The trouble really only becomes apparent when a movie DVD is inserted into the USB optical drive and an attempt is made to view the movie using the Apple DVD Player application. Provided the third party USB optical drive is compatible with OS X, for most part there usually isn’t much fuss or muss in the realm of burning CDRs or DVRs or reading data CDRs or DVRs – most times it truly is a plug and play affair. Notwithstanding which situation you are in, Apple (obviously) encourages the purchase of Apple’s own external USB SuperDrive either as an add-on option or replacement, respectively.Īs good as Apple USB SuperDrives are, most opt to purchase non-Apple external USB optical drives, since more often than not the price point makes more sense.

There are also those who have older Mac portables which shipped with optical drives which have either broken down or the owner has elected to extend the life of their beloved Mac portables by displacing the optical drive with an additional hard drive (HDD) or Solid State Drive (SSD) by adding a third party hard drive caddy. By default, the latest Mac portables now ship sans an optical drive.