MacBook Air SuperDrive

My SuperDrive finally arrived….three days behind the MBA and of course it was delivered just as I was boarding a flight to Victoria for a conference.

As you can see from the photos, it’s really small and thin but what you can’t see is that it’s actually about as tall as the MacBook Air.

It’s not much bigger than two stacked CD jewel cases. It’s also just as quiet (or loud) as my old PowerBook’s optical drive was.

There is really not much more to it. No power/read/burn indicator light. Just a block of aluminum with a slot in it and a USB tail.

Unfortunately, Apple decided to not include anything else with the drive. A simple slipcase would have been nice for something so obviously meant to travel. I suspect there will be no shortage of 3rd parties to fill this gap soon enough…possibly even MacBook Air cases with integrated SuperDrive pouches.

I’m not sure yet how it affects battery life on the MBA since it’s supposed to draw more power than a normal USB device would.

Digital copies included on the DVD…finally

Tonight I picked up the Family Guy Blue Harvest Special Edition dvd set. This is the Family Guy version of Star Wars that opened the current season and was fantastic.

It comes with a digital copy of the episode that you can use on your computer – and it’s Mac compatible for a change!

Strangely, it comes on a second dvd that you have to put in and you then still need to enter a serial number included in the dvd package to redeem on iTunes and download it. Seems like a waste of a second dvd.

If this had happened a few years ago, people might not have bothered with bit torrent and ripping….okay maybe not but still this seems like a no brainer that most likely got stalled as lawyers figured out how to lock these files down with craptacular DRM.

Why did it take so long for this to happen?