An Apple-certified vendor late last month released a patch for the much lauded iDVD application that allows it to work with DVD-R burners that are not internal drives originally sold by Apple (aka, OEM Pioneer DVD-R SuperDrives). The patch allowed users without the OEM drives to use the iDVD application which, after all, is included with OS X, although apparently not installed if an internal SuperDrive is not detected. The requirements for the app are as follows:
Requires Mac OS X, v10.1.3 or later, any Power Macintosh G4 or G4 iMac equipped with a built-in Apple SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW drive), and a minimum of 256MB of RAM installed (384MB recommended).
This patch, however, would allow you to reap the benefits of iDVD on non-compliant machines, and was apparently a selling point for Other World Computing's Mercury Pro DVD-R/RW FireWire external drive. Apple, not pleased, used the DMCA to threaten action against the company, who has now backed down. Although Apple certainly has the right to protect its software from modification, it's not immediately clear why the company would want its iDVD software to only work with internal DVD-Rs, unless this is simply a scheme to promote hardware sales. Nevertheless, things are still looking up at Apple. More than 100,000 copies of Jaguar were sold over the weekend--a new record for the company. And yep, you can expect an ever-thorough Ars review from John Siracusa next week.
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