Apple → Was this a good idea? (Superdrive related).

So... after replacing the superdrive on my macbook with a 128 gb ssd, I put it in a black external case. The case had a decent, but small micro usb cord, but since it's micro usb, I could buy a longer cord. The drive worked well with my windows desktops, but not so much with my mac devices.

Well, I was looking for something that would replace the case with something that looked better, and I ended up getting a superdrive clone case from Amazon:



Even the bottom is a clone except for the apple logo:



The device itself is plastic, although it looks exactly the same as a superdrive.

The one big problem with this is that the cord is a few inches smaller then the other case, and that was was already borderline small. Also, the cord cannot be adjusted.

So was this a good idea? Sacrificing usability for something that looks more correct? This might annoy me quite a bit down the road.

But it goes so perfectly with my mac stuff..

I did the same thing and am considering the same case. Thanks for the pics, it's nice to see what it looks like in reality. Personally it seems long enough. They do make usb extension cables in white for those times when you need more room. Monoprice has them for under 2 bucks:
»www.monoprice.com/produc ··· =1030304 Probably can find them on ebay for even less.

Personally, I usually go with function rather than looks.

In this case I doubt you have the superdrive hooked up all the time, so does it really matter how it looks? And you had the convenience of using any cable lenght you liked, and now you don't. Sure you can get a USB extension but that just fouls the look of it as well.

Usually I do too but I really don't use drives all that much anymore, most stuff I do is saved to externals and the cloud (Not or)

Then you answered your own question, should have just kept the black case.

Well, I still have the black case The drive just isn't in it

LOL.

My only complaint when I did this with my MBP is now when I hook up the external DVD to play a DVD, DVD Player tells me there's not a supported SuperDrive attached. I have to use VLC.

10.8.3, 15" 2010 MBP (Core i5) - 500GB HDD (internal) and 240GB Intel SSD (in SuperDrive bay)

That's odd..

Are you going through a USB hub? I've seen that type of flakey behavior if you don't hook up directly to the computer.

Nope, the DVD drive is hooked up as the OP did above.

My guess is that if I reload OS X without a DVD drive attached, it'll get around this problem. I'm going to yank DVD Player from my Mini's load over to the MBP to see if that is a simple work around.

According to OWC's site who sell DataDoubler, that is expected behavior.

There has to be a reason my 2011 Mini will play off a third party DVD player with the DVD Player app while the MBP 2010 won't.... I'll figure it out eventually.

Why would you EVER use the built in dvd player when you have VLC and MplayerX which have more codecs and video options? It's like using Windows Media Player when you better options on windows!