Air can boot from remote optical disc
January 17th 2008
Like a lot us, the lads at MacFixIt wondered if the Mac Book Air could be booted from a remote optical disc. The underlying issue, of course, being the new portable's lack of an integrated optical drive, which could be a nettlesome shortcoming should the hard disc / SSD go AWOL.
When asked, "Does the Remote Disc function allows booting the system. In other words, could you put a Mac OS X Install disc in a remote computer then boot the MacBook Air from that disc?" Janette Barrios, Apple spokesperson, desktops and notebooks, said, "[The] answer is yes, you can."
How reliable this feature will ultimately be will take time to suss out, but at least for now booting an ailing Mac Book Air isn't that big of an issue.
Of course, this whole issue can be obviated simply by using Apple's MacBook Air SuperDrive ($99) or a third-party drive, such as the Boa Slim ($175) from OWC.
Editor's note: There has been a lot of whining about the Mac Book Air's "lack" of an internal optical drive. This issue seems very much like when the iMac shipped without a floppy drive...
What's your take?
