iTunes/iPod compatible movie files for example) you still have the option to take your legally portable media on the road.
I am disappointed that you cannot install Windows via this method as this <i>is</i> typically a business function. Not knowing how M$ protects its copyrights, though, I am not totally surprised (see above). If this feature also will not install Office, or other Mac specific software, then it becomes a major problem. No evidence of that for now, though.
Finally, this is a dot-zero release of software. I don't expect a fix for the DVD thing for the reasons I have already stated. Apple is becoming a larger market for M$ than ever before, so perhaps they will be able to work out the Windows install issue. After all, M$ would love to sell a retail copy of Windows to every Mac owner out there. Surprisingly few people realize this but in the late 80's/early 90's Mac users like myself ended up (unknowingly) funding a major portion of the developpment of Windows. How? Why? Because at that time Word and Excel were being sold for the Mac and we bought them. Anyone with a memory at M$ (of course with Bill gone there may be none with that historical background left) will know that the more they embrace the Mac community, the more money they make. Thus I would not be surprised at all if a future version of Air Disk or an update to Boot Camp/Leopard made this function work.
Copy the contents of the remote DVD to a folder on your MacBook Air's hard drive, then you can use DVD Player to open and play the contents of the folder. When you're done watching the DVD, just throw away the folder.
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- by rexslate January 24, 2008 9:27 PM PST
- <class="merchant"><span>></span><div class="datestamp"><i>This is a reply to a previous comment by Hillstones</i></div></class><br />
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(6 Comments)For those of you who are not so familiar with Apple's history in similar attempts to minimize notebooks, the PowerBook Duo line was produced from October 1992 until early 1997 in seven incarnations, the last with a PowerPC processor. These notebooks had only one external port: a serial printer/appletalk port (or an internal modem as a paid option). To use other externals, one had to connect an optional external dock to the notebook's built in dock connector. In so doing one could then add an external floppy, external hard drive, external monitor, headphones etc. The goal was to produce a super compact notebook for the road, which could then be set into a dock at home, there to be used as either a desktop computer or to exchange data: to install programs, up or download data, to be put into target disk mode, etc.
These were Apple's MacBook Airs of the 1990's. Were they for everyone? Absolutely not! But back then as today, it was evidence of Apple's cutting edge technology, in producing a computer for a special class of customers, those who desired an ultra small/light notebook, to be used on the road and to be cared for and fed at home. There was a market back then for such notebooks, and I would assume there is also today.
Don't be overly critical. Apple has not slashed out any computer line. They have just added a new concept to a new line of notebooks. Or was that really an old concept newly reintroduced?
Rex