It seems that Apple’s USB SuperDrive has been discontinued, 16 years on the market, as Filipe Espósito reports:
As noted by one of our readers, it’s no longer possible to buy an Apple USB SuperDrive online via the official Apple Store in the US. The product’s webpage says that it’s “Sold Out,” and given that it’s a product introduced in 2008, it seems very unlikely that Apple will ever produce new units again.
Customers can still use their location to see if there’s still a unit available for pickup at one of the Apple Retail Stores. The product is still available in other countries such as the UK and Brazil. However, it’s probably only a matter of time before Apple’s USB SuperDrive disappears from all stores.
As we (probably) say goodbye to the SuperDrive, I figured we should look back at its history.
The 1980s
The name “SuperDrive” first appeared in 1988, when Apple released its first 1.44 MB 3.5 inch floppy drive. The term was used for both internal and external drives. (Here’s a repair manual for some of the models.)
Initially these drives would automatically ingest disks, but in 1993 or so, that was dropped in the name of cutting costs, as remarked upon by TidBITS.
When the iMac came along, the floppy disk was dead, and so was the name, at least for a few years.
The One You’re Thinking Of
In 2001, Apple shipped a new PowerMac G4 with a special trick up its sleeve.
Apple today announced it has begun shipping its new 733 MHz Power Mac™ G4 with the SuperDrive, a combination CD-RW/DVD-R drive that can read and write CDs as well as DVDs that can be played in consumer DVD players. Apple unveiled the SuperDrive at Macworld Expo in San Francisco last month.
The Power Mac G4 with SuperDrive also includes Apple’s revolutionary new iDVD™ application software that enables users to easily create professional quality DVDs for playback on consumer DVD players.
“The new Power Mac G4 with SuperDrive is the industry’s first complete solution for CD and DVD authoring,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The combination of Apple’s amazing SuperDrive, super-fast MPEG2 encoding software and easy-to-use iDVD application is a real breakthrough.”
That Macworld keynote is still on YouTube, with the section about the SuperDrive starting about an hour and 10 minutes into the event.
In his keynote, Jobs spoke about the desire people had to shoot and edit their own video, but admitted that the last step — getting those videos onto a consumer DVD player — had been missing. A new optical disk drive — dubbed the SuperDrive — was here to change that forever.
The SuperDrive started life in that high-end 733 MHz Power Mac G4, but quickly spread to other machines, including the iMac G4 in the spring of 2002. The Titanium PowerBook followed in the fall of 2002, marking the first time that the SuperDrive appeared in a notebook, complete with a slot-loading design, which Jobs loved.
A few years later, the SuperDrive was basically everywhere in Apple’s Mac lineup, at least an option.
The Final Stand
In 2008, Apple introduced the first MacBook Air, which lacked any optical drive at all. In the press release, our recently-departed friend was mentioned:
MacBook Air users can buy the companion MacBook Air SuperDrive, a compact external drive designed for MacBook Air, for just $99. The MacBook Air SuperDrive is powered by MacBook Air’s USB port, eliminating the need to carry a separate power adapter. Many MacBook Air users will not find a need for an optical drive now that they can wirelessly rent movies from the iTunes Store, wirelessly backup files with Time Capsule and access the optical drives on remote PCs or Macs to wirelessly install software applications on MacBook Air.
This SuperDrive was super thin and housed in an aluminum enclosure to match the MacBook Air:
According to its product page, this drive only worked with “Mac models from 2008 and later that don’t have a built-in optical drive.” Later on, Apple would clarify that it would with Macs equipped with USB-C through a supported adaptor.
As optical drives slowly faded from the Mac line, the USB SuperDrive carried on, giving users a way to rip DVDs or burn discs for years after Apple considered such activities as antiquated.
That said, I’m not surprised that it’s finally gone, but I will miss the SuperDrive. Maybe the name will come back around for a third time at some point in the future.