In times of cloud computing, streaming services and VDSL, CD and DVD burners shouldn’t be so important anymore – especially since Apple has gradually taken away the optical drives from its Macs. Only the Macbook Pro 13-inch from the 2012 model year offers a built-in drive for burning and reading DVDs and CDs. But even under El Capitan, recordable optical media is still a popular way to store data or share it with others. With OS X, this can be done comfortably and in many cases without additional software. The burning function is integrated into the Finder and the respective application programs: For audio CDs iTunes is responsible, for photo CDs iPhoto or photos for OS X and for video DVDs iMovie – the program iDVD Apple has long pushed to the siding. What you should know: If you have a Mac without a burner or no drive connected, you will not see any burning options. These appear only after connecting a USB or Firewire burner in the menu and context menu. External burners don’t cost the earth; Apple itself offers the USB Superdrive for 89 euros as an optional accessory when you buy a burnerless Mac. If you still have an older Mac with a DVD/CD drive in your network, you can activate the "DVD or CD Sharing" option in the system settings activate: The Mac without burner uses the shared drive over the network.
External burners in the test
External DVD burners can also be ordered directly from Apple.
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Apple has left only one model with an optical drive in its current computer lineup: The 2012 Macbook Pro 13 in. Who wants to burn on a newer Mac, is therefore dependent on an external drive, Apple also has a corresponding drive in the offer.
Burning DVDs
If you only have a folder full of documents on CD or DVD If you want to burn a CD or DVD, you can do this in the Finder: Select the folder or the files in the Finder and use the command "File>" in OS X . Burn to CD. Now you just have to insert a blank disc and OS X will burn the data to CD or DVD. If you want to sort your data in peace, you can use the option" Burn folder" Operate.
Burning function: Burning is integrated into the system; you can insert the corresponding button into the toolbar of the Finder.
These burning folders are special folders that can be accessed via the Finder menu "File" creates. If you copy files into one of these folders, the system remembers the file in a list. Open the folder and press the "Burn" button displayed. To save space, there are only alias files in the folder, no real files. A blank disc is only requested and written to when the "Burn" button is pressed press.
Alternatively, you can insert a blank DVD. The operating system then asks with which program you want to write the DVD. If you want to burn a data DVD, choose the option "Open Finder". Then a new burn folder is automatically created and the CD or DVD is displayed with an icon on the desktop. You can now copy data to the media – similar to a USB stick.
Burning with System
The actual burning of CDs and DVDs is done by a function integrated into the operating system, which works in the background. iTunes, iPhoto and other programs also use this system component. The quality of this burning function has led to the fact that there are hardly any stand-alone burning programs for the Mac. Because the Apple software works quite universal: Since OS X third party burners are recognized immediately. If you connect a Bluray burner to your Mac, even writing to Bluray media will work. This then allows 25 to 50 GB to be burned onto a Bluray disc. Dialogs and windows are the same as when burning CDs and DVDs, you just have more space available with Bluray.
CDs and DVDs burned with the Finder are "hybrid", i.e. compatible with Windows and Mac file system. The discs are therefore readable under Windows and Mac-OS X. Until OS X 10.11 you could create image files with Disk Utility and burn them to CD – this is very handy for burning large amounts of DVDs. Under El Capitan you can still save an inserted DVD or CD as an image file – but burning an image file is now only possible via the Finder. This is especially convenient via context menu.