While the optical drive is not long for this world, there is one last way to make it useful.

Apple was among the first companies to deprecate the optical disc drive (ODD). Beginning with the MacBook Air in 2008, they have steadily omitted the drive from new revisions of their products. Once the Mac Pro is re-released later this year with its new circular design, Apple will no longer sell a computer with a built-in optical drive.

For those regular legacy users wanting to be on the cutting edge back in 2008, Apple provided a high-tech and a standard option to access disks. Allowing Remote Disk access meant you could share your optical drive via ethernet or Wi-Fi. With the removal of ODDs from all computers they offer, though, this solution is no longer practical.

This leaves the decidedly pedestrian solution of a USB drive physically connected to your machine. What makes this a less-than-ideal solution is the same thing that led to the ODD being pushed out of the computer in the first place: its size. Having to carry an adapter for video output or ethernet connectivity is one thing, but the size and shape of the ODD makes it inelegant and inefficient.

There are two things that could make the removal of the optical drive easier to accept, and both involve using Apple networking hardware. One: allow the Time Capsule to mount disc images over a local or external network connection. This way, any disc you have can be accessed without having to physically put it in a drive, after an initial rip. Second, to handle that initial rip, add external SuperDrive support to Airport devices. Instead of plugging the drive into your computer when needed, you could leave it plugged into the network. When you do encounter that increasingly rare disk, you can pop it into the SuperDrive, then let the Time Capsule make an image of it. Ideally, there would be support for third-party optical drives, access via any Airport device, and access to the stored disk images via the internet (but realistically that’s unlikely to happen).

This would be a great way to extend legacy compatibility with existing hardware, just engineering a software enhancement.