It’s official; it appears that Apple is discontinuing its USB SuperDrive. You may not remember this accessory nowadays, but back in January 2008 when Steve Jobs introduced the original MacBook Air, the biggest feature that the “world’s thinnest notebook” (claimed by Apple) omitted was the built-in SuperDrive, which allowed you to read/write both CDs and DVDs. Although Apple offered Remote Disc as an alternate solution for customers to share an optical drive from one Mac to another over the network for things like installing software, Apple understood that customers were not ready to give up the optical drive just yet as they still had DVDs and CDs to watch movies and listen to music. At the same time, Apple introduced this accessory so people could still use CDs and DVDs on their MacBook Airs without relying on a network connection.
Eventually, other Macs in the lineup would follow suit in ditching the optical drive as that technology started to become obsolete now that Apple introduced the Mac App Store to install Mac apps, and we’ve had streaming services and online stores to watch movies and TV shows and even purchase that content to keep and watch across all of our devices. Fun fact: the last Mac to ditch the SuperDrive in its next revision was the Mac Pro when Apple introduced the controversial “trash can” Mac Pro in 2013. However, the last Mac with a built-in SuperDrive that Apple discontinued was actually the 2012 13-inch “Unibody” MacBook Pro which was sold alongside the higher-end 13-inch Retina Pros until its discontinuation in October 2016 when Apple introduced the thinner, redesigned MacBook Pros with the controversial Touch Bar.
At the same time, Apple pioneered USB-C with a super-thin 12-inch MacBook in 2015, and even though other Macs followed suit to adopt USB-C, Apple never made another version of the external SuperDrive that had a USB-C end. So Apple continued to sell the same USB SuperDrive for years, and Apple even updated its accessory’s page disclaiming that MacBooks with USB-C ports would need a USB-C to USB adapter (sold separately) to use that SuperDrive. (Sheesh, talk about dongles even when pretty much every device today has at least one USB-C port.) It’s super crazy that Apple would still sell this rather outdated accessory that wouldn’t exactly work with some of today’s Macs that it was even featured in one of Snazzy Labs’ videos about some “useless junk” that Apple Store offers.
It’s finally time for Apple to kill off its USB SuperDrive, but if you still have a huge collection of CDs and DVDs, you still have a plethora of third-party options, including those that can also play Blu-ray discs. This begs the question, do you still use an optical disc for your computer? Sound off in the comments below.
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