Don't Hold Your Breath For Blu-Ray on Macs: Jobs

[santiagodraco]

I have to ask, has Job's illness somehow affected his brain? I mean really, the guy has been coming off with some really wacky stuff lately, like the iPhone antenna problem and now saying that Blu-ray is a fad... who wants to bet he has multiple Blu-ray players and a whole library of movies on Blu-ray...

[awesomeSlayer]

I don't think Macs need Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray isn't even near death.

[stldirty]

It's for portability purposes. You can't carry a 60 inch TV with you right? If I'm on a trip, vacation or somewhere remote, I would love to have a Blu-Ray player on my laptop. I have an 18-inch HP monster with Blu-Ray and it has a HDMI out. I can use my laptop as a blu-ray player and save the $150 buying a separate one (unfortunately my PS3 also adopted to this "dying" technology...). You have to think outside the Apple box. Just because you don't find any use of it doesn't mean the rest of the world agrees with you. You are just reading what Steve-o says and believing his hype. The same thing happened with flash. He doesn't like it, so all the little fanboys follow him and agree. The 2 reasons why he doesn't want Blu-Ray is because:

A) It will reduce his iTunes sales
B) He doesn't profit as much by adding a more expensive component to an already overpriced computer.

And who says Blu-Rays won't be eventually adopted into data storage? I mean most games require 2-3 DVD's for installation. It won't be long before they adopt Blu-Ray and use just one. Same thing happened with CD-R's - they used to be the standard for gaming installations and now it seems all games come in DVD format.

let me get this straight, you're saying blu-rays are more portable than downloaded media? i don't know about you but i'd rather be playing a movie i have downloaded on my laptop than wasting battery power spinning up a blu ray disc. i also don't plan on carrying around a whole blu ray library with me when i travel. and i feel if you're the type of person that is sitting around doing something completely different then all of the sudden is like "OH MY GOD I HAVE TO WATCH THIS MOVIE RIGHT NOW OR I'M GOING TO SHOOT MYSELF" and can't wait a minute a streaming movie to load, you have more issues on your hand than not having a blu ray player. especially if you're willing to wait on netflix to send you a disk. speaking of which, netflix is slowly switching over to streaming services too. hmmmm.

[coolmacguy]

blu-ray is most definitely not dying.

Blu-ray disc sales 94% year-on-year for Q1 ? home cinema news - whathifi.com

[feldon30]

Steve Jobs' arrogance is out of control. He's almost back to the "My way, or the highway" BS he was pulling in 1985 when he got yanked and kicked to the curb.

I can go buy a BD-ROM drive for my PC for $89 and it comes with software to play any Hollywood Blu-Ray movie out there. I don't know what licensing nonsense Steve is talking about. I can buy an OEM drive and play Blu-Rays anywhere.

Also, this is not a niche format. Go to Fry's or Best Buy. 1/4 of the DVD selection is now Blu-Ray.

Streaming is a joke for 1080p movies. As others have said, belt-tightening by Comcast, Time Warner, etc. on bandwidth limits has been Front Page News for the last 2 years, especially on the iPhone's only available carrier -- AT&T.


Steve: Quit the excuses, quit posturing like Father Knows Best, and add Blu-Ray to the Mac!


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Another point...

200 movies on DVD is 4.7-9.4GB x 200 (940GB to 1.83TB) assuming you just get the movie and screw the extras. The same 200 movies on Blu-Ray is 15-25GB x 200 (3TB to 5TB). Are you really going to tie up (and never reformat) $300~400 worth of hard drives, just to avoid buying your movies on Blu-Ray disc? And that's assuming you won't rack up huge bandwidth overages while downloading the movies.

How come almost everyone RENTED their VHS tapes, but almost everyone BUYS their DVD movies?

If you don't know the answer to this, then I can understand why you think most people will give up ownership in favor of streaming. VHS had inconveniences (rewinding, no chapter stops), and poor quality. For its time, DVD was a reference quality copy of a movie. You literally "owned" the movie instead of a temporary copy residing on a tape that will eventually wear out, and must be watched in a specific order. Sound familiar?

People, especially Americans like to feel like they own something, rather than have it on borrow. We like to OWN our movies. We like to collect things and talk about our collections with others. Can you really say you collect movies if they are just bits on a hard drive that could get wiped out tomorrow?

[KartRacer]

All printable media is going the way of the dodo.

Not hardly dude. You've never been to a bookstore? They are everywhere and I prefer physical books to electronic copies, but I wish you got both when you bought one or the other. It's not electronic media, and I'm not that old, but the very second that someone said paperwork would be reduced due to computers the amount of paperwork TRIPLED. The printed medium, and physical media will NEVER die I don't think. There are too many people that prefer a physical object that they know will work in a player versus people that have digital copies of everything. I've never had a DVD be corrupted like a digital copy of a movie. I've made digital copies of all my movies and the beauty of DVDs and Blu-Rays is that I don't have to worry about backwards compatibility with software players. Anyone who thinks that streaming and downloads are the future of media is fooling themselves. ISPs are VERY against not setting caps and throttling connections. That's a terrible problem and even then the quality is crap. Complete crap.

[neonsector]

Steve is being retarded and he is stuck in the 90s, BR is not going anywhere.
In fact is more popular now that prices are down a bit more than ever.
The only thing that bluray will be replaced with is 3D blurays.

[cdm94]

I have a simple solution. BUY AN EXTERNAL BLU-RAY DRIVE! They aren't that expensive. end of story.

[n00neimp0rtant]

I have a simple solution. BUY AN EXTERNAL BLU-RAY DRIVE! They aren't that expensive. end of story.

Not cool if you have a laptop

[KartRacer]

I have a simple solution. BUY AN EXTERNAL BLU-RAY DRIVE! They aren't that expensive. end of story.

That only works if you want to write to it. Currently (as far as I know anyway) there isn't any support playing Blu-Rays in OS X. So you'd have one, but you couldn't watch them from the disc. And having a laptop with a drive plugged in is a no go for me. I couldn't stand it.