The Genius waved the labor fee and only charged me for the part ($119). Best of all they installed it an hour. Very impressive. My interactions with them was fun and professional. I do wish of course that my drive had not failed. It is a bit extra annoying that it broke 110 days after the warrantee period. Should have followed my own advice and bought Applecare extended warranty (although if that’s all that goes wrong; I am still ahead cost-wise).

My editorial remark on the topic is; that over the many years of using internal notebook DVD super drives from Apple; I am not so sad to see them go bye-bye. (They are not built-into the Retina Macbook Pro or Macbook Air’s.) I do not have a formal count, but a good guess is – four times – is the number that I have had to replace them since I brought my first Apple notebook in 2000. And each time cost me much more than $119.  I am fine with using the external USB drives for watching and burning my future CD and DVD’s from my notebooks; at least that will only cost me $50 to replace.