On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 01:39, LuKreme <[email protected]> wrote: > > You don’t need to go with a full fledged thumb drive with a cover and a case > around it. You need a USB connector and a bit of Flash memory and that’s it. > You can get those made for about $1 I’d bet. Even if you’re Apple and you > want to to it ‘right’ and make it look like an Apple thing, you’re probably > not looking at more than $2.
It's still more expensive than DVD pressing. I doubt there are many companies around that are going to say, "It's only four times as expensive." And as an aside here, network transfer blows them both out of the water. > Right, but 1) they are not buying ‘blank’ DVDs, they are buying DVD blanks > (Sound like the same thing, isn’t at all the same thing) for a pressing > machine (that is, the drives aren’t burned like a DRD writer, they are > pressed) and those machines are EXPENSIVE. Apple doesn't need to buy the machines, just like they don't need to assemble the blanks, or the Flash media. The prices I've seen indicate that bulk DVD production is very much cheaper. No where near the $1-2 we've been tossing around. Even the bare minimum media seems like it'd fall out around $6-8. If it was so much cheaper to produce "a USB connector and a bit of Flash memory", why can't I buy one of these for personal use? I'd love a drive in the form factor of Apple's recovery sticks. > Once the discs are pressed, they are useless for anything else. the software > cannot be updated. Excess inventory must be destroyed. I'd be hesitant to assume Apple is updating the Flash media. It seems to me that it'd be more expensive to return those to the factory that loaded them to be updated. But then again, I don't know what the process is or who Apple uses for this or if they do things themselves. If it really is an army of unpaid interns loading and updating Flash media with whatever the latest OS release is, it very well could be a bit more economical for them. > There’s a lot more costs involved that the simple manufacturing costs: > shipping, storage, warehousing, distribution, and shelf space are all > considerations, not to mention the WORM aspect of the DVD pressing. Don't all those same things apply to Flash media? What is WORM? (The Googles do nothing.) > Sure, network is going to be the best option. But now that you’ve moved > everyone you can to network distribution, what is the best option for > everyone else? Is it a DVD pressing or a USB stick? This is basically what I've been saying. (Perhaps poorly?) > I say the many advantages to the USB thumb drive outweigh the cost factor for > DVDs. I think this is only true once you've ditched optical drives. Apple computers that have optical drives still ship with DVD media as far as I'm aware. The machines that they did ship USB drives with because they didn't have optical drives have even dropped the recovery media in favor of network transfer. I'm having a hard time seeing an argument that says Apple has taken the more expensive route for fun. Or that they did so when the Air came with a USB stick. Overall, I'm drawing a distinction between software and entertainment media because that's where Apple draws a line. Apple now has both covered, so both are dead in a physical form. Software media has been dead for a while now. The hoards of existing physical entertainment media are still useful and won't be replaced as fast as software media, but the transition is going on there as well. When Apple dropped the floppy, how many users installed software from a CD? (I may not be remembering things very well, but I don't remember any software that did so. Maybe Photoshop was just starting to transition to this?) That the Internet makes things easier is a point in favor of the transition timeline, not against it. -- arno s hautala /-| [email protected] pgp b2c9d448 _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
