Phil Schiller Claims Customers Aren't Asking for Built-In Blu-Ray Anymore

swagi said:

And I guess all of you don't have a decent AVR, let alone a decent speaker system. If you ever heard a Blu-Ray DTS HD Master over a decent home theater (which btw is specced up to 10MBit/s stream for audio) you wouldn't talk this stuff out of your backs.

Do I need a Mac as HTPC? Sure as hell not, because I actually own a lot of Blu-Rays and some of them (those Live Concert Blus) are a real joy to watch over and over again.

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I have a Pioneer Elite HDTV and Blu-ray player with a decent Denon receiver. Boy the quality is just unbelievable superb.
Ideally transferring all these discs to ATV at highest quality will make life much easier to pick and watch a movie/show.
Looking at the shelf to select a disc and putting it on the player gets old and I think make you less probe to watch stuff.
That is where I think streaming is unbeatable.

I will stick with getting my DVD's or Blu-rays for the library. My Blu-ray players gets plenty of use. The DRM is too draconian to pay for when it comes to video.

I tend to agree. I suppose I might use a BR drive on *rare* occasions if it were there but I really don't miss it.

mr jnvii said:

How the heck is Blu-ray expensive? It costs around $25, and you usually get a Blu-ray/DVD combo with that, as well as a digital copy.

I love Blu-ray for any movie with action in it. It looks amazing on a HDTV.

I never buy movies directly from iTunes since I don't have an Apple TV, and if I did I may not always have one and/or something else that's better may come along. I'll always have something that plays DVD's/Blu-rays.

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I agree and some cases you get them even cheaper. I got The Avengers for $20 with 3D blu Ray, Blu Ray, Digital Download, DVD, and the soundtrack.

Let's translate his words because I think they have been misunderstood...

Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology...So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks

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Blu-ray doesn't give "us" any percentage (unless we re-create it somehow, just like we are trying to do with that "innovative", "tremendous", "amazing", [insert_advocating_word_here] PassBook we've "invented"); that's why it makes sense to get rid of optical discs in every device we "own" (because we will "own" all of them... wait for it).

His preferred Blu-ray alternative? iTunes, of course, which lets you buy a movie and then watch it on all your Apple devices.

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Captain obvious to the rescue! How would he mention Google Play or Amazon...
Note the language: "lets" and "buy", as if they were doing a favour to human kind...

Once upon a time, people assumed that Macs' lack of Blu-ray was a delay, not a permanent decision to fast-forward past it. I told Schiller that I imagined folks don't ask about it much these days. "Correct," he said.

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Wrong. He says that people say which very different from what people really say (as usual with Apple... they are always "thinking" for you, just in case your brain is unable of doing some synapse).


Anyhow, Apple doesn't want anything that might threaten its throne of entertainment (because that what Apple has become since the iPod) and it will "conclude" with a locked computer where you will only be able to use applications that you "buy" on the AppStore because they "let" you, and play movies and music that you also "buy" on iTunes because they also "let" you.
And of course, you will "buy" a locked and overpriced machine that you cannot upgrade because they think that they have to "let" you rebuy it every year or so as they think for you when it gets old...

I think the actual quote from Schiller was...
“Customers, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of content delivery changed. We have these things called iTunes where movies are downloaded on them. We have these Macs that go online, Apple TVs streaming. And so the question is not a game of disks where we’re installing blueray drives. It’s — it’s what are our cloud capabilities.”

Psychj0e said:

Apple has lost its way. I'm surprised it's not even an opinion on the mac pro, as lots of people who use their mac for actual work (rather than, I don't know, playing angry birds on a 27" screen) would benefit from being able to make backups of their data using blue ray.

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Why would you want to do that when you can netdrive youre date into time capsuled and then run overnight backups sheduled that mirrors the netdrive into external USB drives.

Br are very limited in space and on top of that you need to manipulated them. My data is always backup I dont even have to think about it. Once a week I swap the USB drive out to an external site. you could also backup to an interet disk for extra safety.

Well who asked for the SD reader slot to be on the back of the iMac because it was so convient to access on the side?

We've also given up on Apple building useful devices. Apple proved before that it could not build anything right when Steve was not there and it looks like that is still the case.

I WILL NOT buy the new iMac - my next iMac will be a refurbed previous to this one generation iMac.

Lie lie lie

Apple says I don't want it

Apple tells me I don't want it, therefore I don't want it.

Sincerely,
An Apple Apologist

likemyorbs said:

I don't have a bluray player in my house at all. Bluray movies are overpriced and inconvenient. I much prefer netflix streaming. The image quality is sharp enough for me.

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As much as I love streaming, you do not get the latest releases. With Bluray rentals through Netflix you still get a good value, but I honestly don't care if a Mac offers this option.

Vertigo50 said:

I can sort of see getting rid of optical drives in notebooks, but for desktop machines it just seems silly. Users lose a great backup option, and they can't simply pop in a DVD or CD anymore, when the part probably only costs Apple less than $5.

Honestly, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that optical drives are one of the parts most likely to fail, and they are trying to reduce warranty repairs, but it's still annoying.

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Optical discs suck for backup. Best backup strategy is a combination of local and Cloud (Time Machine and say Crashplan/Carbonite/etc).

The auto eject drives are pretty expensive. Even online they're typically $50 or more.

Mac'nCheese said:

Not everyone wanted blu ray for watching movies. Some of us want to burn hd videos for family and friends.

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And you can upload them to Youtube or Vimeo and share them out in minutes. Burning discs means you are stuck in the past. I'm doubting that few people have HDTV but not internet.

Psychj0e said:

Apple has lost its way. I'm surprised it's not even an opinion on the mac pro, as lots of people who use their mac for actual work (rather than, I don't know, playing angry birds on a 27" screen) would benefit from being able to make backups of their data using blue ray.

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Backups. LOL if you're paying these prices to backup your data you are a fool

50GB media

tredstone said:

I think it's one thing to discontinue support for a technology on its way out (like they did with floppies), it's another to never support it at all, claim it's not popular while being part of the problem. :|

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No one is asking for it. Blu-ray is best on a large HDTV. People that care about movies are going to watch them on a suitable device. When the largest Mac display is only 27" that's a problem.

calisurfboy said:

Is this how they all are? If so, how will we redeem digital copies in the future if they require you to insert the dvd into the computer if we lack an optical drive?

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They extended iTunes in the cloud to movies, so you do not need to copy the file from disc anymore in most cases. Redeem the code and watch on your ATV. (At least this is how it worked for me on my last BluRay combo purchase.

B

aajeevlin said:

Yea, I don't think you are "average". Most people are now storing or sharing photos over the internet, or store them on online storage (multiple redundancy). Plus, if you burn some DVD with video/photos and you want to share with friends/relative do you physically mail it to them? And risk the chance of having it brake on the way?

The idea of getting up, drive, rent/return dvd or blueray is a lot of work. If I can pay the same amount and having them stream to my device, I'm more then willing to do that.

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How much is 100Gb of storage in the cloud? How secure it is?

Example 2: X-plane needs the dvd in the drive to run....

Example 3: they still sell music cd. (or books still come with cds).

Why the hell would anyone wanna watch Blu-ray movies on a computer?! That's why I have a 46" 3D TV and a dedicated Blu-ray player. I could care less if Apple ever puts Blu-ray drives in their computers, which they never will cuz it'll take away movie $$ from iTunes.

I care... but not about Blueray

I care about an optical drive on a desktop. It doesn't have to be blueray.

What I didn't care about was making the iMac thin enough to be impractical.

likemyorbs said:

I don't have a bluray player in my house at all. Bluray movies are overpriced and inconvenient. I much prefer netflix streaming. The image quality is sharp enough for me.

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Overpriced? are you kidding me? They are very affordable now and compared to netflix, it is not even a comparison in regards to quality

Where's the -1 vote when I need it

I'm in agreement with Apple on this. I do burn lots of optical media, but Apple's built-in options have always been a generation or two behind the curve. With the speed of USB 3 (or Thunderbolt), external burners are now a much better choice for anyone who needs that capability. And the price of external BluRay burners is now under $100. (I think DVD burners are now so cheap they're included in cereal boxes....)

Still hilarious that my 900 dollar laptop that I bought in 2009 had a blu ray drive. But the 1800 dollar one I bought last year doesn't.

NightCastle said:

I guess streaming is the only way to go on a mac now a days - aside from an external drive.

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not just on mac's. This is definately been the trend in my household.

We rarely watch DVD's (BlueRay or not) that we don't already own.

We stream the new movies we want watch.

duffmanth said:

Why the hell would anyone wanna watch Blu-ray movies on a computer?! That's why I have a 46" 3D TV and a dedicated Blu-ray player. I could care less if Apple ever puts Blu-ray drives in their computers, which they never will cuz it'll take away movie $$ from iTunes.

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You guys rationalize everything in Apple's favor

Vertigo50 said:

I can sort of see getting rid of optical drives in notebooks, but for desktop machines it just seems silly. Users lose a great backup option, and they can't simply pop in a DVD or CD anymore, when the part probably only costs Apple less than $5.

Honestly, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that optical drives are one of the parts most likely to fail, and they are trying to reduce warranty repairs, but it's still annoying.

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I think it has to do with the fact that Apple sells media through a competitive format.

********.

Bluray has many extra features that make it worth buying the optical medium. I like to have commentary on movies or episodes that I have watched previously. No such thing for downloaded videos. I want to see blooper wheels, interviews with staff, deleted scenes, etc

doctorossi said:

You're right, Phil- we're not asking for it anymore; we've given up hope. Self-fulfilling prophecy much?

As for me, I'll stop being interested in Blu-ray as soon as there's something better. There isn't yet- certainly not iTunes.

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This.

Additionally, 1080p streams are still very compressed compared to Blu ray movies. 40 movies would fill a 1TB hard drive, so any kind of notion that you can have a high def movie collection digital only starts to vanish.

Data bandwidth and possible caps also loom from the nations' ISPs. This isn't a time where digital is the only answer. And with 4K and 8K UHD in the next decade, movies are only going to get crazy bigger.

And I find the prospect humorous that the same people that laud the retina displays would scoff at demanding a higher visual quality from their movies and content.

bankshot said:

Give me a break, Phil.

I've always found Apple's stance on DRM with iTunes video content to be frustrating and hypocritical. On the one hand, they (Jobs) championed the eventual removal of DRM from the music store. Amazingly, record companies didn't go under. But Apple clearly never had any such plans for movies/TV.

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Blame the movie industry, not Apple. They've always been much more stringent on DRM than the music industry. I'm sure they'd remove it if they could.

Regarding Blu-ray, I just would like Apple to add Bluray support to DVD Player. It's fine for me if they don't provide the hardware. I use Mac Bluray Player but it's unreliable and you don't get menus, so I end up booting into windows usually. Apple probably won't do this due to licensing costs, though.

Not interested in iTunes until the quality and special features are as good as Bluray.