Apple's new USB SuperDrive is only useful if you have a MacBook Air

Those of you who have already opted not to buy a new MacBook Air, but were more interested in the $99 SuperDrive that you could get for the MacBook air had better look the other way. It turns out Apple has somehow made it so that the USB connected/powered SuperDrive is only useable with the MacBook Air and that's it.

Sure you can find other external, bus-powered optical drives for around that price, but everyone knows that rarely does anything work better with a Mac than an Apple made product. I suppose in 2 weeks we'll see if this is true, and if it is, we'll also see if someone out there is enterprising enough to hack it to work on other computers so you don't have to dole out an extra $200 for the SuperDrive on your MacBook.

The guys over at macenstein saw the MacBook Air system requirement next to the external SuperDrive and thought for sure that something must be wrong, so they called Apple and were assured that what was on the site was correct. So, if that really is the case, the only thing I want to know now is how they hobbled the drive, whether its with a driver you can only get with a MacBook Air, maybe its firmware dependent, who knows, but I want to know.

WTF? MacBook Air SuperDrive can only be used with MacBook Air [via macenstein]