Jon's Tumblelog

One of the very minor annoyances of the Intel Macs (and I know this happened before the switch too) was the noise of the SuperDrive. For some reason, every time you would wake from sleep, the SuperDrive would seem to ‘initialize’, and make an audible sound doing so (from some moving part).

I haven’t ever noticed this with our 24” iMac, mainly because we don’t put it to sleep, but only the display(s) to sleep (more on that later).

But on our MacBook, it was louder (than it needed to be), and seriously sounded like Nelson from The Simpsons. It was funny for a while, but sometimes just got annoying (and I hate to say it, but very un-Apple-like). At times, I was even concerned that this activity would eventually mess up the drive, since you often open and close your MacBook, maybe moreso than reading a disk. Our MacBook is the loudest I have ever heard it.

Earlier this week, Apple released MacBook EFI Firmware 1.4, as well as SuperDrive Firmware Update 3.0. While I don’t know what else changed, I do know that the drive no longer makes this noise every time I open the lid, it only makes the noise when booting.

Who knows why it took Apple to solve something so simple (I am sure there is a reason), I am happy it is here. I know its a small trivial fix, but its been something that has concerned me since Day 1 with our MacBook.