will apple superdrive external dvd player work on my macbook pro 14 M3 pro?

That drive should be compatible with your Mac. However, it has a reputation for being finicky about power – and about wanting to be plugged directly into a USB-A port on a compatible Mac, or an Apple USB-C to USB adapter that is itself plugged directly into a USB-C port on a compatible Mac.

How to connect the Apple USB SuperDrive - Apple Support

Apple seems to have discontinued the USB SuperDrive – it's not available on the Apple Store Web site any more. However, there are many third-party CD/DVD and CD/DVD/Blu-Ray burners that should work with your Mac. (I'm using a desktop CD/DVD drive from Other World Computing that has its own detachable power supply – and that has a detachable (and thus easily replaceable) data cable.

Note that

• Some portable drives want you to plug two USB cables into your Mac or into a powered hub/dock so that they can draw more power than what the USB standards require ports to provide.
• Macs have built-in software for playing CD-Audio and DVD-Video discs, but not for playing Blu-Ray video ones. If your goal is to author DVD-Video discs, author Blu-Ray video discs, or play Blu-Ray video discs, you'll need to get not just a drive, but appropriate third-party software.

Kilrymont wrote:

Strange that Apple dropped this device rather than updating it, is it known why they turned their backs on optical drives?

We don't know for certain.

In the case of the MacBook Air, and later, the Retina MacBook Pros, it was probably in part to make the devices lighter. When iMacs got really thin in 2012, their cases just weren't thick enough to keep built-in optical drives.

As for optical drives in general, Apple probably sees all optical drives (internal or external) as a thing of the past. Long ago, Macs had FireWire interfaces that let them import digital video from MiniDV and Digital8 camcorders, and Apple had an application called iDVD that made it easy to author DVD-Video discs which had nice animated menus. But Apple abandoned FireWire when they adopted USB 3.0, and they also left iDVD by the wayside.

With regards to Blu-Ray, Steve Jobs famously referred to it as a "bag of hurt." I'm not sure if he was referring to the patent licensing, the insane DRM schemes, or both.

Is there a quality 3rd party example of optical drive thats reputedly relatively trouble free? (Amazon reviews I place little faith in, Im afraid)

This one would probably be pretty good:

Other World Computing – 16X OWC Mercury Pro USB 3.2 (5Gb/s) Super-Multi Blu-ray/DVD/CD Burner/Reader External Optical Drive with M-DISC & BDXL Support

I have the CD/DVD (only) version. It has its own power supply, so there are no power issues with connecting it through a hub or dock (if you want to do that). The power supply and USB cable are detachable & replaceable. (So if a cat chewed the USB cable, or you wanted a USB 3.0 B to USB-C one instead of the USB 3.0 B to USB-A one, you could replace the cable without having to replace the whole drive.)

You would still need a separate application if you wanted to play Blu-Ray movie discs.

(I know a great deal more about windows devices pre- Win10) - but although there's plenty of transferrable key commands (Ctrl-C,V,X etc) The operational gulf is more'n enough to have me trawling for various answers!

Some links that you may find useful:

Mac - Official Apple Support

Mac User Guide - Apple Support

Switched from Windows to Mac? - Apple Support

DVD Player User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Continuity features and requirements for Apple devices - Apple Support

iCloud User Guide - Apple Support

Yiu’re welcome.

(If you are interested in burning or playing Blu-Ray discs, the Apple USB SuperDrive is not what you want. It only handles CDs and DVDs.)