Dear Apple, Inc.:

[yakko]

I bought the Apple MacBook Air SuperDrive, not wanting to disassemble my MacBook to replace the internal drive that I just found out was going bad

Comments

[shelbystripes]

I think that's all the motivation I need to convince me not to buy a MacBook Air for going back to school with.

[yakko]

I suggest considering one of the many netbooks available instead. They're much cheaper and almost always give more value compared to the MacBook Air.

[shelbystripes]

Well, for going back to school I need something good for taking notes and writing long papers with, and a 10" netbook keyboard is not going to cut it. I'm probably angling for the regular aluminum MacBook at this point.

[zorinlynx]

I actually wonder what their motivation to do this is.

If someone buys a Macbook Air superdrive to use on other equipment, what does Apple lose? If anything, they gain profit on the sale of the superdrive!

I don't see how Apple can be better off in the end by locking this out.

[yakko]

Yeah... the device costs Apple roughly $40 and it retails for $100. They probably could have saved money by not having to develop restrictions on it in the bridge's firmware. Apple would still get the $60 profit either way.

[captain18]

I suspect it's a proof-of-concept test, or a dress rehearsal if you like. Take a fairly minor piece of hardware and see how effective this kind of c-blocking is in the real world, both from a tech and market acceptance standpoint.

My concern here is where it may turn up next.

[yakko]

In a way, Apple's next bout of this insanity happened on the new iPod Shuffle. They have some type of authenticator chip in the headphones to force third parties to pay fees to make accessories for it. The same thing has already happened with the iPod dock and third parties.