MacBook Air Superdrive ONLY works with MacBook Air?

[milo]

What kind of a company does Apple try to portray itself as? I've always known it to portray itself as elitist and profitable. Making user-friendly products doesn't necessarily mean making inexpensive products. If anything, the opposite is true.

Perhaps you should investigate the One Laptop Per Child program. Their pricing philosophy appears to be more in line with your own.

What the hell does that have to do with crippling a peripheral to only work with one computer?

There's no reason for this not to work with any mac or PC that has driver support for it. I don't get why anyone would defend apple on this.

 

[gothamm]

for another $100-150 you can get a blue ray drive and stick it in an external enclosure. rip-off.

 

[Ryan T.]

What kind of a company does Apple try to portray itself as? I've always known it to portray itself as elitist and profitable. Making user-friendly products doesn't necessarily mean making inexpensive products. If anything, the opposite is true.

Perhaps you should investigate the One Laptop Per Child program. Their pricing philosophy appears to be more in line with your own.

Where did I say this was because of cost? It's the whole "just works" philosophy, and the compatibility of their products with others in their line.

 

[neiltc13]

https://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wc...-1&productId=8198552921665079075&tab=Features

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that Sony's equivalent to the MBA's external SuperDrive costs $399.99... so not only can you spend more for Sony's under-powered, smaller-screened version of the MBA ($3699), but you can drop an extra $300 getting the external DVD drive.

The Sony is an ultraportable though, you pay the extra to get a smaller computer. MacBook Air is not. I wish people would stop comparing MacBook Air to Sony's computers because they aren't the same at all.

 

[Eallan]

Is this after you factor in overheads etc though?

This is one of the negatives of them switching to PC-style hardware (Intel etc); in the past at least they could pretend the high price was for top quality hardware in a class of its own etc.

Ps. Sony are a poor example for comparison as they too are infamous for their greed (PS3 anyone?)

I agree with you on the Sony computers being overpriced. I don't think the PS3 was, did you see the component costs?

 

[clayj]

The Sony is an ultraportable though, you pay the extra to get a smaller computer. MacBook Air is not. I wish people would stop comparing MacBook Air to Sony's computers because they aren't the same at all.

Regardless of the size of the computer to which it is attached, you still have to acknowledge that Sony is charging 4 times as much as Apple for a SuperDrive/equivalent to attach to a notebook computer.

 

[desenso]

What the hell does that have to do with crippling a peripheral to only work with one computer?

There's no reason for this not to work with any mac or PC that has driver support for it. I don't get why anyone would defend apple on this.

The theories presented here and elsewhere suggest that it might be a custom device for a custom USB drive.

The person who I was responding to was suggesting that Apple should keep prices on everything as low as possible. That is absurd.. prices are set at a what is seen as a profit-maximizing number in the long run.