— unpredictable thoughts

Apple developing mini-disc adapter

I read an arti­cle this morn­ing at AppleIn­sider about Apple devel­op­ing a mini disk adapter. I see the need for sav­ing money. I actu­ally see the rea­son for skip­ping using a CD at all. The story goes around in a cir­cle and never really answers any ques­tions. If you are going to ship an adapter with every disk; why not just send the big­ger disk? The real ques­tion that needs to be answered is : How do you make an adapter avail­able that you don’t have to send with each disc?

Sounds like Apple needs some design help here. What is your idea?

Here’s some excerpts from this silly mess.

“In such sit­u­a­tions it would be advan­ta­geous to use a reduced diam­e­ter (lower stor­age capac­ity) disc,” Fadell explained. “Such advan­tages include reduced ship­ping costs, reduced pro­duc­tion costs, etc.”

The iPod chief pointed out that one cur­rently avail­able solu­tion to using reduced diam­e­ter discs in slot dri­ves is that of a rigid adapter that when used in con­junc­tion with the reduced diam­e­ter disc enables a disc player to accept and play the reduced diam­e­ter disc.

“How­ever, this solu­tion does noth­ing to reduce ship­ping costs since the rigid adapter (with its larger foot­print) must be shipped with the reduced diam­e­ter disc and there­fore a stan­dard sized ship­ping con­tainer must be used to accom­mo­date both the rigid adapter and reduced diam­e­ter disc,” he wrote. “What is needes is a cost effec­tive method and appa­ra­tus for ship­ping reduced diam­e­ter discs that assures the end user will be able to use the reduced diam­e­ter disc in a slot drive designed exclu­sively for a stan­dard diam­e­ter disc.”

There­fore, Fadell’s inven­tion calls for a “com­pactable mem­ory disc adapter” that can be shipped in a com­pact form and expanded by the cus­tomer once extracted from the retail pack­ag­ing. It could then be fit­ted around the edges of a 8cm mini-disc, effec­tively allow­ing for the reduced diam­e­ter disc to play in a slot inter­face designed exclu­sively for stan­dard 12cm diam­e­ter discs.

AppleIn­sider | Apple devel­op­ing mini-disc adapter for slot-loading drives

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Tags: apple, cd, adapter, design, green, sus­tain­able, technology