“After calling licensing for Sony Corp.’s Blu-ray technology a ‘bag of hurt,’ Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said his company’s new laptops won’t have Blu-ray capable drives for some time,” Steven E.F. Brown reports for The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area.
“News reports quoted Jobs saying Apple would wait until ‘things settle down’ before incorporating a product that would push up the price of Apple’s notebooks,” Brown reports.
“Jobs spoke at an event showing off new Apple notebook computers on Tuesday. He said Blu-ray discs are great when it comes to watching movies, but said their licenses are too complex. If demand grows for Blu-ray drives in Apple computers, the company will consider adding them later,” Brown reports.
Full article here.
Erik Gruenwedel reports for Home Media Magazine, “Apple is a founding board member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, which perhaps gives it first-hand exposure to a licensing process that mandates encryption, related DRM safeguards and is reportedly cumbersome and expensive.”
Gruenwedel reports, “Steve Baker, VP of industry analysis for NPD Group, believes the number of companies with a hand in the licensing process dissuaded Apple, which he said has migrated toward digital distribution rather than packaged media. ‘[Apple is] not trying to be everything to everyone like Netflix or Blockbuster,’ Baker said. ‘They’re going to keep trying to deliver economy around digital downloads. I still question why anybody would question or care whether they have Blu-ray.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Christopher G.” for the heads up.]
You wanna know hwy there’s no Blu-ray in Macs? Here’s why: Apple iTunes Store sells 200 million TV shows; ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC offer primetime lineups in HD – October 16, 2008
So iBlu-Ray discs could be used in the near-to-come Wii Blu-ray?
That would be sweet….
Blu-Ray is a huge waste of money. Recordable CDs and DVDs are too slow and too big for practical everyday use. Their capacities cannot keep up with emerging technologies.
A single Blu-Ray recordable disc costs $8-16 on NewEgg. 4 gig flash drives are in this cost range now and 8 gig units are approaching it. For the laptop user, the thumb drive is a lot more practical and useful.
Maclover,
There is a very large industry out there that produces video (wedding videographers, corporate video, as well as churches, etc). To future-proof their work, they are rapidly acquiring HD equipment. And it is actually quite cheap. Consumer HD camcorders can now be had for less than $500; prosumer models for about $2,000 (these are the kind that the afore-mentioned industry would want to use). Software solutions must be avaliable to them to capture, edit and deliver their work in any format that is asked for by the client, and it will more and more often be Blu-ray.
Set-top Blu-ray players will be selling for less than $200 this holiday season. They will likely outnumber VHS sales (which isn’t exactly saying much, but still; we all have VHS somewhere at home), and will be on their way to match sales of DVD players soon.
Having a playback solution in a Mac may not necessarilly be the most urgent priority (as argued by many, including the original article), but being able to use Apple’s software to intuitively and easily create HD content that could be played back on a Blu-ray set-top player will very soon be critical.
iLife brought an extremely easy and intuitive workflow for getting home movies from MiniDV into the living room of grandparents. The technology is now cheap enough to make this possible for HD. Apple needs to get this done. Blu-ray drive support can wait; this should not.
@Darrell Spice, Jr.
“It’s not just for movies – I’d love to be able to backup my iTunes to a single blu-ray disk instead of the multiple DVDs I have to use now.”
you are insane… get yourself a external HD for that
SAVE THE PLANET. STOP THE POLUTION. JERKS.
Don’t put your money in PLASTIC, TRANSPORTATION, etc.
If you have an alternative like iTunes Store.
F*ck the industry and your package formats. Buy the content not the package.
@ Maclover
I already own all the equipment I need to shoot weddings in full HD. I have almost $30,000 invested in HD cameras, microphones, cranes, Glidecams, a massive Apple Mac Pro editing system with dual 23″ Cinema Displays, etc. And yet I’m forced to cobble together an HD solution out of Final Cut Studio, Adobe Encore, and a 3rd party Blu-ray player. Given the fact that my PC-using associates have a better workflow using Windows Vista and Adobe, I don’t think it’s too much to ask Apple to support Blu-ray for its professional community. It has to happen soon.
Who cares about Blu-Ray. The average consumer is happy with their upconverted DVD player. 99% of the consumer base is not going to run out and buy a Blu-Ray player for a (in their eyes) somewhat minimal quality gain. This is not the quality leap from VHS to DVD we saw. It is the average consumer that drives the market. Put on top of the cost of upgrading the end of physical media and it just isn’t worth worrying about now. The only reason that Blu-Ray is selling at all is because it comes standard in the PS3. The people that aren’t paying for broadband are not going to pay extra for discs and players.
Peruchito:
I had an unfortunatel experience of having two external HDs fail one after another (within weeks). As they were used for backups, I was extremely uncomfortable about this. I now have a collection of about a dozen DVDs that represent most of my more-or-less permanent data (such as music, photos, etc). I still use the external HD for the Time Machine, but I no longer trust it. It’s mechanical device, with extremely high tolerances, high sensitivity to sudden motion, high sensitivity to sudden temperature changes, high sensitivity to magnetic fields (did you by accident put the drive near your subwoofer?), etc. I cannot bring myself to trusting such a device to hold a permanent record of data that matters for me. Optical media is, at this point, much more resilient. CDR has been out there for about 15 years and even the oldesd CDRs that I have from over 10 years ago are still perfectly readable. The medium has proven itself as robust and reliable.
Don’t let this stop anyone from backing up on HDs, though; you may be lucky and nothing will happen to your data.
Joe Six Pack:
You are wrong. Very many people bought large HD TV sets during past two holiday seasons. They brought them home and hooked them up to their standard cable box. They thought they were getting HD; instead, they were watching a stretched SD image (so everyone looked fat). Some surveys have shown that more than half of those who bought HDTV didn’t even know they needed a HD signal in order to see HD picture.
These are the same people who will buy Blu-ray. They won’t do much research, compare upconverted DVD with a bona-fide Blu-ray. They’ll go to Best Buy, the sales bozo will tell them that if they have a HD TV, they NEED a Blu-ray player in order to watch HD; they’ll take them to that Sony 52″ display with “Iron Man” loop, show them how spectacular the picture is, and these people will buy the player.
The average consumer will buy the Blu-ray player as soon as it drops below $200. This is the magic price (and it is the reason iPhone is now $200). Add to that the fact that they can get Blu-ray movies from Blockbuster and it will be a no-brainer decision. The only wildcard this time around is the recession (actually, depression), which may slow down the adoption — people are broke these days…
Blu-ray on macs would be a great addition. As far as downloadable video goes, iTunes is OK, but you cannot compare the quality. Blu-ray is going to remain videophiles top choice for a while. It kind of sucks that this is one area where windows users have better options.
Great posts! I agree 100%. Although I’m not in the video biz, I understand where you’re coming from.
Your experience with hard drives mirrors my own. Last year I had two, four-year old, FW/USB 160 GB LaCies that I bought within a month of each other, both fail within a couple of weeks. Fortunately, it wasn’t the drive mechanisms that failed, but the electronics of the case. I stuck them new enclosures and they were back up and running. However, like you, I can’t trust electro-magnetic media like hard drives.
As the old tech saying goes, “It’s not IF your hard drive fails, but WHEN.”
>MacDonald wrote: It kind of sucks that this is one area where windows users have better options.
That’s exactly why the Mac Fanboys won’t admit no Blu-Ray drives in the MB & MBP lines is actually a bad thing.
While AppleTV is a decent alternative, it’s not portable. It doesn’t have a BRD either. With broadband bandwidth caps gaining traction, additional downloads only adds to that problem.
Now if Apple were to add Blu-Ray to AppleTV, they’d have that trojan horse again.
I am burning blue-ray from Final Cut Pro. I use Adobe Encore with a Pioneer external blue-ray burner. Works great! I only use this as a option for clients. About 1 in 10 ask for their project on blue-ray.
there should be blu ray…but this is coming from a company that was still selling a laptop just last week with just a combo drive for over $1000.
Seriously, I do a lot of editing on my Macs and DVD burning and storage is just not enough.I already have two external HDDs.
Who has the patience to store and download 30gig movies anyways??
Apple should start a promotion that gives away like 10HD TV shows with every Mac to get people in the habit of buying and playing in HD. It would cost them very little and train people to go to itunes to buy media….if you want to topple Blue Ray you’ve got to think like a drug dealer. Give it away at first, then they’re hooked.
One thing to consider, these new MBs and MBPs may be short-lived updates.
When the Nehalem chips come out, Apple is going to be scrambling to get them in their notebooks. Nehalem is a very important blip on the radar.
Supposing Apple offered an optional BR player in 2009 and 10 percent of the mac-buying public bought them? We’re talking about approximately 880,000 macs.
Using the current Blu-Ray licensing figures Apple will pay roughly twenty-six million dollars in royalties to the BR consortium on those 880k computers!
For those of you who are into authoring, check out this video at MacVideo.
It offers a professional perspective, along with solutions for those of you like Predrag and his proponents who seem to be struggling to find a solution.
Another vote for Predrag here.
Talk to Steve on behalf of the rest of us! That mandate from us here will certainly give you standing!
(And mention the FW issue in the new MB’s while your talking to him.)
If you really think Blu-Ray is a great idea… look at the wiki page for Blu-Ray towards the bottom, under the DRM section. BD+ actually has an application that can launch and check the hardware (your mac). I am not sure I would want to open this door (or rootkit) on the Mac.
I don’t think this is an Apple corp greed thing… or Apple trying to corner the market on downloads as much as it is a BS Blu-Ray DRM system that Apple is against. Steve does not like DRM because he knows his customers do not like DRM.
Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it!
The Dude abides.
The Dude:
just minor nitpick correction: Apple Corp. is the record label of Beatles; Apple Inc. is our computer company.
G4Dualie:
Yes, these are, for now, perfectly acceptable solution. I have known about them and I’m sure, most people in the industry are aware as well. They underscore the point that there is a market for Blu-ray burners. I for one will be patient and wait until the dust settles, the licensing for all that stuff comes down and Apple decides it is now worthwhile to put them into their consumer products. Meanwhile, I will author my Blu-ray content in Toast (and perhaps in Encore, if I decide it’s worth the investment) and burn it onto ordinary DVD-DL discs. One hour of HD content per disc is perfectly adequete for my needs right now, so 30- or 50GB Blu-ray discs aren’t too necessary for me.
@Peruchito
you are insane… get yourself a external HD for that
Insane? Hardly – I’ve had a number of drives fail over the years. I do use external HD for Time Machine, but because of failed drives I like to have other backups as well. It’s also conducive to keeping offsite backups.
Some people suggest using flash drives, but I’ve got over 32GB of music and a 64GB flash drive is over $200. Sure blu-ray media is expensive now(about $5 per disc bulk), but so were CDRs and DVD-Rs at one point.
iBlu-Ray?
I thought your Mom Bluray
The solution for Apple is simple and straightforward – sell combination HD downloads and Blu-Ray disks through iTunes.
HD downloads are encoded at lower bit rates and provide instant gratification, albeit at lower quality. The BD arrives a few days later for archival and high quality viewing at 1080p.
Expecting to buy BD equivalent quality video on a flash drive is unrealistic. A 32-64 GB drive costs way too much in the near term.
The DisplayPort connector on the new MacBooks can be adapted to DVI or HDMI. HDCP runs over HDMI or DVI. DisplayPort has yet another encryption format.