Did Apple forget it still sells this!?
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2024
- Apple still sells an optical drive and it hasn't changed in 15 years. It isn't USBc and Apple doesn't even list the tech specs for it on the product, like what medias it supports, or it's read write speeds although you can find this info on things like Apple related Wikis. Worst of all they charge $79 for it.
/ dmug
0:00 Intro
0:52 (Travel) Welcome to the sunny Oregon Coast
2:02 SuperDrive
3:18 (Travel) The fine breweries of Astoria
3:36 The SuperDrive still works but isn't perfect
4:23 Disk burning options
5:28 There's plenty of cheap options
5:58 Remember DVD+-RW media?
6:22 Remember owning media?
Usually in my videos I like to place the hardware I'm talking about in beautiful locations but I wanted to branch out and talk briefly about the beautiful location I'm visiting. There's so much to say about Astoria, as also was captured by the British during the war of 1812 and renamed to Fort George before being returned to the US and one of the two locations where Japan attacked the United States during WW2 when a Japanese submarine fired on Fort Stevens. As a history dork, with an affinity for the PNW, Astoria is steeped with history.
Apple SuperDrive (Apple Wiki)
apple.fandom.com/wiki/Apple_U...
Burn (Open Source disk burner)
sourceforge.net/projects/burn...
New Astoria brewery Obelisk Beer Co. is an Oak-inspired monument to Slow Beer
newschoolbeer.com/home/2022/1... - Наука та технологія
You can also find “generic” versions of this drive - almost exactly the same but with no Apple branding and slightly different firmware (I have one I bought from eBay not too long ago). If you connect the Apple SuperDrive to a Windows or Linux box it won’t allow you to insert a disc because the firmware expects a series of SCSI commands to initialise the drive which the Mac sends when the USB connection is established but other OSs don’t. For Linux there are easy workarounds and I gather there are for Windows as well. The generic versions obviously work with PCs out of the box.
I didn’t even think to try it in windows with my Mac Pro 2019. Interesting.
i use my superdrive with my windows 10 pc every day, no issues and no boot camp lol
the "fix" is to extract the driver form the itunes installer in windows, and then you install that driver and you can use it
you can also extract the ODD driver from the bootcamp support files
Thought it was due to the power output on the Apple USB compared to PCs?
Crazy, this weekend I tackled a long overdue todo of going through a stack of DVD-RWs I had used for recording off of TV via a DVD recording deck, dating from the 00s. And, several months ago, I specifically bought a used Apple Superdrive to be ready for the project and for ripping several old music CDs I have in a box in the garage. I did think to myself, yeah, I don't really see me using DVD-RWs, but I'll keep a special like new blank/erased set just in case. The level of censorship is extremely troubling. It's like erasing history, obscuring popular culture.
Yeah burned disks are starting to rot. Good move copying them and yeah, it sucks in the streaming era that TV shows get censored or edited. I felt like we had this debate when George Lucas kept re-editing Star Wars and got a lot of flack for it and ET had its guns replaced with walkie talkies but here we are again.
The most common editing is music because of licenses, which really sucks as it can change the tenor or implications of a scene, especially if lyrics or song content/meaning is part of a gag or symbolism. My brother formerly working in Hollywood is the reason why I know Scrubs, That Seventies Show and Wonder Years have had significant music changes. Often changes between multiple releases from broadcast, like DVD vs Blu Ray music changing and then again for streaming.
@@dmug That's very interesting. Having inside knowledge of issues that comes up is always revealing. I'm baffled by Spielberg's self-censoring to appease.
I remember Wonder Years when it first aired, for me it was the music they were playing that was the allure.
This changing of songs, or a combination of censoring and business related copyrights, licensing issues, etc. also happened with the 80s TV sitcom 'Bosom Buddies' and 'Love at First Bite (1979)' when both hit the DVD market.
The music that we heard on mediums like records, tapes, etc. appeared in movies then the movie would relate to the public, a kind of popular cultural thing that would connect the film's stories, characters, to the viewer. Just pointing out the power of music overall.
Thanks for your reply!
I bought one last year. I went to my local Apple Store and the staff had no idea what I was talking about. I ended up going the John Lewis (large department store chain in the UK) and they had a customer return one going cheap - so got that. So the answer the question on the thumbnail, no Apple don’t know they still sell it. 😂
Although it works well, it needs to be plugged directly into a Mac. Thankfully USB A to C adapters work, but as you found, you can’t connect this via a hub for some reason, which is a pain. Anyway, I finished ripping all my DVDs and CDs (about 500 discs in total), so I probably won’t use it again.
I bought a cheap one before and it felt cheap, made a lot of noise and intimately stopped working. If this SuperDrive had a removable cable allowing for a USB C cable to be used, and it wasn’t fussy about hubs, it would prefect.
i would never believe, that video about external cd/dvd drive would be so fun to watch
When a disc is stuck in the drive, you can force-eject it: reboot your Mac and hold down the trackpad or mouse button while it restarts. That should force the drive to eject the stuck disc.
It only works for a soft-stuck, but not a hard-stuck resulting from a physical jam.
I have my original from 2008, use it regularly, still use it with current gen MacBook Pro, works great!
Congratulations on this video getting so much attention. Keep up the great work, I love your content!
Thank you for watching, glad people enjoy my hamfisted video
I still have this drive bought it with 1gen MacBook air it was so useful over the years you can also use it on windows with boot camp drivers
Your b-roll footage is always awesome!
Trying to make that more of a thing when possible.
Don't worry about making vlog type videos, we enjoy you caractère and you make great content as well as a teaching lot of things so Its not a problem at all for most I guess !
Hey, a small technical clarification about Apple's oldest product. The 2003 Apple 30-pin to USB cable was actually thicker than the current one. It only changed to that thinner one they sell now with the original iPhone, so that puts it around 2007. Still older than the SuperDrive, but only by a year.
Oh interesting, I didn’t think about the old larger head 30 pin vs the shorter head 30 pin.
Apple didn’t switch from the 30 pin dock connector to the Lightning connector until the iPhone 5
@@dmugthe Lightning connector only has 8 pins. It looks like more because their are eight on each side. But one side is a duplicate of the other so it can be inserted in either direction.
It’s not widely known that the dock connector originally carried a FireWire signal but early on switched to carrying a USB signal.
There are three revisions of the 30-pin connector from what I've gathered. My 6th gen iPod (Classic) still has the oldest style of 30-pin connector, even though it's newer than the first iPhone. I'm not quite sure how old it is, but as it's an 80GB it must be either late 2007 or early-mid 2008. The "current" version, with the rectangular USB connector, came out with the iPhone 4 in 2010.
So the Superdrive must be the oldest product in Apple's current line-up if there haven't been any revisions to it, although I suspect its USB connector may also have changed around the same time. I also wouldn't be surprised if the original Superdrives still used an IDE drive internally, as that's what 2008 MacBooks used.
@@SterkeYerke5555 I watched some unboxings of the original iPhone and iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 1G, they were using the short-end 30-pin connector, but you're right that the USB-part is slightly rounded.
Cool vid!
The popular idea that optical media is obsolete is a bit silly. Not only is it a physical disk that you own and cannot be dispossessed of on a whim (which you did mention), but as archival media, blu-ray disks and dvds (the archival grades) seem to be one of the better options for the consumer, at least relatively speaking. Hard drives are complex and can fail spontaneously, as can solid state memory. Modern LTO Ultrium tape drives are too expensive (at least for me). What else is there?
For an Apple device that price doesn’t seem too bad but it’s cheaper to make one yourself. I still have decent Blu-ray external drives that I salvaged from old and scrapped laptops. I would put them inside those cheap enclosures from eBay or Amazon and make it external which only cost a few quid and they usually worked fine with my Macs even for booting MacOS installation discs from. Those were the days when tech was easy to modify yourself. I kinda miss those days but Apple Silicon machines are much simpler than constantly tinkering with a Mac Pro. 😂
I just wish apple products were more easily repaired and such. But yeah, things are simpler.
I bought an old broken Dell laptop that had a Blu-ray drive for pennies and bought an external USB enclosure for the optical drive for about $20 on amazon
I was totally caught off guard after seeing you visited my home city of Astoria. Always strange when the internet intrudes in your backyard 😅
Yeah, I'm a coastal native but the southern end of the Oregon coast. I had an ex-GF from college from Warrington. I always liked that entire area. When it makes sense I'd like to hit some other smaller Oregon towns in videos like Sisters, Jacksonville, Yachats, Silverton, Joseph, Hood River, and such.
Now we need a retro review of Toast. Because I don’t think anyone bothered to review a CD burning app for Mac in over 20 years.
As fun as that'd be, probably wouldn't get hardly any views as I don't have a large enough audience for that sort of content. I won't say, never, but unlikely.
you can force eject discs with the super drive just hole down the spacebar on startup of your machine
That isn't the same as a true hardware force eject. There's several people in the comments who've complained about stuck disks.
Living in Nova Scotia now but great memories of vacationing ( and drinking) down the Oregon Coast. Thanks for the memories.
I still got one as well. It's recognized as a MacBook Air SuperDrive and works fine with Windows as well. You can open it, there is a regular Drive inside. Maybe you can change the cable there? There is a little Board on the back with a regular internal Drive connection
You live in such a beautiful part of the world. It’s so different to where I live in the north of the UK.
Thanks, the Pacific Northwest is 'huge but I don't think most people ever think much about it outside of the US or Canada as it's a place that has massive forests, rain, and rugged volcanic mountains. Oregon by itself is the same size as the entire UK, and we only have 4.5 million people here. It actually caused a bit of a kerfuffle in 2009 when Obama mentioned this fact to the Queen Elizabeth II. Also, the British did take over Astoria in 1812 so for the for briefest of periods, it was renamed to Fort George. I suppose he could have mentioned Washington, the state above named after George Washington is smaller than the UK. ;)
Ironically where I'm from is named after Bandon, Ireland, and even has gorse as a foreign invader brought over from Ireland. I realize all of Ireland ≠ the UK, but it is funny we have gorse. There's bits of British imprint up and down the PNW, as Captain Cook landed in Oregon near Cape Perpetua, and British Columbia is.... well, it's in the name.
I just bought one last month. I love it. It doesnt have to be fast or good, it just has to work and it does and I LOVE IT.
I bought one a few years ago. My Windows PC Blu-Ray drive died, I then built a new PC, and had a MacBook Air for more portable use, and decided that I'd give the Apple Superdrive a chance. I'm an audio nerd, and enjoy buying CD's yet so that I can get good lossless audio files for my music collection, so I use it around 30 to 40 times a year. I also have some old media saved on data CD's from my early 2000's years, and I enjoy the ability to carry some old projects and such with me to my new computers. I still have some High School projects from the late 1990's and early 2000's on my modern computers.
Testing the limits of my memory, but I think you ran into problems connecting it through some USB hubs because it draws more power then allowed under the USB 2 spec. The single USB port on the MacBook Air that it was released with output additional power for it.
I had one since 2010… still works.
I’ve order a SuperDrive recently and will be using it as a CD transport. It was super cheap also.
i have this, still comes in handy sometimes lol
Thank you, for posting this video about an old Apple device their external DVD super-drive. Sadly, I agree with most of your comments ... when Apple's stock of these DVD drives runs out sure that, they will stop selling them. As for myself, I am usually about 10-years behind when it come to Apple desktop systems. So, all of the Apple desktops and laptops in my collection had DVD drives until a couple of years ago. In 2021, I picked-up a used "space gray" trash can size Mac Pro 8-core/D-700/64GB/1TB SSD model and paired it with my already owned Apple 27-inch Cinema LED (none thunderbolt) display and everything has been working great. However, because it had no DVD drive, I ordered from Apple their external DVD super-drive unit to load my old software (i.e. iLife '09, iWorks '09, MS Office, etc.) and to watch TV and movie DVD's. Have always, wished Apple had made a Blue Ray DVD or some other HD format DVD external player (smile...smile).
Someone needs to order one of those Superdrives new and take them apart to see what manufacture date the drive has
Also don't forget unless they updated anything inside it's very finicky and requires being plugged directly into a port on a Mac. No hubs. I got one with an original MacBook Air that is like almost useless because it won't work on anything else. Most external optical drives are limited by power however there is some other limitations involved with the Apple version. Most will use a short USB cable due to the power issues however the optical drive should still work with a powered hub and Apple somehow prevents that.
I do have a cheap memorex tray loading “SuperDrive” for my iMac. I use it rarely though. It has weird two usb connectors.
I ditched my Superdrive from my MacBook Pro 13" mid 2012 when I decided to install a second big capacity HDD (2To).
I found an enclosure look-a-like to the Apple one and put the Superdrive in and I have to say that since then I maybe used it a couple of times but not much.
I absolutely did not know that it was still on the Apple site thanks for that reminder. 😉
Now I have to find one of your video to install a recent version of Mac OS on my good old boy running Mojave.
I kept my 2010 iMac going for way too long because of the disc drive. I still use CDs and having one if these super drives makes it work amazingly with my 2023 MacBook and with Apple Music
Surprised you didn’t try tearing it down making a play on “no disassemble”
These tend to not work right when connected to new Macs, particularly when connected to a USB hub
they might be outdated but dvd drives come handy now and again
Cool and still using Lighting for some gadgets.
Not sure what's the point of the Superdrive if it can't read Blu-Ray? :-)
Nothing beat an original physical copy, they should be at least in SD cards w/ the art like the Nintendo Switch.
God bless Apple.
Happy to see Burn getting some love. I work in tech support, and Burn's been my go-to for disc burning for years, because it's about the only thing that burns discs and ISOs without any issues (macOS and Disk Utility can be finicky with certain ISOs), runs on both Intel and PowerPC machines (if you use an older version that supports pre-macOS 10.9), and it's free. It also does excellent video DVD creation, converting your input video to MPEG-2 and then making a menuless DVD that just jumps straight into the video (unlike most commercial DVDs and blu-rays, which still make you sit through warnings and previews and the whole "mUltiMeDIa ExPEriEncE" menu nonsense like it's still 1996).
Yeah, I used to use Burn back in the day, and then rediscovered it when I made my video about running Mint Linux on a Black MacBook 2006 as Disk Utility couldn't burn a bootable linux ISO, which I totally forgot. I burned the DVD using an old version compatible with 10.6 just by guessing what date would be Snow Leopard compatible.
ua-cam.com/video/4sE70yh0AV4/v-deo.html
I'm new to vintage computing which is a totally weird thing to say as I lived through the era of pre-OS X, and even bought the Public Beta for OS X. There's a bunch of details that I've half forgotten.
I don't think I ever used it to burn DVDs with with video, I owned a version or two of Toast legally from bundles and not-so-legally over the years and thus didn't need burn nearly as much.
Personally I use balenaEtcher, which is available for OSX, Linux & Windows.
I just bought a Superdrive a week ago to backup my DVD’s. I have a huge DVD collection. Before that I was using a generic knockoff, but the real thing is so much better quality. I got mine on Amazon for $59.
I have a follow up that’s kinda tangentially related about a genetic blu ray drive that should be up in a week
I’m m a fan of optical discs for retro stuff. Like the 2010 Mac Mini that is the last Mini with a SuperDrive or Unibody MacBooks.
I have one of these SuperDrives, and I use it all the time to import CDs to my 2014 Mac mini or watch DVDs on my 2021 MacBook Pro. I just wish it supported Blu-ray too, because I have so many Blu-ray discs of stuff I specifically didn't want to buy from iTunes because it would have taken up wayyyy too much space on my computer(s).
That being said, I have a Blu-ray player that connects to a TV via HDMI-is it possible to use that HDMI passthrough thing to use it with my Mac?
You’d need a hdmi splitter or device remove the DRM on the bit stream then you’d want a USB to HDMI capture device. After that QuickTime or software like OBS would let you watch and even capture it.
I actually use one of these, and it works fine for most things. I'm also planning to get a BluRay one for data backup, specifically music, videos and photos, since they are "albums" and I don't need to move things into it.
I wish Apple updated it with USB-C and BluRay support.
I recently found a working one at our ewaste collection center... It's compact, yup. I'm guessing Apple made a lot of these, and the warehouse still has, well, a lot of those. I enjoyed the B-Roll (beer roll?) footage - especially after calling you out on the last one, LOL.
Yeah, I don’t intend to make every video a beer video. Next video most likely won’t but it’s fun to mix it up. If I can think of a way to thread it into the narrative, I will.
I feel like I had the right idea but could have done it better. I cut down the script a bit as I talked more about media types, archiving and specs but it really felt like padding to me. My b roll will continue to incorporate unusual for tech vids. If I’d stuck the plan of ripping the goonies while in Astoria, with the super drive, I think that’d worked. At the time I felt like I was doing too much Astoria.
I never even noticed they stil make them and stil sells them! As I got mine from a thrift store
wow i still have mine
I still have mine from 2013 and it’s been plugged in ever since. Maybe used it like 10 times in 10 years lol
i own this it's been a lifesaver a few times, just because its old it doesn't mean it's useless!
I bought one at a thrift store for $2 and it's been the best burning drive I have had - very very reliable as long as you never shake the table ect while burning so keep it stable always - probably like any burner - . Also Like any optical drive a disc will fail burning every so often - maybe a disc issue not sure - always check 'verify disc after burning' if you have sensitive data you want to keep. takes almost 2x longer but it's worth it . The next most reliable system for burning I have used on a Mac - is using a firewire connection with any type of PC DVD/CD burner inside the firewire ready carriage - the flexibility of being able to put in an LG - (insert general brand here) is a bonus so many available for dirt cheap. You can also daisy chain these types of burners and have a multi disc burn system
All my systems have an optical drive, mostly to rip tracks from music CDs.
Ever since I’ve been into vintage computers I’ve been slowly building a collection of DVDs because basically every G4 up through 2012 Mac can play them.
I gave all my DVDs years and years ago to my brother when sold my house to move to for work. I never had an amazing collection but if I had a lot of space, I'd probably start trying to grab Blu-Ray disks and random DVDs.
I started ripping all my dvds to iso files so I caneither burn them later or play it with something like vlc player and preserves the DVD menus with special features etc
Best way to archive, especially now that 20 TB HDD can hold roughly 2500 DVDs.
@@dmug yeah
So, there's a different way to look at this. While there is cheaper drives, this is actually one of the better ones for media playback. The cheap plastic drives are good for writing or installing, but for playback it's better to have a sturdier, heavier drive that will dampen vibrations and keep quiet.
If you want to play a CD or DVD, the Superdrive is very quiet. You'll barely hear it.
I have also one of those cheap Samsung external drives and it's noisier, and at high speeds the whole drive will start sliding.
So depending what you want your drive for, build quality can be very important. This is usually the case also with CD players and DVD players. The more you spend sometimes you get something with better construction. For example, I have a Panasonic DVD Player/recorder + HDD recorder, and while the image and sound is very good, you can hear the disc being read at playback speed. It's not ideal.
For Windows I have a Blu Ray drive, but I decided it would be better to get a full sized internal desktop drive and I put it in a high quality metal enclosure by OWC, and unlike even those expensive small Blu Ray external drives, it feels really high quality and handles very well without extra noise.
So actually, limitations aside, I'd highly recommend the Apple Super Drive.
i’ve still got mine, from 2010!
think you should've made the travel log abit longer, beautiful area
Thanks. This was an experimental vid as I have no idea how people would react to the unusual juxtaposition. I’ve sorta done this before with my LTT Backpack review and my two reviews of wallet AirTag competitors (one filmed in while hiking in the Oregon Badlands outside of Bend and the other while cross country skiing on Mt Hood). The difference is those didnt do really much narratively speaking with the location besides the LTT backpack with a brief detour to talk about forest fires.
I chickened out and cut down my script as I thought about using the dvd drive to watch the goonies, and I debated going to shipwreck of the Peter Iredale and the Louis and Clark recreation fort but it was kinda wedged in and I felt like maybe would bore people.
I’m trying to find a balance as I enjoy mixing my hobbies.
I luv optical media. It's cheap, so when I buy software online, I can burn a copy on a disc, so I have it handy, when I want to reinstall it later. Even if it isn't available anymore or I forget my login.
Further, I still own old games, When I install them, I cnan burn all the mods and compatibility patches on a disc and store it with the original game for later reinstallment in 15 years or so.
I don't have a cluttered harddrive somewhere with all those little things that I might loose if the drive fails. I just have CDs, DVDs and Bluerays.
I got one of these years ago and it looks great, but the first thing I found was it will not work unless plugged directly into the computer. At the time I had no free USB port on my iMac, so to use it I'd have to unplug something. Went back to using a Samsung DVD, which was like 1/3rd the cost and it still working over 10 years later. Meanwhile the Apple DVD is sitting in a draw.
Yep, discovered that same issue. I have it plugged into my Mac Pro 2019 as I have a 4 Port Sonnet Pro USB card but it's super annoying that it has to be direct to the card.
@@dmug Have you tried it on an externally powered USB hub?
i may buy a few from apple in the new year as you never know when unopened new old tech like drive by apple has stoped being sold as new
also it be intresting to see if it can be used on an iphone15pro
Why would anyone be surprised? If they are serious about compatibility like dvd’s or cd’s they’ll need to offer this still.
To be fair I often forget I bought one - it's sitting on top of my Mac Mini server just in case I need to import a CD to iTunes - or rip a DVD, but that's probably naughty so yeah that never happens ;)
I got an optical drive for free at a church sale. and it still works.
I’m not surprised. Many still use optical discs. It doesn’t need to be usb c either. Wouldn’t work with as many computers if it was.
well, the SuperDrive Still exists if you buy on Apple Store. however the new model uses USB-C instead of USB type A.
If there’s a USBc model, I haven’t seen it nor has anyone else:
Apple USB SuperDrive
store.apple.com/xc/product/MD564LL/A
Only listing I can find
@2:15 , I can verify that this is true. Mine is a 2018 model and it is still the same.
I bought one for a very specific reason, the potential to burn my DVDs into files to keep on my MacBook. I've collected old cartoon network and Nickelodeon DVD collections because I have been feeling nostalgic lately and I want to archive these pieces of media for my future kids to enjoy one day! I love the streaming era that we are in but there is a drawback when they can remove content at any given time with or without notice. if optical drives still work in the future then preserving media that way is a guaranteed win and also I'm trying to burn the files on my computer or cloud as backup insurance.
BD-R might be of interest as you can get archival versions that are supposed to last 125 years and would take up less shelf space, downside is the price.
I did. They're available in the store. Someone bought one while I was in the store. Her disc got stuck inside hers. 😭
Still working with my Mini M2, PS1 and PS2 emulators can't see it though, I wanted to use my original discs
welp, I expect them to take the superdrive down soon, thanks bud
crazy how they removed the apple battery pack and the 3 in 1 charger. after 2 years but they still sell the 2008 mac superdrive usb.
I have one of these
The short USB cable is really annoying. Just to short to place it under my Apple iMac 27 inch 2023 or next to my Apple Mac Mini 2012. A USB A to USC C adapter adapter does not work with my Apple MacBook 2017.
I didn’t mention it but I tried an extender and it didnt work for me either but the extender has issues with some devices.
Borat approved!
i still have my DVD and my PC from 2020 still has a optical drive
Just got one at goodwill for 5 bucks, plastic still on it lol
The SuperDrive is funny, because it's the only offering that only works on Macs, and even more specifically only Macs without an onboard optical drive. There is special firmware on the drive which when paired with a special driver will then tell the drive to initialise. If you plug it in to a Mac with an onboard optical, or any PC, no SuperDrive without special hacks.
I have one of these! I bought it in March 2013 for £65 from my local Apple Store. I can't remember what Mac I had then - probably a MacBook of some kind. Obviously I was still using optical media at that time, or at least thought I would be, but no more, of course. In fact my Apple Superdrive has sat in a box of bits for some years now - it was taking up space on my desktop that I needed. I actually dug it out a few weeks ago - my wife needed to read an old CD - but then we discovered that our year-old M1 iMac doesn't have a USB-A port, and we don't have a USB-A to USB-C converter. So back into the box it went.....
I Owen one I bought it when I bought it with my my Mac 16 Mac Pro in 2008
Come for the forgotten product, stay for the sleepy Oregon town
Its fine i guess. Only if you want an optical drive that fits on top of a mac mini
Superdrive starts at 50€ (used) on eBay in my Country.
Ooof. That’s too much.
I was actually thinking of buying one of these for ripping CDs with my 14” MBP. They just fit the aesthetic. I have a Blu Ray drive in my Mac Pro but transferring stuff is just kind of annoying.
I might recommend looking at some of the PC options as the non-removable cable and lack force eject kinda sucks. It looks nice enough next to the MacBook or Mac Pro, but I’m pretty sure some of the competitors are faster which would be a time saver if you’re ripping a lot of discs. It’s not a bad drive and I suppose it depends on if you intend to leave it on a desk or in a desk drawer when not in use.
Computer blu ray drives are very pointless, especially since blu ray is kinda dead format compared to dvd
@@crazywarp36they’re useful for offline data archiving as BD-RE should last 20-50 years, which is much longer than unpowered NANDs they’re not as bulky as tapes, and non susceptible to EMP like a sunflare, and won’t be deleted if you don’t pay a server bill. They’re just not all that useful to a lot of people but they store enough data that you can archive a considerable amount. With any luck by the time is a problem, a better offline solution for long term will come around.
Yeah.@@dmug
@@crazywarp36bluray is far from dead lol. blurays can store up to 50gb which is HUGE compared to the 8 gb of dvds. Plus unlike dvd its video is presented at 1080p with far higher bitrates then any streaming service will ever reach.
Surprised you didn't mention Disk Utility in your DVD burning list. I've been burning ISO (data) and IMG (video DVD) files to writable optical media for decades using the OSX Disk Utility. You have to make sure to select the DEVICE and not the disk to create video DVD's from IMG files (like the IMG files created with iDVD "save as disk image"), Disk Utility operations are even more powerful from the command line -- eg. a Bash script I wrote for formatting and duplicating USB keys in bulk. Note that I can only speak for the Disk Utility program included through OSX 10.14, since that's where I've plateaued my Mac systems while I migrate to 100% Linux.
Addendum: Totally agree with the value of OWNING media in physical form like DVD and CD vs the censorship, user abuses and content manipulations of streaming. Under corporate corruption turning copyright in copywrong, it's a matter of Fair Use versus Ab-Use.
Disk utility in the latest macOSes remove the ability to burn. Script actually had it.
@@dmugThanks for noting. One more reason to go full time Linux.
I have had no luck getting my external optical drive to work with my 17” M1 MacBook Pro. Any disc inserted doesn’t read and then gets stuck. I’m not using a hub, just using a USB A to C adapter.
Bad drive? I'd probably get one of the 3rd party ones as they're less issue prone.
@@dmug the drive works fine on my windows machine. Maybe I just need to try a different one.
@@tuckertastictk That is very weird.
I keep my SuperDrive in the miscellaneous drawer. I actually used it about 3 months ago.
oh this is like in Socialist East-Germany (the Trabant-601 was nearly unchanged build from 1950s to mid 1980s) ... today such drives to such a price should be Bluray-burners with USB-C
One downside to DVD for anyone looking to rip content like movies and television is resolution. DVD has a maximun resolution of 720x480 which is pretty low by today’s standard. HD DVD could cap out out a full 1080p but HD DVD also never took off because it lost to Blu-Ray. While Blu-Ray is great for data preservation and high resolution media at 720p and above it is also a real pain to rip copyrighted material.
There's some things that are still DVD only to this day, for example, Pirates of the Silicon Valley. The highest quality copy floating around is on Archive.org which is a DVD rip and not the full ISO.
Apple is used in teaching quite a bit. And some teachers play dvds.
Have a few friends who work in Education. Chromebooks have really taken over.
Apple should make a USB C version at least
I am not sure about the statement that Apple does not support blue ray. As you said, you can connect and use a BD drive and burn even the more recent 100 gb discs. Perhaps the right way to say it is that there was never an Apple branded blue ray product.
They support it in in-so-far it's Universal Disk Format (UDF). It adheres to the same file system that DVDs use (and CD-RWs). Basically, as far as the OS is concerned, it's just a DVD, but larger but Apple doesn't support anything about the Blu_ray standard. Apple natively has never supported VC-1, one of the principal codecs.
I probably should have been geekier about that, but pretty much any OS that supports DVD has BD-Rom support. However, Blu-Ray as most people know it, Apple does not support because of licensing and Apple had a competing product: iTunes Movies (now Apple TV).
@@dmug thank you for the explanation. The situation reminds me that windows xp did not support DVD (I do not recall exactly but I remember CD burning was added with an update) . Basically it was the same scenario as Apple: you could read and write to the discs but the codec was not included. Apple was at the forefront with DVD player and iDVD.
Later versions of windows added DVD video support either as a paid upgrade or bundled with more expensive versions.
Now here is the interesting part: Windows does not support BD either, it is supported in the same way as apple: as a data disc but with no codecs.
So I would say the whole situation of BD and Apple was overblown thanks to remarks from Jobs and felt like a betrayal after the previous support of DVD, but in the end it was not particular to Apple.
@@Kurazaybo It was mostly licensing. The quote from Steve Jobs about Blu-Ray that gets passed around is:
"Concerning authoring on Blu-ray, it seems impossible to provide software supporting such format for consumer market. In addition to DRM, here it is the cost of licenses that slow down the entire process; one would have to start paying 3,000 USD to AACS, then 80,000 USD to Sony, 40,000 USD to Sonic, etc." - Steve Jobs, MacBook Event in 2008.
If I recall right, the Blu-Ray coalition also wanted per-license. Apple just opted to duck out of it, and Microsoft pushed HD-DVD.
I imagine had the licensing been more sane, both companies would shipped Blu-Ray playback, especially if there hadn't been a format war.
my old boss resisted to upgrade to M1 until i told him apple still sold optical drives.
Because Apple know that moving a 4 gigs file through the shitty USB ports is so slow. Faster to burn it on to cheap blank DVDs and distribute it. Also it's more secure than upload it to some cloud in third world location!
Call me old-fashioned, but it pisses me off that (since 2017?) Macs only use USB-C - yet a lot of accessories are still stuck on USB A. For example, most webcams.
"Oh, but you already have a built-in webcam!". Well, if you dock your laptop into an external monitor (for example, at work) you want to have the webcam above the monitor. Or you will need one if you have a Mac Mini or similar.
One more thing that hasn't quite transitioned to USB C: pendrives.
You can buy like 6 USBA to USBc low profile adapters for like $10 off Amazon. In the vid I'm using a generic one. It's kinda a non-factor of complaints I have about Apple. They still make some Macs with USBA (the Mac Mini, Mac Studio, the Mac Pro) as well.
The laptops do not use it as physically they wouldn't fit on the TouchBar MacBooks due to the thinness, and the MacBook Airs have been too thin for USBA for some time. It's a fair trade off in my book.
I have a slightly different complaint:
There's not enough USBc to USBc hubs on the market.
@@dmug Fair points. And I appreciate your reply! (You’ve got a new subscriber!).
My complaint is rather on the other side of things: there aren’t enough USB C peripherals. USB A seems to be the default, even though most manufacturers have moved on (Mac, PC, Android and even iPhone!)
The hyphen in DVD-R is pronounced "dash" not "minus" lol. Otherwise a good video.
Good catch. I never knew that and googled it. Sure enough, been probably referring DVD R disks that were - as minus and plus +, instead of dash vs + for 20+ years.
Yeah, lots of us still use optical media and RIP CDs.
I think with the name VideoArchiveGuy, you're probably the expert in the room.
Whats so weird about this? frankly optical media has not progressed really since so no reason for them to release a new one if the old one still works as the entire point to this drive was to phase out optical drives built into macs but still provide this as an option. but will say $79 in 2023 is way too much for a optical media drive lmao but its honestly still so expensive due to them not making these in mass anymore so cost them more to manufacture them now then it actually did when they released them.
I love my optical media and don't like digital. Digital media can be taken away or controlled so you cannot use it. If I own the physical media nobody to stop me from using it. That goes for movies, music, games, software, etc. If it is digital and your drive crashes you can have a hard time with the seller of the digital media if they are even still around. If you don't have the key code you are screwed. If you have the physical media the key code is with it.
Does it work with a Mac Mini. Thanks.
I’d be very surprised if it doesn’t. It worked on 5 computers I tried it on: MacBook 2017, MacBook Air 2015, Mac Pro 2008, Mac Pro 2019, M1 Max.
It doesn’t seem to work with any USB hub though , it must be directly connected to the Mac. Also, my Blu-ray video might be of interest to you, since the drive does everything this does and of course burns Blu ray. It’s also a lot less picky about where it’s plugged in. There’s cheaper versions of the drive I bought if you don’t want the USB hub that’s on it.
The goofy world of Blu-Ray on the Mac
ua-cam.com/video/xTzvh0EFg_s/v-deo.html
Great, thanks. Not into Blu Ray at all but will check out the video. And yeah cheaper versions is something I'm now realising might be a good idea.@@dmug
Huh never knew this either. I think i bought an LG drive for the laptop cause that's what was available at the time. All old content is on dvd or cd so it's a must for me.
yeah since computers don't have dvd drives you must purchase one and apple knows that but the price hasn"t changed for years so yeah second hand i better. the burn mac app started in Mac os 9.2 I never understood the point nor used it as I use toast which is very good software to burn anything!
Might actually be better to buy one of the cheaper PC brands. One guy said it doesn’t work with Windows and requires specialized drivers for Linux. If I had known, I’d tested this in windows and made a stronger suggestion to get a non-Apple drive based on that.
Actually they have changed it since 2003: Apple made it worse! Case in point my sister bought a M2 MacBook Air but she has a bunch of music-CDs and wants to keep listening and burning them for shows in her kindergarten. So she bought a new Apple Superdrive together with a USB hub and MacBook Air. The SuperDrive (usbA) won't power on via the usbA port in the usbC hub on the M2 MacBook Air. Luckily our parents have an old Mac mini and old Superdrive .... strangely switching the two solved the problem as the very old Superdrive with usbA powers on via the usbC hub on the MacBook Air, but the current Superdrive does only work on the old MacMini with built in usbA....
I suspect that it will work with either one of these generic adapters or Apple’s own USB-C to USB-A adapter. I had the same issue with my copycat plastic enclosure… Also, I didn’t like the fact that the cable was super short, so I just chopped up a ruined Lightning cable (an original one, from Apple, yes) and soldered it into the drive’s internal adapter in its place, and now I have it mounted to the back of my main display, iMac-style, with that heavy-duty plastic velcro tape. I am guessing that at some point, should a later Mac Studio model come out with no USB-A ports, I can just redo the mod with an old USB-C-to-Lightning cable instead and get the same effect…
@@Mainyehc well, my sister only has the usb hub adapter from the Apple Store ... and it didn't work with the new superdrive but the old superdrive did ...
@@tobiaslofiin the video it works fine with the usbc adapter I happened to have with my M1 Max. Given the problems I had with powering it, I’d guess the bad USBc adapter is likely the issue.
@@dmug I don't know for sure either. all I know is the older superdrive works on the M2 MacBook Air but the current Superdrive doesn't.
please someone should inform me ! Why the heck do you use this ancient thing whereas there are flashes, sd cards, hdd, ssd ? Please
Have you ever encountered a DVD or CD and wanted to read the data off of it or transfer data to an old computer/device/game console that only supports optical media?
@@dmug No. Nowadays we dont need them but as i see from the comments people use it. I really wondered why they use it in 2024
@@mmad2822 probably as described, my audience skews older, so I’m sure many have old DVDs, CDs, and burned disks. I don’t use CDs and DVDs often but it is useful.
I bought a black MacBook 2007 and couldn’t get it to boot off USB to install an OS but it certainly booted fine off a DVD. I burned Mint Linux and installed it. I can’t say it’s often but I do like having it.
You are so right about censorship and bullshit bingo on media :(