The MacBook Air Superdrive dilemma

So yeah, we get that you are obviously an Apple fanboi — no harm in being loyal to specific products.  And you’re a guy on-the-move — you do business online, you are a poster boy for everything portable, your office is the coffee shop, the metro, Central Park, or wherever you choose it to be. For this kind of life you get a MacBook Air – sleek, devilishly handsome, and errrr… white.

Devilishly handsome. Razor thin -- to a fault.

And yeah, you only get 1 USB port, ‘coz it’s waaaay too thin for another 2 or 3, as the Apple mothership decided so. It also doesn’t have its own optical drive — heaven forbid that they Cupertino destroy the aesthetic for a DVD SuperDrive! You can get an optional one as an accessory – USB device. Wait… only one USB port on the system? That might be a problem…

Problem 1

See, because you live such an active and mobile life, you rely very much on gadgets and accessories — your iPod, USB thumbdrives, external hard drives, all manner of USB-enabled gadgets — all of which seem to need a USB port to survive and be usable. Sadly, the MacBook Air SuperDrive uses that port too.

There's the rub. Only 1 USB 2.0 port (the one beside it is a Mini-DVI port)

Possible solution? USB hubs. There is no USB problem that technology can’t fix, and this is how most MacBook Air users do it as well, expand that USB 2.0 port into 4, maybe even 8 ports. A USB hub will do the trick for most of your devices, yes. But here’s a startling truth that most MacBook Air SuperDrive owners have been discovering — the drive does not operate on a USB hub. So, it remains a fact, that you can’t use any other USB device if you want to use your MacBook Air SuperDrive.

The MacBook Air (not so) SuperDrive

Problem 2

So you already bought a MacBook Air SuperDrive, and you’re thinking, “What the heck, I’ll just keep it and use it with my other devices.” Wrong. Can’t be done. The MacBook Air SuperDrive will only work with the MacBook Air — another fact that MacBook Air owners are discovering.

I mean, we’d get it if Apple does not want to enable usage of the drive for PC systems — hey, all’s fair. But you can’t even use the drive on other Mac models — this is something we feel is a very big oversight on Apple’s part. In the words of our current generation = FAIL.

If you want to check on the comments from users, check the product page of the MacBook Air SuperDrive here.

Solution

And we can say this unabashedly — go third party. Our DIGISTOR Self-Powered External DVD Burner, the one we just unwrapped a few weeks ago, works perfectly on Macs — tested it with the Wiz’s MacBook Pro (who’s internal SuperDrive is actually having issues as well) and it played media, read data and burnt data without any hitches.

The DIGISTOR external DVD burner -- perfect MacBook Air option

This USB DVD drive is actually perfect for the MacBook Air because, yes, it works even when mounted on a USB Hub. DIGISTOR’s self-powering technology involves an internal Li-Pol battery that the drive can access when bus power (any generic USB hub can still give up to 500ma of juice)is no longer adequate.

Check here for purchase options on the DIGISTOR external DVD drive.