Apple ‘leads industry’ in DVD burning

In a brief statement released today, Apple said that it leads the personal computer industry in DVD burning. The company said that it has shipped nearly half a million Macs equipped with SuperDrives. SuperDrive is Apple’s nomenclature for the Pioneer-built DVD-R optical drive installed on various Power Mac G4 and iMac systems which can burn DVD discs that can be played back on most consumer DVD players.

It’s been more than a year since Apple first introduced the technology on the high-end Power Mac G4. The company released the computers in January, 2001 with iDVD, a consumer-oriented DVD mastering software application. Since then, iDVD 2 has been released and ships standard with any SuperDrive-equipped Mac. Apple also last week released an updated version of its pro-level DVD mastering solution, DVD Studio Pro 1.5 — the first version to work natively on Mac OS X.

Apple also announced that it has shipped more than two million DVD-R media discs to date, as well.

Apple senior director of hardware product marketing Greg Joswiak said that Apple is leading what he calls the desktop DVD revolution. “SuperDrives are now in iMacs, Apple’s recordable DVD media is now priced under $5 per disc, and our iDVD software makes it easy for anyone to create their own DVDs.”