Jobs Confirms No CD-R/W For OS X, Says Updates On The Way

by , 3:10 PM EST, March 21st, 2001

C|Net has published a report on Apple's press event in Cupertino that deals with some issues near and dear to many would-be Mac OS X users hearts. According to the report, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, confirmed reports broke by another C|Net report that OS X final would not support burning CD-R or CD-RW disks despite the fact that burning your own CDs is at the center of Apple's current marketing campaign. According to the C|Net report:

Putting an operating system together takes time, Jobs said. Companies can wait until everything is perfect or get out early versions and obtain feedback.

"With an OS, only the latter is viable," he said.

Apple, for instance, came to a crossroads on CD recording a few months ago, Jobs said. The company effectively had to decide between having its development teams concentrate on adding a feature into Mac OS X that would let the operating system record CDs on Apple's own CD drives, or adding support for third-party CD burners into Mac OS 9.1, the company's current OS.

The report also says that Apple will be releasing updates next month for CD-R/W capabilities and sometime this Spring for DVD playback capabilities.

This is an excellent report, and there is more information that we did not quote. We recommend it.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Faced with support in OS 9.1 for third party CD-RW support and support for the feature in OS X, Apple made the right decision. Remember that OS 9.1 is the OS shipping in Apple's current hardware offerings. However, we find it strange that Apple was faced that sort of either/or decision. With the importance the company is placing on burning CDs and iTunes, this backseat driver thinks they would have dedicated more assets to being able to offer the feature in both OSs!

That said, because of that very importance, there must have therefore been a compelling reason why Apple made this decision. Not being privy to all the information, we will have to accept that.

In any event, not being able to burn CDs might be a reason for some people to wait before buying OS X, but we think that most early adopters will still want to do so. Mac OS X is a great OS, even without the missing features. Once the updates comes, even those issues will be quickly behind us. It's been a LONG wait for OS X, and we can deal with these little speed bumps.

C|Net Report