Okay, I doubt Apple’s announcement of its new machines are going to do the company’s bottom line much good, but on the other hand it is nice to see Steve Jobs stick with plans to offer a DVD-R drive. Currently there are half a dozen different proposals for DVD recordable drives out there and the standards war has really helped keep these drives from finding a mass market.
Apple’s decision should help change that. And they picked the right standard, DVD-R. Most of the other DVD recordable formats can’t simply be played in a consumer DVD machine. The DVD-R format, however, will play in a standard DVD player.
Apple is going to use a Pioneer DVD-R drive, and it should cost about $1,000 initially. That is way too high for broad appeal, but the price of these drives should fall in much the same pattern as the prices of CD-R drives fell.