By Graham K. Rogers

In the latest version of OS X - 10.10, Yosemite - some System Preferences have seen changes. As many new Macs no longer have internal disk drives, the CDs & DVDs preferences panel may not be shown, although the necessary files are installed. The panel is available to control the actions of the computer when a disk drive is available.

The CDs & DVDs panel does not appear in the panel for System Preferences on my MacBook Pro. However, on the older iMac which has an optical drive, it is unchanged from previous versions of OS X, apart from the different interfacing and fonts that are used for Yosemite. A close look, however, will reveal that the minute icons used on the selector buttons have been updated (e.g. iTunes).

These preferences allow users to control how the computer will behave when blank disks - or disks that have media on them - are inserted in a drive. Five disk options are available: blanks CDs, blank DVDs, music CDs, picture CDs and video DVDs. As before, blank disks options are separated slightly on the panel from those for media disks. Buttons for the blank disks have more options.

Beside each of the two blank disk items is a button with a number of choices, the top in each being, "Ask what to do": the Finder will alert a user and the user can then open an application, or deal with the disk in another way.

Other options available are: Open Finder, Open iTunes, Open Disk Utility, Open other application, Run script and Ignore. The blank DVD menu also has the additional item, Open iDVD. As an example of thoroughness, the tiny icons for iTunes and iPhoto actions have been updated from the previous versions in Mavericks as they were when moving from Mavericks to Mountain Lion.

The specific media items (music, pictures, video) each have as the top selection the probable default application for most users: iTunes, iPhoto or DVD Player (respectively). The user may select other applications, depending on the software installed on the computer. The buttons also allow a user to run a script or "Ignore".

See Also:

• Accessibility
• App Store
• Bluetooth

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.