A website has started a petition for SuperDrives in various Macs -- PowerBooks, Mac minis and iMac G5s in particular -- that fail to write DVD media at the advertised rate, instead writing at a maximum 2X speed though a faster speed may be indicated by software displays.
To recap, most of these mechanisms are manufactured by Matshita. The problem affects Apple's Disk Utility, Roxio's Toast and a number of other recording applications. Either the option to burn at the advertised rate is not accessible, or the burn repeatedly fails when attempted at the advertised speed.
Some users are able to write at greater speeds with certain brands of DVD recordable media, or alternative third-party burning software. See this article for further information, including suggested media brands and recommended burning software.
Now a group of users has started a petition with the aim of drawing more attention to this issue.
The petition call reads:
"This is a petition to get recognition for the fact that many PowerBooks and Mac Minis have a fault with the internal SuperDrives. Up until today, Apple does not fix this problem out of warranty or acknowledge that there might be a production fault in all recent aluminum PowerBooks and Mac Minis.
"Some very unfortunate Apple customers have had their SuperDrive refuse to burn at over 2x. [...]"
The petition goes on to state that the issue is not disc media-related (though, based on MacFixIt's data, it is in some cases), and identifies the MATSHITA DVD-R UJ-835E drive as problematic, though other drives may also be affected.
Petition website:
macfixit.com.
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