One of the neat design features of Matthew’s new iMac G5 is the slot-loading DVD-R drive, which like everything else, is built “into” the display.

Apparently the guys at mekentosj.com thought it was cool, too, and decided to take things one step further. They created the free app Disctop, which completes the illusion of the disk sliding right into the computer… upon inserting a CD or DVD into your screen, this app animates a rendition of the disk sliding onto the desktop. After a few seconds, it seamlessly melds the disk image with your desktop image, giving you a visual reminder that there’s a disk in the drive.

You can even set preferences for the type of machine you have (causing the disk to slide onto the screen at different locations), and change the timing so that when you hit the eject key, the animation lines up perfectly with the physical ejecting of the disk. Cute? yes. Practical? maybe. Would you ever see this on a Windows box? probably not.

A nice addition would be the ability to set multiple locations for those who have multiple optical drives (like me).