MacBook Air SuperDrive super hack makes it work with any computer

As tnkgrl mentions at the outset of this hack, the MacBook Air SuperDrive is a nice little slice of hotness, retailing for a mere $99, and doing the whole external drive thing with Apple's sense of style. Unfortunately, it only works with the MacBook Air due to a proprietary IDE to USB bridge, as tnkgrl discovered. For a mere $9 she was able to find a replacement part, and after pushing some internals around she had her self a Mac mini and HP Mini-Note-friendly USB disc drive. We've all been laboring under the assumption that Apple needed more than the standard USB power draw, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that she was able to pull this off with a regular part, and we demand Apple start selling $108 SuperDrives-for-all immediately. Er, please?

[Raymond @ Jun 24th 2008 8:55AM]

LaCie has a Portable DVD±RW with LightScribe, USB-powered

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10986

It is tray-load through.

[wizzle @ Jun 24th 2008 10:59AM]

"external power supply; "

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10986

weak.

[Rick wilson @ Jun 24th 2008 4:17PM]

Its more expensive but this only requires one USB port, is slot load, and works on any computer: http://www.slidirect.com/product40-129.html

[Michael @ Jun 24th 2008 8:57AM]

Why does Apple do this? Love their stuff, but man, on one hand they are genius and on the other they completely miss the boat.

[JimReaper @ Jun 24th 2008 11:13AM]

Maybe, but it seems to me apple are doing a very good job of steering the boat where they want it.

[Juice @ Jun 24th 2008 11:17AM]

They are secretly owned by China because they love communism.

[bobartig @ Jun 24th 2008 1:09PM]

This follows Apple's design philosophy of everything doing exactly what it needs to do to function, and nothing more, or the "nothing left to take away" design approach. The MacBook Air's superdrive is designed to provide a SD for an MBA. Thus, it does absolutely nothing else. No hub, and not compatible with other Macs.

For Apple, the 'correct' place for a superdrive is inside your Mac. Every Mac that has an optical drive has a standard, or BTO superdrive option. Clearly that is the correct answer. Either you need a SD, and you buy it with, or you don't need it and go without.

If you are using a MacBook Air, you clearly should not have an optical drive at all. But if you insist, here, have this slick little proprietary USB one.

So, if you have any other Mac, and need a superdrive, you should have done it the right way, and gotten it with one. If you have an MBA, you can go either way. If you're using some other brand of computer, and want to use the MBA Super drive, you can go fuck yourself. That is Apple's stance. Love them or hate them, they take this stance with everything they do. Sometimes it breeds outstanding results (iPod line), and sometimes it causes flops (apple puck mouse).

So you see this as a missed opportunity, that is, the opportunity to sell the MBA SD to other computer owners who want a portable USB SD. Apple sees it as unnecessary functionality for a problem that has a more elegant solution already.

[deyanimay @ Jun 24th 2008 9:12AM]

Whats wrong with this statement?

"...she had her slef a mac mini..."

[Andrew @ Jun 24th 2008 9:35AM]

What? I don't see anything wrong with it myslef.

[Luke D @ Jun 24th 2008 9:42AM]

It's the 'she'!

No way a girl could do such a feat of engineering! ;-)

(I really wish more girls would do engineering though...)

[Rick @ Jun 24th 2008 9:46AM]

An Apple a day keeps your slef away!

[morcheeba @ Jun 24th 2008 1:53PM]

Luke D... I know you mean well, but your joking about girls in engineering perpetuates the stereotype that keeps girls out of engineering.

Now, excuse me, I've got to try out my tutu for some man-ballet ;-)

[Frn @ Jul 19th 2008 3:57PM]

Your sexist and stupid remark.

[Frn @ Jul 19th 2008 3:59PM]

... and of course the misspelling that probably she wouldn't have typed.

[Abhinav @ Jun 24th 2008 9:15AM]

Gr......
A apple everyday makes you poor...
A premium for every part.. that's apple's sales strategy

[John @ Jun 24th 2008 9:17AM]

Were you the editor of this article by any chance?

[Jason M Macek @ Jun 24th 2008 9:16AM]

Power to the people!!

[Abhinav @ Jun 24th 2008 9:26AM]

@John : nope... I'm not the editor for this post

[mike @ Jun 24th 2008 11:50AM]

@ frogger

to prove PC companies have good support would you point to PC World? or another PC mag that did a study? Exactly what study would you point to? Can you disprove the claim or pretend to be the anti-bias cop?

logical fail.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9937231-37.html

[arkowi @ Jun 24th 2008 9:30AM]

I would assume the reason Apple made the drive this way, is that so people would not try to use them with random computers and then ask for support. If you sell it as a universal external optical drive, you have to support it as such (provide technical assistance, etc).

[wrabbit @ Jun 24th 2008 9:41AM]

I'd agree that that would probably be their official reasoning, in reality however they're simply douche bags.

[ajfarson @ Jun 24th 2008 9:58AM]

Now that's funny! Apple barely provides tech support for their own products. No one is worse than Apple at post-purchase product support.

[bpmarkowitz @ Jun 24th 2008 10:10AM]

@ wrabbit - most giant companies are.

@ ajfarson - i was thinking more along the lines of them saying "this is only for macbook air" but it actually *unofficially* worked with other computers out of the box and some guy ends up hosing his non-apple computer.

[primetime4 @ Jun 24th 2008 10:13AM]

Your statement about Apple support could not be more wrong. Apple hardware you can complain about but they have always provided great support for their products. What do you think the Genius bar is for?

[Forrest @ Jun 24th 2008 10:13AM]

Pardon if you're being facetious aj, but I thought that Apple Genius thing was supposed to be awesome customer care?

I've never owned an Apple product, but I see people raving about it on forums and comments all the time.

[Gotung @ Jun 24th 2008 10:32AM]

ajfarson:

Troll much?

Pretty much every statistic puts Apple at or near the top of the list in the support department.

http://www.macworld.com/article/133293/2008/05/consumer.html

[frogger @ Jun 24th 2008 11:10AM]

To prove that apple has good support, you link to macworld?

[mattclarkie @ Jun 24th 2008 11:41AM]

Most companies put on the box that it is designed for X, and that the company cannot provide support for other devices. Apple make it not work with other devices. I would imagine it costs them more money to make it not work rather than making a standard external drive.

[mike @ Jun 24th 2008 11:57AM]

@ frogger

haha you're so... whoa... not funny... so macworld can't report anything accurately? so I guess you'd never read PC World for info either.

Read this, then, and maybe your next comment won't be an epic fail.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9937231-37.html

[ChillyWilly @ Jun 24th 2008 1:33PM]

I would guess that Apple wanted to force it for support reasons, to only work with the Air. Personally, I think they could have found a way to make it work with all Macs... they could easily sell a ton of these for $99.

[gentux @ Jun 25th 2008 12:42PM]

i had some real world experience with Apple's support and it is really superb. I had a macbook with a defective hard drive, it was my fault, i had a dvb-t antenna with the magnetic socket near the drive and that made it fail.

So I went to a "apple service provider" gave them my notebook and asked to hurry. 2 Days later I phoned them, i wanted to have that done now. They told me about a shortage these days and they're having trouble getting a new one from apple. So I phoned apple and asked kindly to have a new drive more quickly. Said done next day the ASP had a new drive and mounted it into my mac and i could pick it up 3 days after bringing it in.

And to everyone who's telling that this support is bad: there are companies where a notebook has a new defect when it comes back not just cheap companies HP (compaq line not pavillion) too. After all the Apple supporters speak clear german and not some sort of East-european dialect nobody understands.

The fact that the MBA drive isn't compatible is easy to answer it's basically the same as the fact that OS X doesn't run on PCs. They don't make any money with that. Why should it cost you 170$ for a similar product if you could get a MBA SuperDrive. It's a service for MBA-buyers to get themselves a SD for not too much extra. It's like buying a OEM-Version of windows bundled with a PC is cheaper than getting it seperately. I think every MBA-SD costs Apple some dollars which they get back by selling MBAs. It's easy mathematics and business thinking. Not too hard, isn't it?

[kal326 @ Jun 24th 2008 9:37AM]

"she was able to pull this off with a regular part" Should this be part like the article reads or should it be port? Port makes more sense, but part does kinda work. The part not to miss is Apples continued practice of sticking it to the consumer with unnecisarily proprietary parts.

[Mile @ Jun 24th 2008 9:40AM]

A port is a part.

And parts are parts.

[kal326 @ Jun 24th 2008 9:40AM]

That sounds like a bit of a lame excuse at best. Its a USB powered optical drive, how hard could it be to support? Whats next, Apple branded proprietary flash drives because Apple wouldn't want to have to support those as a universal device?

[MadMike @ Jun 24th 2008 9:41AM]

I wonder if Apple even pays attention to articles like this. We know Palm does, they even reply - they just didn't follow it.

Heck, companies don't even pay attention to Walt Mossberg and with a single web-post he can adjust a stock price by 7%.

[ajfarson @ Jun 24th 2008 10:00AM]

I am sure they knew it would be easily hacked, and that they could care less. However, I suppose it is wishful thinking that Steve'o actually designed it to be an easy hack, just wanting to take the support liability off of Apple's shoulders.

[MacUnknown @ Jun 24th 2008 9:46AM]

Well I think they forced themselves into restricting it to the MacBook Air. They needed an answer for "Where's the optical drive?" detractors at a cheap enough price point. However if they made it work for any Mac that $200 bump for the SuperDrive in the MacBook and the Mac mini wouldn't be as appealing. Apple's good/better/best models keep it simple for consumers but they are running out of legitimate reasons to keep combo drives.

[catachip @ Jun 24th 2008 10:00AM]

I'm trying to conceive of a situation where I would even WANT this to work with another Mac. It's for the MacBook Air... get over it.

[Dyranios @ Jun 24th 2008 10:57AM]

If your DVD drive on an imac breaks....

(I know because mine has and I had to buy an external USB burner)

It really highlighted one of the major criticisms of the mac, no easy access to different parts etc

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 24th 2008 12:00PM]

There are plenty of DVD burners you can use that don't come from Apple. They're also half-height devices which means they are much faster to read and write.

I use one of these on my PC. I have no use for a slimline drive outside my laptop.

[etechshop @ Jun 24th 2008 10:43AM]

you are expected to support yourself if you buy any Apple product.

[Jeff Lewis @ Jun 24th 2008 10:55AM]

I'm loving the Apple fan doublethink here.

There are tons of nice external USB powered DVD burners. Take a look at the ones from LG. And there are lots of reasons to have one around: you might have something like a Netbook or a UMPC.

So, that means Apple *went out of their way* to make this device MacBook Air specific. This isn't new - we forget that Apple also did things like have Mac specific firmware for hard drives and CDROM drives back in the 90s that locked them to Macs exclusively. They invented a video card spec that required special firmware.

As usual, the Mac fans, unable to rationalise this bad behaviour from their 'perfect' company, blame everyone else.

Support liability? Please. Doesn't everything 'just work' with Macs? There are lots of external DVD burners. They either work or fail. If they fail, you replace them, just like Apple will with theirs.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 24th 2008 11:59AM]

No, Apple didn't make special firmware locking CD drives to Macs. I used my very first Apple CD drive (Apple CD SC 300, the first 2X drive) on a PC. Before ATAPI though, CD drives weren't exactly standardized, maybe you ran into problems with that.

Apple had to have different firmware on their video cards, because the normal firmware on a video card had Intel x86 code in it with BIOS function calls, which wouldn't run on the PowerPCs Apple used at the time. They had no choice. They selected Open Firmware, which was not proprietary, it actually was developed by SUN.

Now they use EFI, because the firmware in video cards uses BIOS function calls, and Macs don't use BIOS (mostly because it runs in 16-bit mode). EFI is a standard created by Intel.

[Morgan @ Jun 24th 2008 11:28AM]

The big question is how will it perform though a hub!

We've got a macbook Air here in the shop and the biggest beef our user has is that he gets stuck with no peripheral action if he plugs the drive in. Single USB port becomes a nightmare in a world of external keyboards, USB 8 gig keys, iPhones that don't sync over bluetooth, external time machine hard drives etc etc etc. Plug the external DVD and *poof* there goes the rest of the world. (yes yes, I am aware there are 'solutions' like time capsule for time machine, and buying another ENTIRE COMPUTER to use the DVD via TCP/IP, but let's stay in reality here).

So cheers to tnkgrl for finding this part and hacking it in.

[tnkgrl @ Jun 24th 2008 2:55PM]

It works fine with a powered hub! You have to be able to supply this hacked SuperDrive with a whole 500 mA on a single port...

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 24th 2008 11:37AM]

The device does use more than the standard 500mA. It's even listed on the box. So by doing this, you make an out of spec device that lies about it's power usage. This can make it unreliable.

It will still work on some ports, much like nearly any 2.5" HDD that is USB powered also draws more than 500mA and usually works anyway.

As to Apple's USB to IDE bridge being proprietary, I find it highly unlikely Apple made a proprietary USB to IDE bridge, that would cost a ton of money. Probably the problem is Apple is just loading up a USB profile (device descriptor) into that bridge at power on. Indeed this is what the article says.

I bet if you found the serial EEPROM on this device and reprogrammed it with the same device descriptor you have on other USB to IDE bridges, you'd have it working with other computers in no time.

Note, this guy took the bulk capacitance off with his mod, that's going to make reliability very sketchy. It looks like there is space to put it back a better mod would do so.

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 24th 2008 12:23PM]

Yeah, the EEPROM is the chip down and left of the hole in the middle in this pic:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tnkgrl/2607353636/in/set-72157605790040071/

It has a standard pinout, you could read it out and replace the USB descriptor.

Although changing the EEPROM and then running on 500mA would mean you'd really want the bulk capacitance that the Apple board doesn't have. So the mod the poster did, but without removing the bulk capacitance, is probably the smarter mod.

[tnkgrl @ Jun 24th 2008 3:00PM]

First of all, I'm girl, not a guy...

Second of all, if you actually read the post on my blog you will see all the different things I experimented with, including re-flashing the existing IDE to USB bridge! It's a no go.

It's possible the MBA SuperDrive draws more than 500 mA, but so far my hacked device is working fine with any and all USB ports I've connected it to, including laptops running on battery power.

Consider yourself flamed :)

[why not the LS2LS7? @ Jun 24th 2008 6:16PM]

Well, I'd suggest you take a look at the USB spec. The amount of power a (properly functioning) device takes is not determined by how much is available, but by how much the host tells the device is available. So just adding more power as you did doesn't tell you anything.

You made (say) 2A available, but the device still doesn't know it's available because the host didn't tell it so.

There's no way to hack that with a simple hardware hack.

You should put an oscilloscope probe on some points there and look at the current and the voltage at the 5V with only 500mA available and no bulk capacitance. I guarantee you'll see the 5V supply is a droopy, noisy nightmare. Honestly, it was probably noisy already with 1A, due to IR drops across the supply wire. But it'll be more droopy and noisy now.

[Josh @ Jun 24th 2008 11:39AM]

That blanket his awful! *shudder* And would you really want to open a computer component on blankets - the most static electricity generating things known to man?