In short, yes they are. All the drives in IDE Macs are just bog standard IDE hard drives and ATAPI CD/DVD drives they work in 99.9% of other IDE machines.

They are made to order by OEM suppliers with Apple ROM tags on them on some older drives but I think they've even stopped doing that now, they just use off the shelf stuff. I can't remember if my Mac Pro's hard drive has an Apple sticker on it or not, they usually still do as most drive manufacturers offer the service for all OEM supplied hardware.

The slot-loading iMacs - at least the earlier (350MHz-450MHz) ones - use an older type of optical drive that won't fit in PC laptops or other Macs that use laptop drives. Same deal for the 400MHz, 500MHz, and 550MHz Titanium Powerbook G4s.

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FWIW the 667 GigE TiBook has an old fashioned non-standard slot loader in too, I think the GigE was the last model to do so though, they wen to using standard form factor ones with the DVI versions I think.

There are adapters available for using notebook drives in desktop machines. From memory, the ones for optical drives are different from the ones for hard drives. Once the iMac-specific converter board is removed, it's a standard notebook drive.

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Your memory would be correct, oh flaming bench top gas burner of wisdom [] ]'>. The ATA laptop CD connector is a low depth surface connector about 3/4 of an inch long. ATA hard drives use an IEC 44-pin narrow pitch pin header (I forget the exact spacing) and the appropriate female attachment. Both carry power and IDE, the CD drive also carries stereo audio out.