“Now that HD DVD is dead and Sony’s Blu-ray has apparently won the HD media war, why aren’t we seeing Blu-ray drives available as a factory option, at least, for Macintosh computers? I think Steve Jobs is deliberately holding back in a high-stakes gamble for control of HD video distribution,” Robert X. Cringely writes for PBS.

“There’s a tiny chicken-and-egg problem here in that Apple’s professional applications don’t yet support Blu-ray. Maybe they’ll use that as an excuse, if a lame one. Clearly Apple has had plenty of time to make it possible to burn Blu-ray discs. As the dominant hardware and software vendor to the movie industry — an industry EAGER to jump to Blu-ray — it would appear to be in Apple’s interest to be shipping those Blu-ray drives right now. So the fact that they aren’t shipping has to be a conscious decision at Apple where, as we know, most big decisions — conscious or not — are made by Steve Jobs,” Cringely writes.

“I can only guess that Jobs sees Blu-ray as a threat to that download business and this decision to delay Blu-ray deployment is an expensive stalling action, buying time for Apple to launch its own true HD alternative,” Cringely writes. “Yes, you can download some movies from iTunes in 720p right now, but in the surging HD market 720p is no longer good enough. The obvious standard is 1080p and right now you need Blu-ray or BitTorrent to get that. Putting on my near-futurist hat, then, I’m guessing Apple is working madly to deploy its own 1080p download solution and is hoping the world will wait for it.”

Much more in the full article, including how Cringely thinks Google will help Apple deliver 1080p, here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Mtnmnn" for the heads up.]