Apple Hype and 'Killing' the optical drive

The optical drive has been functionally dead to most people for a while. Apple feels the need to laud about it. When was the last time I used an optical drive on a computer? The last time I installed Linux. That was only because it didn't come preinstalled, and I very well could have installed it off a USB key.

Big deal. It's not news to me, but the mainstream media fawns over the announcement. It'd better be a slow news day....

I custom-built a computer before Apple released the original iMac and guess what: it didn't have a floppy drive because I didn't feel the need for one (what with the optimal solution to a broken copy of (*shudder*) Windows 98 being nuke it from orbit: what would I need a floppy drive for?).

For that matter, I can't remember the last time I installed something off a USB drive that I couldn't have downloaded from the internet. Even StarCraft. Can you say steam, mac users? How about sudo aptitude install apache2?.

Yeah, that's right. The rest of the world beat you to the punch. The "App Store" is nothing new, just another derivative rip-off of something that someone else did which Apple will have the audacity to claim that everyone else ripped off from them.

If I had a nickel for every time I've typed aptitude or apt-get I'd be richer than Steve Jobs.

And before anybody asks: Yes, they get even smaller than that....