“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
I don’t want it as a player necessarily, I want it as a recorder! Hopefully apple will figure out a way to deal with this.
Blue Ray?? I think Apple is correct in holding off on this technology. Right now it is expensive and yet to be shown as the successor to the ordinary DVD. It may be an answer looking for a problem to solve.
One thing going for blue ray is the fact that most regular people are not going to want to download movies and then watch them. Most people just want to stick the disk into the machine and play the movie. Of course, they can do that quite well with regular DVD’s so that is not a reason to move to Blue Ray. No rush to go to Blue Ray as far as I can tell.
Blu-ray will follow DVD as CD followed DVD.We’re now in the position where the premium for readers is small (About $80). Once more readers get out there, media prices will drop and eventually you’ll consider a machine without Blu-ray to be as obsolete as one that doesn’t come with a DVD burner would be considered today.
Let’s discuss Blu-ray licensing for a moment…
Apple is a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association. As such, does Apple even need to pay royalties for Blu-ray technology? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question, so let’s assume for now that Apple, Dell, HP and some other members of the Association do indeed have to pay royalties.
Let’s also assume that G4Dualie’s math is correct, in which case Apple would pay about $US30 in licensing fees per Mac — which seems a rather high fee structure to me. Let’s assume even further that Apple will need to pay more licensing fees in order to add Blu-ray support to OS X, iLife, etc. For the sake of argument, let’s say the total licensing cost of Blu-ray for Apple is US$100 per Mac.
Dell, HP (both members of the Blu-ray Disk Association), and others have been providing reasonably-priced Blu-ray options in an impressive number of computers — even in laptops. Adding a BD-R drive to an HP desktop costs about US$250.
What all of this means is that a BD-R drive should cost about US$350 to add to a Mac Pro. I’m sure that many Apple customers would happily pay US$350 BD-R capabilities.
PS: Predrag is correct that, worldwide, relatively few people can download HD content.
@Thinker
All of which makes perfect sense for a playback solution but I fear that a few here are looking to Apple for the software that accompanies a read/write solution and I wouldn’t be holding my breath.
If we are talking about a read/write solution, then the issue isn’t just about the money, it’s about the labor and sweat equity of double-tracking two different systems; maintaining a time-tested, relatively risk-free solution for clients paying the bills, while implementing a new one that siphons off the balance of my free time with no assurance that my clients will even embrace it. Until I’ve had time to factor in all of the known and unknowns how can I put it to work, much less sell it? And if Apple isn’t talking then we’re at an impasse. This is strictly a back office solution for the time being.
But, if all we’re talking about is a player and a movie, oh hell yeah, I’m all in. But if I’m buying a player I think I’d rather have one that comes with a playstation.
While Apple is part of the BR Consortium, they are subject to the same licensing requirements as everyone else and are not immune from the political whims of said consortium, whose membership dynamic can change as their technological interests ebb and flow. DRM is the looming variable.
My thoughts are to take a wait and see approach and make due with my current processes before committing to bleeding edge solutions, especially as a businessman in this current economic climate. One misstep can be can be hard to recover from.
PS: Predrag is correct that, worldwide, relatively few people can download HD content.
And relatively fewer people use Mac much less Blu-Ray, so where’s the incentive, or the market?