MBA Superdrive: Silver side UP!!!

apple should apply the small apple-logo on the top (aluminium) and all problems are gone ...

I am sorry and I don't mean to sound condescending but didn't the rubber foot on the bottom give it away?

You are joking I hope. Seriously? You thought you should put the black side up, with all the technical stuff written on there and the rubber ring that works as the "feet", which also then put the disk slot off center and extremely low comparatively, and put the serial # upside down back by the power cord that has the usb logo on one side only which would then be upside-down and unreadable when you turn it upside down too? Wow. I think we may have more of an issue than working a superdrive here. Square peg-round hole-must make work-push-push-push.

For the record: It was a silly mistake on your part, far from an industry wide issue for Apple. Goodgrief.

Wait...so the bottom of the superdrive is black? Completely black? Then, um...I'm wondering where the confusion has come from. :S

Um...I could understand not knowing which way is up if all the sides were one color and they all looked the same, but I'm with mfoster on this one, sorry--I wouldn't put the black side with all the technical stuff and the rubber "foot" on top. I don't understand how this confusion could've happened, especially if you have to plug it into the MBA and the USB has to be face up too, as Mfoster said.

Maybe, if you don't want to get the top confused and show that you're an Apple loyalist, you can take one of the spiffy Apple stickers that came with your MBA or iPod or other Apple device and stick it to the top? Maybe it's because I walk the line and I use both Macs and PC's, but I've never actually understood what to do with those Apple stickers I've gotten with iPods in the past, so...maybe this is where one of them would come in handy?

Yes, the top is silver aluminum and the bottom is all black rubber. Seemed pretty obvious to me, but I've seen a couple of people post here that they did it opposite.

Last week there was someone posting alot about installing windows into fusion and the disk kept giving him a problem..., I wonder now if that was the issue.. HAHA, man that is funny...but not when it is happening to you of course..

Again, it is just silly human error, added to that the excitement and eagerness of a new MBA...

I am reminded of my first computer in 2000 when I called for help to the Gateway store. My unit was making this rapid beeping sound... come to find out I had a book on the keyboard that was holding down a key... it was an idiot alert .... So, I can say I have been there... too funny.

One of the funniest things I have ever witnessed was years ago, I was a PC manager of a national retail company. I worked in the corporate office. We had pc's at every desk and we used sneaker net.
These pc's were some of the original pc's with very small HD's and dual 5 1/4 floppies.
I had one user who everyday for weeks asked me for new floppy disks. I finally asked her what she needed so many for. She told me that she put them in the pc and that the pc used them. I asked her what she did with them after she used them. She looked at me quizzically and said the pc kept them.
I walked over to her computer and asked her to show me what she did. I could not control my laughter when I saw her place the floppy in a little opening between the floppy drives.
I opened the case and saw about 2 dozen floppies inside the computer. She thought that was how it stored the data.
True story

That was before PCs got retractable cupholders.

Go to a local Wal-Mart and buy yourself some flag or smiley stickers and put one on the drive. 🙂

-Dan Uff

That sounds like the time my wife told me that our MacMini was broken and wouldn't read or even recognize the DVD that she had tried to play, not only would it not recognize the disc, it also wouldn't even eject it.

The computer is part of our Home Theater (a great little HT computer actually) and sits on an external firewire HD that is shaped just like it...yes she had stuck the disc into the little cooling space between the Mac Mini and the external HD : )

I can totally see how these minimalist designs without any external markings or visible control levers/buttons could be a bit unintuitive. The external Superdrive for the MBA is minimalist to the extreme. None the less, I do love Apple's minimalist designs.

All of us have had our Doh!!/Homer Simpson moments. It takes a brave person to public acknowledge it. Thanks for bringing a chuckle/smile to my day.

Dave

As for the drive not showing up unless there is a disc in it, isn't it like that on all Macs? I can't see the optical drive in my MacBook Pro unless there is something in it, same with an external usb optical drive. Come to think of it, why would you need to see the drive if it's empty?

I suppose it has something to do with a portable hard drive or flash key having storage onboard, once connected you can see them and the available storage. But with an optical drive there is no storage available until a disc is inserted, so Apple decided to make the drives invisible until media is present. It makes some sense I guess, even in Windows you can see the optical drives, but you can't do anything with them until media is present.

jchunter: it is not that the drive won't work in one position or the other; it is that with it being upside down, therefore the disc was inserted upside down to it. I suspect that if you put it upside down again and inserted the disc also downside up, it might function. But as an experiment, not full time.