Posted Saturday, July 26, 2003

iDVD 3.0.1 Follow-Up: Installing on a Mac Without a SuperDrive

After posting yesterday's tip about iDVD 3.0.1 running on Macs without SuperDrives, I received several nearly identical emails: "When I try to install iDVD 3.0 on my Mac, a message appears saying that I don't have a SuperDrive and that I should use the other iLife installer disc."

It's true: If you use the standard iLife installation DVD, you won't be able to install iDVD 3.0 -- and if you don't have 3.0 installed, you can't update to 3.0.1.

What to do?

You can install iDVD 3.0 on a Mac without a SuperDrive, provided that Mac has a DVD drive. You just have to perform a couple of extra steps.

Step 1. Insert your iLife installation DVD in your Mac's DVD drive.

Step 2. Locate the icon named Install. Select it and choose Show Original from the Finder's File menu. A window will appear, and in it will be a folder named Packages.

Step 3. Double click the folder named Packages. A window will open containing five icons, one of them named iDVD.pkg. This is the iDVD 3 installer.

Step 4. Double-click the icon named iDVD.pkg, and install iDVD 3.

Step 5. After the installation is complete, run the iDVD 3.0.1 updater.

I successfully used these steps to install and update iDVD on my PowerBook G4, which has a DVD drive.