MCE Technologies on Friday announced the release of a new slot-loading DVD-R “SuperDrive” designed to work as a replacement for the optical drives found in 15-inch MacBook Pros and MacBook laptops. It costs $199.
The new drive supports DVD+R DL (Double Layer) and DVD-R (Dual Layer) media, so it can burn up to 8.5GB per disc (on supported media). It replaces the 4x and 6x drives found in these machines, matching the same form factor.
The drive is 9.5mm high, compared to 12.5mm tall for some other mechanisms. It writes standard DVD-R and DVD+R media at up to 8x speed, and DVD-RW and DVD+RW at up to 4x speed (dual-layer and double-layer disks are written to at up to 4x speed). It can also write to CD-R media at up to 2x speed.
The drive is natively compatible with Mac OS X v10.4 and 10.5, and works with iTunes, iDVD, Finder burning, iPhoto and DVD player. It’s bootable, as well.
MCE includes installation tools and a manual.