Making Apple USB SuperDrive work with other Apple Hardware At the time it shipped, the System Requirements for the Apple USB SuperDrive said it worked with precisely three models of computer:


MacBook Pro with Retina display
MacBook Air computer
Mac mini computer


The questions and answers linked to from its page are fairly explicit that it only works with Apple hardware that ships without the option to include an internal Superdrive.

My question is what the limitation is (firmware? drivers?) that would preventing it from working with, completely hypothetically, a mid-2007 24" iMac with 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor running Lion (because performance slowed down too much when I tried ML on it) that has an unreliable internal Superdrive? Are there drivers, kernel extensions, or hacks to fool the OS as to what machine it's running on that would let it use the external Superdrive?
You can edit a plist file by following the instructions found here to enable it on your system, however be aware you won't be able to boot from it (such as installing an OS via CD/DVD at boot).

I have no idea why Apple place the limitations on things like this, other than the potential that it makes things difficult for people (such as myself) who want to stray from normal configurations by installing two hard drives rather than a hard drive and optical drive in their systems. By making it difficult for the masses, they create a more stable experience overall as they have more control over the default configurations.

It's a combination of the firmware on the device, and the plist file which tells the OS whether to recognise the device. There's something in the EFI which prevents it working at boot level though which I don't know enough about to provide further information on though.