Apple Says PC Makers "Afraid" To Drop Old Technology

Apple has always been about streamlining their product lineups, and they recently did that by switching to solid state storage and slowly getting rid of optical drives in their computers. In an interview with Time, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said that PC manufacturers "are afraid" to do the same.

Schiller says that "these old technologies" are holding the company back and are simply just "anchors" that are weighing down Apple and preventing them from going where they want to go. He continues by saying that technologies and hardware like optical drives are no longer useful and have completes their purpose, but Windows PC manufacturers are "afraid to remove them."

A lot of users thought Apple would eventually upgrade the optical drives in Macs to Blu-ray drives, but the company has done exactly the opposite by removing optical drives completely. Even some people thought that Apple might introduce cheaper Macs, but the company released the iPad instead, which has been chipping away at PC sales since its release.

Speaking of cheaper computers, Schiller referenced the once popular trend of netbooks, and noted that Apple didn't want to build a netbook of their own because they were simply substandard products to begin with and weren't the future of computing. Although, some say that the MacBook Air line is the company's response to netbooks, especially the 11-inch model, but Apple claims it as simply a thinner and lighter laptop.

[via Time]