#remote disc

[smart-tours]

Macbook Pro Retina - Optical Drive Workaround

I recently bought myself the new Mac Book Pro with retina display and absolutely love it! The new screen is so sharp and even working on text documents is more of a pleasure.

The main drawback I found though when trying to set up my software is the lack of an optical drive. Clearly this was explained to me in the store and I figured it wouldn't be that big a deal actually, however now I'm sitting here with an Aperture install disk and don't know what to do. I've just looked on Amazon at external drives and to be honest, I could get one for under £20 so it's no big deal but I wanted to double check there wasn't another way to work around it and guess what?

There is a workaround!

Well assuming you have another PC or Mac anyway. For me I have a big ol' Mac Pro and so for those of you with an iMac or Mac Pro here's the workaround.

Be sure both computers are on the same local network.

On the Mac with the optical drive, choose System Preferences from the Apple () menu.

Choose Sharing from the View menu.

Enable the checkbox for DVD or CD Sharing.

If you want to be asked for permission before others can use the optical drive on the computer, enable the "Ask me before allowing others to use my DVD drive" checkbox.

After you've enabled DVD or CD Sharing, insert the disc that you want to share.

Go to your Mac that does not have an optical drive and open a Finder window.

Select Remote Disc in the DEVICES sidebar list. You should see the computer that has DVD or CD Sharing enabled.

Double-click the computer's icon and click Connect. If the computer that is sharing its optical drive has "Ask me before allowing others to use my DVD drive" enabled, click "Ask to use."

On the computer sharing its optical drive, acknowledge the request by clicking Accept.

From this point on you can see the drive from your new MBP and load your software.

I am literally just loading Aperture now while writing this and all is good!

I hope this is a help to someone, if you've not seen what I do over here please take a look at my virtual tours while you're passing by.

The above information was found at the apple support site and you can see more information including screen shots here.

[jeremymulder]

Feature Request: Enable Remote Disc on AppleTV

Forgive the ghetto wiring in the picture. It bugs me too.

I used to plug my laptop into my TV like so for a variety of different reasons. One was to watch Hulu. The other was to stream movies from the family iMac where they are stored to the TV in the family room. It worked great, but it was annoying.

When the AppleTV 2 came out, it solved a couple problems and made life much simpler. Streaming movies that I owned was immediately solved. And although it doesn't stream Hulu (yet?), I just went and got a Netflix account and basically satisfied whatever on demand streaming need I had. But there is one problem it hasn't solved (in addition to the Hulu problem, I suppose), even though I'm sure it's technically possible.

I don't have a DVD player.

I haven't had an actual DVD player in years. Up until about 10 months ago, my trusty, first generation Xbox 360 did the job just fine. Then it died. Thus, I have no DVD player, other than the one built in to either my iMac or my Macbook Pro, as seen here. That means that whenever I want to watch a DVD (once a month, maybe), I have to go back to the old method of plugging in the laptop to the TV.

Now, OSX has this great feature where I can fully access the DVD player on my iMac from my Macbook Pro, and vice versa. It's called Remote Disc. In other words, the capability is built into the software to be able to read another computer's DVD drive.

So here's my request: enable that functionality on the Apple TV. Then I just pop the DVD in the iMac and I'm good to go. I can watch it wherever the ATV is connected over my wireless network. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

[pleaserebootit]

How to: Enable Remote Disc Access

An ability enabled by default with MacBook Airs is the Remote Disc function.

Remote Disc allows you to access the optical drive of a separate Mac or Windows PC. For Windows, you need to install DVD or CD Sharing for Windows. To enable drive sharing on a Mac, enable them in Sharing via System Preferences.

However this option is restricted to the Macbook Air. Or is it. This function is built into Mac OS X. You just need to enable it. Follow these instructions:

Launch Terminal found in Applications:Utilities and enter the two commands below

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser EnableODiskBrowsing -bool true

defaults write com.apple.NetworkBrowser ODSSupported -bool true

Reboot your computer

This will allow any Mac to access any computers CD/DVD drive with Remote Disc sharing enabled. This can be useful in the event you have a faulty optical drive (which I have unfortunately encountered more frequently than I should have).