MacBook Air Superdrive does work on other machines

Slimline external drives tend to be ugly or rubbish. The one Apple made for its MacBook Air is the exception. However, it requires more juice than even two USB ports can provide, meaning it won't work on any other machine — or so goes the story! Tnkgrl's hacked it, however, and finds that it uses a simple hardware handshake to lock out non-Air machines. She's posted a how-to to get the ostentatious optical up and running on anything, powered by only a single USB port.

Here's video of it running on a HP Mini-Note:

Macbook Air superdrive for all [tnkgrl]

[#1 posted by DTPhantom , June 25, 2008 8:13 AM]

Now there's a surprise Apple using proprietary hardware to lock out customers. And how is Apple better than MS?

[#2 posted by bardfinn , June 25, 2008 8:37 AM]

DTPhantom:

Because Apple is 25 years behind Microsoft on the "Why isn't this simply usable?" curve.

Unfortunately, because we aren't seeing an internet tablet from Apple, the iPhone and iPod touches can't access any USB storage or SD card, and now THIS, Apple may find the curve is logarithmically exponential rather than gently sloped.

[#3 posted by Santos , June 25, 2008 10:02 AM]

What's with the hate? There's a hack and now you can have some fun.

[#4 posted by zuzu , June 25, 2008 11:53 AM]

What's with the hate? There's a hack and now you can have some fun.

The hate is because this hack shouldn't be necessary to begin with. Interoperable standards such as USB are called standards for a reason. (What exactly is Universal about a Universal Serial Bus device that only runs on one type of machine?)

Contempt may be heaped on any product or company who spends development resources on making something not work. (DRM epitomizes this phenomenon.) Computers have enough difficulties without people purposefully creating new problems.

[#5 posted by Pete , June 25, 2008 4:32 PM]

I had no idea the drive didn't work with other computers; shame on you, Apple.