Windows 8 & New Macs: No Love for DVD

DVD Playback/Burning No Longer Supported

The future according to Apple/Windows is in the cloud, not those house-cluttering DVD's/CD's/Blue-Ray discs.

Windows 8 will launch without DVD playback (Article)

"I cannot find iDVD on my new mac" (Apple Support Thread)

Why is there no iDVD on my new Mac? (highlights from this post)

Apple insists that the entire world has access to fast broadband (and are prepared to pay for the considerable bandwidth usage) and wants to distribute home movies to friends and relatives via download (iCloud, YouTube, Facebook, whatever) rather than mailing them a DVD. The fact that in reality not all users do, has so far had no effect on this policy.

Whilst Macs with a Superdrive continue to be able to burn video DVDs, the software for so doing, iDVD, is no longer included in the iLife bundle that comes with OS 10.7 Lion (which also omitted iWeb) or will come with OS 10.8 Mountain Lion. And it is no longer included in the iLife 11 from the online Apple Store:http://www.apple.com/ilife/. Your only solution is to look on Amazon or eBay and try to get an older version that includes iDVD 7, i.e. iLife version 9 onwards. You should also do this if you plan to buy a new Mac anytime soon, as stocks of iLife that include iDVD will not be available for ever.

And if you think Microsoft are any better, their new Windows 8 operating system will not play DVDs, or burn them, unless customers buy an extra upgrade, the company has announced: http://www.gizmag.com/windows-8-no-dvd-playback/22443/

In other words, computer manufacturers have declared optical media as dead, long before consumers are ready to stop using them, which is fine as long as they offered us a choice, but they won’t even do that. Flexibility and intuitive use of a computer seems to be a thing of the past.

When I received my new MacBook a few months back, I was very excited about the possibilities of video editing using iMovie.  When I was done with the first edit, I was rather frustrated trying to find iDVD.... then more so when I discovered that it was not included.  Especially since iDVD is my preferred DVD burning software.

It seems like the push to cloud-based storage is not something we will all have to do, regardless of financial situations, and weather we want it or not.

Walmart is anticipating this, and is trying to lead the charge to get everyone in on the conversion process:

So what are your thoughts on this?  Leave comments below.