The late Steve Jobs once described Blu-ray as a "bag of hurt." Guess some of us like the pain -- and MCE (www.mcetech.com) makes it possible to view Blu-ray discs on your Mac with its USB Super-BluDrive.

The lightweight, portable, slot-loading drive connects via USB and can play and record CDs and DVDs as well as play commercial Blu-ray movies directly on the Mac with the included software. The USB Super-BluDrive is compatible with all Mac systems and retails for US$79.

It gives Mac users a solid alternative to the Apple USB SuperDrive by providing the same functionality, but with the added bonus of giving users the ability to watch Blu-ray movies directly on the Mac. The MCE USB Super-BluDrive includes Mac Blu-ray Player software for the playback of commercial Blu-ray movies natively on the Mac. Commercial Blu-ray movie playback requires an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.4GHz, or faster, and at least 2GB of RAM.

The drive is compatible with Apple's DVD Player application for the playback of DVD movies as well as with Finder Burning for burning DVDs and CDs from the desktop. The drive can be used for installing system software and applications, is bootable, and is fully compatible with all DVD and CD recordable media on the market today and can record to standard DVDR media at up to 8X (11MB/sec) speed, to DVDR+/-DL (Double/Dual Layer) media at up to 4X (5.5MB/sec) speed, to DVD+/-RW at up to 6X speed, to DVD-RAM at up to 5X speed, and to CD-R and CD-RW media at up to 24X speed.