Superdrive is a term that was first used by Apple Computer in about 1988 to refer to their 1.4MB floppy drive. This replaced the older 800K floppy drive that had been standard in the Apple Macintosh up to then, but remained compatible in that it could continue to read and write both 800K (double-sided) and 400K (single-sided) floppy disks, as well as the then-new high-density floppies.
Now that use of floppy disks is declining, Apple has reused the term to refer to the DVD writers built into several of its current Macintosh models, which can read and write both DVDs and CDss.
Superdrive was also used by Imation to refer to the LS-120 disk drive it introduced in 1997, as one of many rival proposals for a successor to the floppy disk. The drive could read both floppy disks as well as its own 120MB cartridges. The product failed to take off, and the format is no longer in production.
