Seth Weintraub pitches an interesting idea in Computer World:
… I think the SD card is going to replace the DVD drive on most of Apple’s laptops going forward. If you really need a DVD, you’ll be able to buy an external USB Superdrive – but that option will mostly be a safety net.
Remember when Apple killed the floppy with the iMac? This will be the same thing. You could buy external floppy but how many of you really did?
Think about it. What would you rather have on your laptop? An easily rewritable 32GB SD card the size of a postage stamp that can hold about the same amount of data as 8 DVDs or a big spinning disk that can scratch easily and takes up about 1/4th of the internal usable area in your laptop?…
Right now the cost per GB storage is in favour of the DVD (SD cards are about 20 – 30 times more expensive per GB), but SDXC cards were announced earlier this year, which will offer up to 2 TB of storage on a single card. The price per GB will certainly drop as larger cards arrive on the market. Apart from the obvious advantages for laptop manufacturers (more space for other peripherals or a larger battery), it would enable people with large collections of data – movies and music – to save a huge amount of shelf space, and allow use of storage which is smaller and more robust than external hard disks.
I think Seth is right: Apple has often moved ahead of the pack when new technology has become available, and this idea is very attractive both for Apple and their users.
