New feature supports MacBook Air.
Have you peeked in the Sharing preferences pane since updating to Mac OS X 10.5.2? Take a look and you’ll see a new option right at the top of the Service list: DVD or CD Sharing. This option, once enabled, makes it possible to share your computer’s optical drive with a MacBook Air via the Remote Disc feature.
This feature makes it possible to use another computer’s optical drive to run installation software on DVD or CD on a MacBook Air, which lacks its own optical disk.
Once enabled, the DVD or CD Sharing feature has one option with a check box: Ask me before allowing others to use my DVD drive. Turning on this option ensures that you approve any shared use of the disk.
Page References
You can learn more about Sharing features of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on pages 484-491 of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.
Hi – in addition you can now share DVD/CD drive between all computers running 10.5.2. Great up you have only a combo drive on an older laptop.
I know we’ve been able to mount a CD/DVD disc from one computer to another on the network, but I’m not sure if we’re now able to boot one computer off that shared disk. I tried setting it up between my two 10.5.2 Macs (a MacBook Pro and a 24-inch iMac) and could not get it to work. So although you can share data on the CD/DVD, I’m not sure whether the sharing capabilities have actually increased for any computer other than the MacBook Air.
If anyone has additional information about this, please do let us know. I couldn’t find anything about it on the Apple Support site, which I checked prior to writing this piece.
ok, I have enables dvd/cd sharing on both my imac 24″ aluminum and my ibook g4 and both are running leopard 10.5.4 but i am unable to view, connect or see the other computers dvd/cd drive. I can see and share all other folders but the dvd/cd drive does not show up on either…..what is the deal?
Have you tried connecting this to a PC w/ PC or vista? Cuz, I have a mini laptop w/o an optical drive, I was wondering how my Computer cna access the DVD/CD rom drive of my iMac 17″….