I know this thread refers to Apple Superdrives, but I believe the same holds true for Pioneer's OEM DVD-R hardware. I have a Pioneer DVR-A03 in an external FireWire case and applied several firmware updates.

The first updated, 1.90 added 4X media recognition and bug fix for high-speed media. However the drive would now only burn certain media at 2X and it burned Pioneer 4X media at only 1X.

The latest update, 2.00 added support for 2x recording speed on High Speed (4X) media.

The problem is that Apple hasn't yet released the equivalent update for the Superdrive. For the Pioneer DVR-103/A03 this is version 2.00. For the Pioneer DVR-104/A04 this is version 1.4

All the updates are at www.pioneerelectronics.com/hs and they only work on an internal IDE connection. I had to take my drive out of the FireWire case for updating. There is also one more catch. The latest firmware is only available as a Windows installer. However you can extract the firmware file from the Windows update package on a PC or Virtual PC and then use the Mac updater application, which is available with the older firmware, to apply the new firmware file.

Thank you Apple and Pioneer for making this so damn complicated.

I'd like to add to the validity of the claim that the firmware update for the Superdrive disables compatibility for cheaper DVD-Rs. The update has rendered the Ritex 2X DVD-Rs as 1X only using Toast Titanium 5.2. Off to buy Apple media. Weeeeeeee.