Apple has begun to stop installing CD/DVD drives since the introduction of MacBook Air in January 2008. Later Apple discontinued manufacturing MacBook and iMac with optical drives in 2016 and mid-2011 respectively. With your new Mac devices, you are not able to run CDs or DVDs. For this purpose, you need to rely on external CD/DVD drives. Moreover, you need an external drive to import movies and music to iTunes. If you have got the latest MacBook or iMac (released after 2012 and 2016), you need to buy the best external CD/DVD drives.
Quick access:
#1. Apple USB SuperDrive
Apple claims that its USB SuperDrive has everything you need in an optical drive. With simplicity, this external drive has state-of-the-art technology. You can connect this SuperDrive with your MacBook Pro with Retina display, MacBook Air, iMac, or Mac mini with a single USB Type A cable, which is built into this SuperDrive.
Change your DVD drive region in DVD Player on Mac. To play a DVD, the region code of the DVD must match the region code of your DVD drive. Your DVD drive is automatically set to a region code the first time you play a coded DVD. If the region code for a DVD doesn’t match the current region code of your DVD drive, a dialog asks you if you want.
The design of this drive is compact as it is slightly bigger than a CD case. You can carry this SuperDrive anywhere in your travel bag or laptop bag. Use this drive on your desk or tray table. Check out the compatible devices.
Download the Express Burn if you want a CD burning software that is a fast, easy and user-friendly disc burner for Windows/Mac. Its features include audio CD burning and recording, Blu-ray burning video and DVD authoring, data DVD/CD/Blu-ray writing and so on.
Mac Apps for CD & DVD Drivers. Mac Apps for CD & DVD Drivers. Most Popular; New Releases. Update the firmware on specific models of the Combo drive for increased reliability.
USP: Compact design Check out on Apple
#2. VersionTECH
VersionTECH is one of the leading brands in manufacturing high-quality CD/DVD drives for Mac. The most useful feature on this drive is that there is no eject button. And you are not supposed to use any driver program or extra power supply as it can be powered by the USB port.
VersionTECH has created a stylish design that features a durable metal finish with an elegant silver lid. The ultra-slim drive is convenient to carry anywhere. Among other notable features, this drive boasts are embedded cable, premium wire drawing material, low noise, and high durability.
USP: Ultra-thin design Check out on Amazon
#3. LG
LG is a renowned brand in the world of electronics. The brand has also manufactured top-notch accessories like power banks, Bluetooth headphones, keyboards, stylus and more. For your Mac, LG brings an ultra-slim DVD external drive. With its 8X DVD-R writing speed, you can quickly transfer data from your DVD or CD to your MacBook or iMac.
During the style evolution, LG’s optical drive has achieved a new status from slimmer to the slimmest. The product occupies little space on your desk and delivers the best performance every time you insert a CD or DVD.
USP: Superior data protection Check out on Amazon
#4. Cocopa
With its high-speed interface of USB 3.0, Cocopa can quickly transmit your data at the maximum speed of 5GBPS. This makes Cocopa an excellent choice of marketing executives, who have to make presentations in offices. The strong fault tolerance gives a stable performance.
For fashion-forward users, Cocopa has used brushed texture shell that gives you a good touch feeling. With its small size, you can carry this portable DVD drive with your laptop anywhere.
USP: Stable performance Check out on Amazon
#5. Gipow
Beating USB 2.0 and USB 1.0, Gipow has designed a USB 3.0 external drive for your Mac. Whether it is your movies, videos, or audio contents, you can quickly transfer everything to your Mac. If you don’t want to transfer audio/visual contents, you can watch or listen to the contents directly from the drive.
This CD/DVD drive is compatible with multiple operating systems, apart from macOS. It’s a plug-and-play drive you can install and use without any software or driver.
USP: Fashionable design Check out on Amazon
#6. Rioddas
When I opened the package, I wondered there was no cable attached to this drive. Then I realized that the cable is smartly embedded at the bottom of this drive. This intelligent design can impress any user. This is the best portable drive for Mac owners, who have to travel extensively. The drive doesn’t occupy space in your travel bag or laptop bag.
For better stability on any glossy surface, Rioddas has put a non-slip pad on the bottom. This non-slip pad prevents your drive from falling off your table or desk. The multi-functional CD/DVD drive can burn movies and music.
USP: Embedded cable design Check out on Amazon
Cd Drive App Mac Free
#7. ISKE
Unlike other external CD/DVD drives that show eject button, ISKE doesn’t have that eject button. When you want to eject a CD or DVD from the drive, you can perform this action from your Mac.
ISKE’s external drive boasts intelligent design as it offers embedded cable design; users should not underrate this feature as it can protect the cable and makes your drive more portable.
USP: No eject button Check out on Amazon
#8. Botee
Botee has come up with a unique feature: voltage stabilization system. This system avoids high or low voltage lead. Thus, it can protect your computer from any damage. Bootee offers you free lifetime product warranty, 30-day product replacement or refund.
Universal compatibility of this drive enables it to work with multiple operating systems aside from macOS. This means you can smoothly transfer your data from Windows computer to Mac or vice versa.
USP: Voltage stabilization Check out on Amazon
#9. ivkey
ivkey presents unique design in its external CD drive that works with USB 3.0 high-speed interface. For faster data transmission speed, use this product and achieve a maximum speed of up to 5GBPS. Along with speed, you get stable performance and strong fault tolerance.
Ivkey has unparalleled intelligent burning technology and brand new chip to correct the errors. You can play your audio/visual contents without any log or distortion.
VicTsing brings a multi-function external CD/DVD drive with which you can watch DVD movies, burn files, music, videos to another CD or DVD. You can also install software and create backup discs etc.
VicTsing offers robust anti-shock and noise-reduction technology. The drive consumes low power, and it can be powered by the USB port; you are not supposed to use any external adapter. Don’t miss its slim and lightweight design, which provides a stylish appearance.
USP: Error-correction ability Check out on Amazon
That’s all!
Summing up…
For smooth, hassle-free, fast, and secure transmission of your data, external CD/DVD drive is the best solution for your Mac. Note that you can buy any CD or DVD with maximum data storage capacity and then transfer your data from one computer to another.
You may also like to refer:
Which external CD/DVD drive would you like to buy for your Mac?
Jignesh Padhiyar is the co-founder of iGeeksBlog.com who has a keen eye for news, rumors and all the unusual stuff that happens around Apple products. During his tight schedule, Jignesh finds some moments of respite to share side-splitting contents on social media.
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The Terminal app allows you to control your Mac using a command prompt. Why would you want to do that? Well, perhaps because you’re used to working on a command line in a Unix-based system and prefer to work that way. Terminal is a Mac command line interface. There are several advantages to using Terminal to accomplish some tasks — it’s usually quicker, for example. In order to use it, however, you’ll need to get to grips with its basic commands and functions. Once you’ve done that, you can dig deeper and learn more commands and use your Mac’s command prompt for more complex, as well as some fun, tasks.
Curated Mac apps that keep your Mac’s performance under control. Avoid Terminal commands, avoid trouble.
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How to open Terminal on Mac
The Terminal app is in the Utilities folder in Applications. To open it, either open your Applications folder, then open Utilities and double-click on Terminal, or press Command - spacebar to launch Spotlight and type 'Terminal,' then double-click the search result.
You’ll see a small window with a white background open on your desktop. In the title bar are your username, the word 'bash' and the dimensions of the window in pixels. Bash stands for 'Bourne again shell'. There are a number of different shells that can run Unix commands, and on the Mac Bash is the one used by Terminal.
If you want to make the window bigger, click on the bottom right corner and drag it outwards. If you don’t like the black text on a white background, go to the Shell menu, choose New Window and select from the options in the list.
If Terminal feels complicated or you have issues with the set-up, let us tell you right away that there are alternatives. Download iphone apps on mac. MacPilot allows to get access to over 1,200 macOS features without memorizing any commands. Basically, a third-party Terminal for Mac that acts like Finder.
For Mac monitoring features, try iStat Menus. The app collects data like CPU load, disk activity, network usage, and more — all of which accessible from your menu bar.
Basic Mac commands in Terminal
The quickest way to get to know Terminal and understand how it works is to start using it. But before we do that, it’s worth spending a little time getting to know how commands work. To run a command, you just type it at the cursor and hit Return to execute.
Every command is made up of three elements: the command itself, an argument which tells the command what resource it should operate on, and an option that modifies the output. So, for example, to move a file from one folder to another on your Mac, you’d use the move command 'mv' and then type the location of the file you want to move, including the file name and the location where you want to move it to.
Let’s try it.
Type cd ~/Documentsthen and press Return to navigate to your Home folder.
Type lsthen Return (you type Return after every command).
You should now see a list of all the files in your Documents folder — ls is the command for listing files.
To see a list of all the commands available in Terminal, hold down the Escape key and then press y when you see a question asking if you want to see all the possibilities. To see more commands, press Return.
Unix has its own built-in manual. So, to learn more about a command type man [name of command], where 'command' is the name of the command you want find out more about.
Terminal rules
There are a few things you need to bear in mind when you’re typing commands in Terminal, or any other command-line tool. Firstly, every character matters, including spaces. So when you’re copying a command you see here, make sure you include the spaces and that characters are in the correct case.
You can’t use a mouse or trackpad in Terminal, but you can navigate using the arrow keys. If you want to re-run a command, tap the up arrow key until you reach it, then press Return. To interrupt a command that’s already running, type Control-C.
Commands are always executed in the current location. So, if you don’t specify a location in the command, it will run wherever you last moved to or where the last command was run. Use the cdcommand, followed by a directory path, like in Step 1 above, to specify the folder where you want a command to run.
There is another way to specify a location: go to the Finder, navigate to the file or folder you want and drag it onto the Terminal window, with the cursor at the point where you would have typed the path.
Here’s another example. This time, we’ll create a new folder inside your Documents directory and call it 'TerminalTest.'
Open a Finder window and navigate to your Documents folder.
Type cd and drag the Documents folder onto the Terminal window.
Now, type mkdir 'TerminalTest'
Go back to the Finder, open Text Edit and create a new file called 'TerminalTestFile.rtf'. Now save it to the TerminalTest folder in your Documents folder.
In the Terminal window, type cd ~/Documents/TerminalTest then Return. Now type lsand you should see 'TerminalTestFile' listed.
To change the name of the file, type this, pressing Return after every step:
cd~/Documents/Terminal Test
mv TerminalTestFile TerminalTestFile2.rtf
That will change the name of the file to 'TerminalTestFile2'. You can, of course, use any name you like. The mv command means 'move' and you can also use it to move files from one directory to another. In that case, you’d keep the file names the same, but specify another directory before typing the the second instance of the name, like this:
Terminal can be used for all sorts of different tasks. Some of them can be performed in the Finder, but are quicker in Terminal. Others access deep-rooted parts of macOS that aren’t accessible from the Finder without specialist applications. Here are a few examples.
Copy files from one folder to another
In a Terminal window, type ditto [folder 1] [folder 1] where 'folder 1' is the folder that hosts the files and 'folder 2' is the folder you want to move them to.
To see the files being copied in the Terminal window, type -v after the command.
Download files from the internet
You’ll need the URL of the file you want to download in order to use Terminal for this.
If you want to download the file to a directory other than your Downloads folder, replace ~/Downloads/ with the path to that folder, or drag it onto the Terminal window after you type the cd command.
Change the default location for screenshots
If you don’t want macOS to save screenshots to your Desktop when you press Command-Shift-3, you can change the default location in Terminal
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location [path to folder where you want screenshots to be saved]
By default, macOS saves screenshots as .png files. To change that to .jpg, do this:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type JPG
Press Return
killall SystemUIServer
Press Return
Delete all files in a folder
The command used to delete, or remove, files in Terminal is rm. So, for example, if you wanted to remove a file in your Documents folder named 'oldfile.rtf' you’d use cd ~/Documents to go to your Documents folder then to delete the file. As it stands, that will delete the file without further intervention from you. If you want to confirm the file to be deleted, use -i as in rm -i oldfile.rtf
To delete all the files and sub-folders in a directory named 'oldfolder', the command is rm -R oldfolder and to confirm each file should be deleted, rm -iR oldfolder
Just because you can use Terminal to delete files on your Mac, doesn’t mean you should. It’s a relatively blunt instrument, deleting only those files and folders you specify.
Another way to free up space
If your goal in removing files or folders is to free up space on your Mac, or to remove junk files that are causing your Mac to run slowly, it’s far better to use an app designed for the purpose. CleanMyMac X is one such app.
It will scan your Mac for files and recommend which ones you can delete safely, as well as telling you how much space you’ll save. And once you’ve decided which files to delete, you can get rid of them in a click. You can download CleanMyMac here.
As you can see, while Terminal may look scary and seem like it’s difficult to use, it really isn’t. The key is learning a few commands, such as those we’ve outlined above, and getting to know the syntax for those commands.
Best mac app to import iphone photos and rename them. However, you should be careful when using Terminal, it’s a powerful tool that has deep access to your Mac’s system files. Check commands by googling them if you’re not sure what they do. And if you need to delete files to save space, use an app like CleanMyMac X to do it. It’s much safer!