Recordable DVD Drives around the corner. Hang in there...
From the NY Times
January 11, 2001
Onboard DVD-R Drive Option Another First for Apple
By DAVID POGUE
Like most computer makers, Apple Computer has been hit hard by the recent decline of the home computer market. But the company is coming off the ropes swinging, using this week's Macworld Expo in San Francisco as an opportunity to unveil not only its new product line, but also its strategy for the future: to serve as the premier hub for the digital gizmos we carry around these days, like MP3 players, digital cameras and camcorders, Palm devices and DVD players.
A cornerstone of this "digital hub" strategy is what Apple calls the SuperDrive, the first recordable DVD drive ever to appear in a personal computer. This drive will be an option in the company's new, top-of-the-line Power Macintosh model, which will reach the marketplace in late February. The drive, which combines a DVD player, DVD recorder and CD-RW drive, can burn video discs that play in any standard consumer DVD player, a feat that used to require a specialized $5,000 burner unit from Pioneer. (Pioneer manufactures Apple's new drive, which will also be available in upcoming Compaq PC's.)
But burning a DVD is only half the battle; somebody still has to convert your digital movies into the DVD format and design the menu system (to be operated by the viewer's remote control). For this purpose, Apple includes a new program called iDVD, which brings iMovie-like simplicity to the act of designing a menu system and encoding digital home movies into DVD format. Chief among iDVD's virtues is its encoding speed: it takes two hours to prepare one hour of video, a vast improvement over the all-day wait required by its $2,500 pro-level rivals.
Apple also took the wraps off iTunes, a free program designed to make quick work of turning songs from your audio CD's into MP3 files on your hard drive. From there, it can record custom audio CDs, using either the SuperDrive or, when the company releases the necessary plug-ins, a standard CD burner.
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