Here’s a quote from a recent issue of Nature

InPhase, a holographic-technology company based in Longmont, Colorado, is marketing a disk that is similar in size to a standard CD but can store 200 gigabytes—a 200-fold improvement on optical CD technology.

Opinions? Will Apple be implementing this technology anytime soon, or maybe it’s out of their league…?

I doubt they’d push it until others took up the standard, and I don’t see that happening until there’s a real USE for that much storage.  Heck, I’ve had a DVD-ROM for over 3 years, and I’ve yet to own a data DVD.

Apple is pretty good for adoping things before they are a standard, and making them become a standard.  Like Airport, Firewire, DVD recordable disks (both RAM and DVD-R’s) and even USB.  All these things became MUCH more main stream AFTER apple adopted them.

As far as using this technology, well, it all depends on how well it works.  Even if I had a CD that could hold 200 Gigs, it would be worthless with existing techology because it would take SO long to write a disc.  CD’s are too slow. It would take forever to write and read and find data on the disc.  If there is some other technology going along with this to make it realistic, then great, and then I could also see Apple adopting it.  It all depends on what all is involved.

I think both Alphax and Jon Stanard made good points. 

First, how many people really need that kind of massive storage on a removable disk.  This the exception of a few games, nothing I’ve looked at software wise needed more than 1 CD worth of information.  People who need more storage than that typically use DVDs.

Second, current writing technology is pushing the data transfer rates on many home machines.  I’m not 100% sure that this is an issue for Macs, but ask any techie who has worked with PCs if they get much more than 16x out of a CD burner, and they will tell you no, because it is buffer underrunning too often.  This is not a limit of CD technology, but the fact that you rarely see drives mose faster than 50x is.  The discs can’t take it.  Eventually, how much data you can fit into the same area will hit its limit as well.  Eventually a more efficient design than optical disks must be found.