I. HATE. my. MacBook.

Hold down the eject key on startup?  Sorry, I hate them too for this reason.  PCs have quick releases on the optical drives.  We have this problem all the time with Macs at work.  To make it worse, they are nearly impossible for us to service, it takes forever to take them apart and put them back together. 

*holds her macbook close and apologizes*

LOL.

Hey, that worked better than this prof's laptop he brought in this week.  He was taking his kid to the ER for an asthma attack and brought his MacBook to watch a DVD while waiting.  On the way back, they slipped on ice, landed on the computer case, and BENT the MacBook with the DVD stuck inside.  My co-worker managed to rip the whole thing apart and get the DVD out (it was rented from a library).  We gave the Prof a new MacBook and are keeping his as a "spare".  It's so funny looking, it's totally bent and won't sit flat.  Amazingly, the display is not damage even though it's now curved!
 

 Hey, there is usually a TEENY hole by the CD drive. You take a paper clip, straighten it out, and push it into the hole. It will manually eject your disk.

:-) 

Thanks jeano, but I think that hole is only there on the old iBooks, or the older MacBooks. Mine DEFINITELY doesn't have it. I looked.

From what my internet readings lead me to believe, there are two problems. Mine was that the CD was JAMMED. My computer was giving me the option to eject the CD, but it was just catching on something in there. The other is that the computer stops 'seeing' (please excuse my lack of computer-savvyness right there) the CD so it won't give you the option of ejecting, which is the purpose of being able to manually eject it.

Man, what you can learn on the internet in two short hours!

My German professor was having problems with his MacBook in class one day. My friend told him to "sweet talk it", so after he went and screamed, he came back in and it was working. So he, um... seductively licked part of the top of the screen.

You know, just sharing, in case you still feel the need to apologize to it. 

jeano

 Hey, there is usually a TEENY hole by the CD drive. You take a paper clip, straighten it out, and push it into the hole. It will manually eject your disk.

:-) 

That only works on computers that actually have a tray that ejects from the drive.