No Disk Drive on the new iMacs
I recently got a new iMac..Gawgeous!!! The only thing I was a little iffy about was that it doesn’t have a disk drive. My main use for the drive was burning CDs with pictures in order to have them printed. And I have also made disks of pictures for others, like my Mom. So, my immediate reaction was one of panic. But as I think about it, the ease with which I can get photos to a thumb drive is equal to that of a disk. Plugging in the thumb drive, the iMac recognizes the external device just like it does a camera. And dragging the pictures from iPhoto to the Open Finder window is a snap. You can then take your thumb drive to any photo kiosk, at which time you can burn a disk there, if you are so inclined.
But other printing options present themselves too. Shucks, you can send photos out for printing right out of iPhoto to Apple and have them mailed to your door. You can email your pictures to a place like Target or Walmart from home and go pick them up. (I’ve never done that so I don’t know if they can be mailed to you instead). I’m at Target twice a week anyway so no big deal to pick them up! Or, you can print your photos at home on your printer! Depending on how many you print, ink and photo paper costs could add up. That leads me to think about eventually not printing many individual pictures at all. As a matter of fact, I just received the Photo Book that I made in iPhoto.
78 pages of family and friend adventures from 2012, all beautifully displayed in a bound, hardcover book. I plan on doing that for myself every year now. Let’s face it, my plans to scrapbook were a bit ambitious. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
The other drive issue is movie watching or listening to music. You can buy an external disk drive that plugs into your Mac to watch or listen to disks you already have. But the truth is that music and movies are being downloaded more and more. Apple certainly doesn’t make it difficult to buy movies and music on iTunes and your purchase is available on all of your devices.
What started out as panic about a change I didn’t choose to make, has turned into a learning experience and a realization that change isn’t limiting. So profound for a tech tip, isn’t it? Now I have to do things a different way but my options are many. I think for me there are many instances where I don’t know what I don’t know, ya’ know? That is what prompts my tech tips and my quest to learn just little bit (byte!) of new information every week and share it with you.