The good news is that, in general, most modern optical drives can read and write most common formats.
Many different companies developed different versions of optical drives and optical media, often competitively, rarely ever collaborating. That's a consequence of the decades-long development process that optical drives went through. The optical drive exists to accommodate media, and there's a bewildering array of optical media formats. The optical drives on older Mac laptops featured a simple slot instead of a pop-out tray.
