Ripping CDs today on my new Mac Pro, I realized that I no longer had the eject button in my menu bar. Since I did a clean install on the Mac Pro, it didn’t carry over a lot of my settings from my previous Mac.
Having an eject button in the menu bar lets you quickly eject any optical discs that are mounted on your Mac; it doesn’t let you eject hard drives, however.
To do this, go to /System/Library/Core Services/Menu Extras, and find Eject.menu.
Double-click that item, and it adds an eject button to your menu bar. There are no options.
When I’m ripping a lot of CDs, and doing other things at the same time, I find it quicker to eject them like this than to go straight to iTunes. Your mileage may vary.