Apple phasing out its last SuperDrive-equipped Mac?

It appears the 13" non-Retina MacBook Pro, introduced some 7 years ago alongside a 15" and 17" non-Retina model, seems to be getting pulled from store shelves. The model, the last Mac equipped with an optical drive (the standard DVDRW SuperDrive), is still on sale at Apple's online store for the moment, but replacement with an updated equivalent model seems unlikely.

Given the fact that Apple currently has the MacBook, MacBook Air, and a retina 13" MacBook Pro all crowding out its lower-end offerings, the death of the antiquated non-Retina model seemed inevitable. Older technology, lower battery life, and a less-impressive display stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the more recently updated (but still languishing) Mac models in the rest of the lineup. For its part, Apple hasn't directly commented on the end of production of the model, but this falls in line with the way the company has retired other models before.

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Apple has been phasing out the optical drive since 2011 and 2012, when its Mac Pro, Mac Mini, and newer MacBook Pro models opted for smaller frames which excluded space for said storage medium. With the introduction of the MacBook Air, Apple made an external SuperDrive an available option for those who needed it. No iteration of the SuperDrive (internal or external, slim or half-height) ever saw support for Blu-ray (or HD-DVD), and with this latest move, it seems as though you'll definitely be getting a 3rd-party device if you want any support for the high-def formats.

The outgoing non-retina 13" MBP was also the last notebook model with an easily accessible/replaceable standard notebook SATA hard drive & user-upgradable RAM; since the newer computers have come about, Apple has toyed with proprietary SSDs, sometimes integrated into the mainboard of the computer alongside the set amount of RAM.

If you want a computer with a built-in optical drive, you'll have to look to one of the (dwindling) list of Windows PCs available with it.

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The future is on your flash drive, in the cloud, and accessible on your phone and tablet. It is not modular, and any upgrades require an entirely new machine.

[Sources: TheNextWeb, AppleInsider]

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