May 25, 2012 - 05:30 PM EDT — AAPL: 562.29 (-3.03, -0.54%) | NASDAQ: 2837.53 (-1.85, -0.07%)

RUMOR: Mac OS X 10.5.6 to deliver Blu-ray support

Friday, September 19, 2008 · 10:57 am · 21 Comments

Arnold Kim reports for MacRumors, “Our pre-event rumor roundup accurately spelled out the major releases” from Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event last week.

“The bulk of the information came from Kevin Rose who detailed a number of the changes accurately. Readers should find interesting that Rose also revealed some future details that have not yet materialized,” Kim reports.

“Specifically, Rose expects that Blu-ray support will finally be built into Mac OS X 10.5.6,” Kim reports.

“The 10.5.6 update will not come before the rumored notebook revisions in October, but could conceivably be ready by Macworld San Francisco 2009,” Kim reports.

Thank You for supporting MacDailyNews!

♥ Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended for Mac - Student and Teacher Edition DVD (65171323) only $249!
♥ Blowout: Apple 15.4" MacBook Pro i7/4Core/2.0GHz/4GB/500GB (MC721LL/A) only $1,549.99 + Free Shipping from MacMall
♥ Mac Madness Save 25% on Parallels Desktop 7!
♥ 15% Off Compatible Ink. 10% Off All Others (excludes OEMs). Free Shipping over $55. Coupon: 123BLOSSOM, Expires 6.18.12
♥ Save up to 60% at the Hammacher Schlemmer Special Values Sale-While supplies last.
♥ Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.5 - New! Simply Smarter Speech Recognition
♥ Up to 30% OFF Accessories from Verizon Wireless
♥ Limited Time Offer: Get free ZAGGsmartbuds when you buy a ZAGGsparq!

Comment Feed

21 Comments

1 2 Next »

Crabapple

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 11:02 am · Reply

Holy Cow! are we back to rumours again?
Jeff

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 11:04 am · Reply

All I want is Hi-Def (HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) Playback from the DVD player app then I can connect my X-box HD-DVD drive to my Mac to watch Video on my HD Display.
steve516

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 11:14 am · Reply

I think basically they are recognizing that the physical disc media will be around for a bit longer, and they may as well support it, or they risk alienating customers and users…
Macromancer

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 11:22 am · Reply

“Holy Cow! are we back to rumours again?”

When did we stop?
bob

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 12:08 pm · Reply

fuck blu-ray and any other optical media, what is this the 20th century?
Yimmie

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 12:18 pm · Reply

Physical media is dead to me. However the industry will continue to crank out content on s physical medium until the unwashed masses stop buying them. Which means some sort of physical medium will be around for the next 100 years.
bioness

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 12:32 pm · Reply

I remember someone said that bluray coming on 10.5.5

now it’s 10.5.6… then it’ll be 10.5.7
Predrag

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 12:38 pm · Reply

Yes, Yimmie, and bob; physical media will continue to thrive, and digital downloads will continue to be smal percentage of the video pie, as long as there is the developing world. Even here in the US, vast majority of population doesn’t have ‘real’ broadband (i.e. speeds greater than 2Mbps). What local telcos are selling here as ‘broadband’ is 512kbps and 768kbps ADSL service. For these people, their ADSL link is practically useless for HD content.

Apple has been rather late in the game of HD on optical media. Currently, I have no easy way for watching my AVCHD camcorder videos on my Mac. The directory structure of SDHC card it creates is Blu-Ray compliant (for the most part), so it can play in any Blu-Ray-compliant tool (software or hardware). Unfortunately, there are no software titles for Mac that can read Blu-Ray-structured content. Windows has had choices for quite some time now.

You don’t need a Blu-Ray drive in order to author/watch Blu-Ray content; it can be delivered on standard (or dual-layer) DVD-R(W).

It is high time for us to get some options regarding HD content on Mac. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait until MWSF for an incremental update to the Leopard.
shiva105

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 12:40 pm · Reply

I’m curious to know why so many folks are so anti-physical media? Magnetic media fails. Until all storage is solid state, why pay for movies or TV shows that can be wiped out just because you got too close to a magnet?

Personally, I’d love to see movies out on small, solid-state storage. Takes up a lot less space, less expensive to tie into a variety of hardware, and far more reliable than storing on a current hard drive. And easily transferable between people.

Just looking at my own movie library, physical media costs me a lot less than paying for downloads and having the space to store it all. Let’s see- we’ll assume that Apple carried every movie in my collection, and we won’t worry about resolution. From a quick glance through the iTMS, looks like Apple charges at least $9.99 for movies. I’ll round it to $10 for simplicity’s sake. $10 a movie, 726 movies, makes a total of $7260. 726 movies at an average of 4gb each is 2.9TB of needed storage. Quick search on DealMac shows a Western Digital 1TB ext drive for $150. I’d need three of those, so that’s $450 for storage at today’s prices. Total adds up to $7710. Since many of the DVD’s I’ve bought have been bought used, I’ve only spent $6800 on them altogether. So having digital-only copies *at best* would have cost me $900 more, or more than $1 per movie more than what my current average is.

Yep, digital-only media sure sounds like a bargain to me. But I guess I’m old-fashioned in that regard.
Bo

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 12:47 pm · Reply

You can get 32GB USB keys for around $70 and still falling in price. Who will buy BR drives?
I think it is great that Apple is going to support it, but I am afraid that very few people will buy it.
udde

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 1:00 pm · Reply

@ Jeff “All I want is Hi-Def (HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) Playback from the DVD player app then I can connect my X-box HD-DVD drive to my Mac to watch Video on my HD Display.”

What the hell is HD-DVD???
Petey

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 1:10 pm · Reply

Looks like blu-ray drives will be in the new macs then!
Brau

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 2:22 pm · Reply

Apple will never release Blu-Ray support on Macs because they want everyone to stay on the Apple farm and buy their HD content from iTunes.
qka

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 2:30 pm · Reply

I’m curious to know why so many folks are so anti-physical media?

Not that it matters to the average user, who may only want the past several years of blockbuster movies, but physical media is archival. Granted, there is disagreement on the lifespan of various optical media, but 10, 20, 50 years from now you may still be able to read it. Think of the joys and problems of old movie film – the same problems will exist for today’s when they get that old.

There is also the issue of file formats. Can anyone help me – I have a document written with Electric Pencil on my Apple ][ I need to open??????
HD Boy

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 2:45 pm · Reply

Apple will release Blu-Ray support on Macs because professional photography, graphics, video and publishing customers need it and will demand it. This market is critically important to Apple.
Synthmeister

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 3:00 pm · Reply

Once the BR drives come down to $200, Apple won’t have a choice because they will be in every other computer and everyone will start buying them for their home movie setups.

I’m betting by MacWorld, January, Macs will get BR.

Already, 42 inch 1080p HDTVs are less than $1000 and BR players are around $300.
Peruchito

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 4:28 pm · Reply

what’s the point of blu ray again?
Predrag

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 4:47 pm · Reply

Peruchito,

The point of Blu-Ray is to have access to movies and other content in High Definition. While it may be available to the privileged minuscule minority via fat broadband internet connections, large masses of ordinary folk willl never have those kind of connections (at least not in the next ten years). The only way for them to watch their contend in HD will be on shiny plastic discs, as has been for the past ten years or so.
Predrag

Friday, September 19, 2008 - 4:49 pm · Reply

“…as has been for the past ten years or so”… for the Standard Definition content, that is.
Cubert

Saturday, September 20, 2008 - 8:31 am · Reply

@Yimmie,

“Physical media is dead to me.”

You’re right! I just poked one of my DVD’s and it didn’t even budge!