New Mac Pros and Mac Minis Launching in August

[JohnDoe98]

There's no reason not to support BD on the Mac, it is by far the best way to experience movies, most ubiquitous way to buy, share and sell movies and it is backwards compatible with all the DVDs people have already.

It's a no-brainer and it is quite amusing watching some people twisting themselves into a pretzel in order to excuse or explain away why Apple doesn't support BD playback.

I'm not even saying they have to put the drives into the computers, just support the playback. Though it would be awfully kind of them to allow people to buy BD drives BTO or even include them by default.

No reason huh? What about the fact that it would involve coding software, and thereby using resources? What about the fact that it would conflict and compete with the itunes movie store and their belief convenience of delivery is importanr that maximal quality? Are those not reasons? What do you call them?

 

[Atlantico]

What do you mean when you say OS X is being dumbed down?


Do you mean dumber people can use it now, or Apple is removing some of the features?

I have no idea if the first argument would be true, although I couldn't care less, but certainly there's nothing removed in Lion which was in Snow Leopard, except Expose's current version.

Mac App store, Launchpad, no icons on desktop.. new Finder... dumbed down.

Also missing from Lion, just for the record: FrontRow (though I won't miss that since 1.0 was the only good one and 2.0 was the AppleTV disaster) and Rosetta. Also missing optical disc distribution.

There's probably plenty more, but I'm under NDA

 

[iBug2]

Now you give me a break.

Discussing Apple involves criticizing them when they do something stupid, and for those of us who have been paying attention to their antics for the last couple of decades, there's plenty to criticize. Always has been.

Plenty to praise too. That's discussing things. And Apple is easy to discuss. They always manage to get pie on their face by doing something bone-headed and then every once in a while the do something great.

They're fun to watch because of this. The list of Apple's great things is short compared to their blunders, also-rans, bad ideas, flops and general miscalculations of the market.

Calling me ignorant really made your argument, wow. Well played. How to counter that!??

The problem is that when people accuse Apple of doing something bone headed, it turns out an amazing success in couple of years. So everyone has to swallow their words. Same with praising. People think Apple has done something great, and it turns out a downer later on.

You cannot know if a giant company like this did something "right" or "wrong" without waiting several years and seeing the consequences.

The only thing one can know is that if they like it or not. I don't like iPad, I don't want to use an iPad ever, but if that's where the industry is going, so be it, I'll have to use it eventually. So personally I don't think iPad is a great invention, but it's hugely successful and a correct move for Apple.

 

[iBug2]

Mac App store, Launchpad, no icons on desktop.. new Finder... dumbed down.

Also missing from Lion, just for the record: FrontRow (though I won't miss that since 1.0 was the only good one and 2.0 was the AppleTV disaster) and Rosetta. Also missing optical disc distribution.

There's probably plenty more, but I'm under NDA

App Store is available on Snow Leopard, and no feature of it is being removed in Lion.

No icons on desktop has been possible since Leopard. And on Lion you can enable them through Finder preferences, EXACTLY like you can on Leopard or SL.

Frontrow, give me a break. Removing it isn't dumbing down anything. Adding it in the first place was. Glad that's gone.

Rosetta going also isn't dumbing down anything. Rosetta have been an optional install on SL for 2 years now, I never had to install it. Everything is Intel now. Unless you're a Quicken user ))

Btw, no icons on desktop has first appeared on KDE 4.0, which is Linux. It's certainly a step forward in the direction of making people understand that Desktop is not a file browser. So it's where the OS design will go.

 

[Bear]

No reason huh? What about the fact that it would involve coding software, and thereby using resources? What about the fact that it would conflict and compete with the itunes movie store and their belief convenience of delivery is importanr that maximal quality? Are those not reasons? What do you call them?

What do I call them? Excuses.

As for convenient delivery. You have a Netflix account and you get DVDs or BDs delivered to your door for rental. What about ordering from Amazon or Barnes & Nobles and getting delivery right to your door. That's convenient. Or I can go to the library and borrow discs (yes, including BDs). That's pretty convenient and at the right price... free.

Some people are into instant gratification. Some people prefer quality. There is a time and place for both. Now if you could get quality instant gratification that would be fantastic.

 

[Atlantico]

Obviously, you haven't been outside of the USA or perhaps your state, Arizona? Is a fast internet connection only worth if you can buy movies form iTunes? Enjoy your 2 MB internet.

I don't live in the USA, actually. And we were talking about streaming movies, where one of the most common one discussed here on MACRUMORS is in fact iTunes.

Now I don't live in the Netherlands either. So I ask: is the iTunes video store available there? I know it doesn't in most countries (in fact outside of the US, UK, France and Germany, I'm not sure it is offered) ... so if there is another way of getting legal movies off the internet in the Netherlands would be my followup question, if iTunes isn't available.

The rest of your comment makes no sense to me. The issue was completely and 100% utterly around legally downloaded (streamed) movies off the internet.

Personally I think there's great value in high speed internet. I also realize it's not widely available and usually has download caps. And it can be quite unreliable.

What is your problem, exactly?

 

[JohnDoe98]

I'm afraid there are more CDs sold than all digital distribution put together. The niche is what you're advocating, ironically enough.

And this is almost a decade after music became widely available for purchase on the internet.

Movies are even farther behind. On-line sale of movies hardly registers compared to the sales of DVDs/BDs and the sale of BDs is growing far faster than online sales, despite online sales being smaller and thus in a much better position for fast growth.

What color is the sky in your world?

I am not sure, in mine it is blue. Yours? By the epway, what is the numer one music store in the world?

And if CDs are so valuable why is it their resale value has become virtually non-existent as opposed to how the situation was 5 years ago?

 

[maclaptop]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)



How else would you see what you're doing?

Clairvoyance

 

[Atlantico]

Serious videophiles certainly wouldn't watch Blu Ray on their Macs. Why do such a thing when you have a 60" already?

Well, as we both know, more people watch movies than serious videophiles and even they can surely enjoy a movie with somewhat lower sound quality and closer to the screen (i.e. on a Mac)

Why always bring videophiles and BD together? It's not some sort of an exclusive videophile format: it is the de-facto video format on planet Earth.

It should be playable anywhere. Really.

 

[iBug2]

Well, as we both know, more people watch movies than serious videophiles and even they can surely enjoy a movie with somewhat lower sound quality and closer to the screen (i.e. on a Mac)

Why always bring videophiles and BD together? It's not some sort of an exclusive videophile format: it is the de-facto video format on planet Earth.

It should be playable anywhere. Really.

Actually DVD is still the de-facto format. More DVD's are sold than Blu Ray's still.

But irrelevant of that, I didn't bring videophiles up, I just replied to the guy who did.

 

[Atlantico]

No, it means that nobody was interested in that after all, because the reason they dropped out was "we can't sell any of them".

Yeah I can't wait for more iOS features in OS X

Anyway, after not upgrading the XServe for two years, and providing really bad support and no roadmap, yeah it was a small wonder why it wasn't selling "as expected".

Sounds familiar, eh Mac Pro? Just wait long enough to upgrade the thing and people will eventually stop buying it: then you can say (if you're Apple) "oh it wasn't selling, so we axed it".

And no, there was no exit strategy.

 

[rhett7660]

This is impossible. Not happening.

Apple's only supposed to care about "iToys" and nothing else. They don't care about Macs anymore.

Judging from the negatives, people don't understand sarcasm when they see it.

 

[JohnDoe98]

What do I call them? Excuses.

As for convenient delivery. You have a Netflix account and you get DVDs or BDs delivered to your door for rental. What about ordering from Amazon or Barnes & Nobles and getting delivery right to your door. That's convenient. Or I can go to the library and borrow discs (yes, including BDs). That's pretty convenient and at the right price... free.

Some people are into instant gratification. Some people prefer quality. There is a time and place for both. Now if you could get quality instant gratification that would be fantastic.

It is only an excuse if you are already prejudiced in favor of BR. Otherwise, what you have are explanations and reasons. And quite frankly, netflix is always delayed in its catalogue. As for Apple or cable rental services, they are built into your TV. All you do is pick up the remote. No more convenient than that, and the quality is impeccable, even on a 120" screen.

 

[iBug2]

Yeah I can't wait for more iOS features in OS X

Anyway, after not upgrading the XServe for two years, and providing really bad support and no roadmap, yeah it was a small wonder why it wasn't selling "as expected".

Why do you take things backwards? It wasn't updated because nobody was buying them. Not being updated should have been and actually was an indication that Apple was indeed going to drop it.

Oh btw, web browsing with a touchpad is actually easier than browsing with a mouse. So gestures aren't automatically a bad thing. If you try to use them on wrong type of operations, then they are bad.

Sounds familiar, eh Mac Pro? Just wait long enough to upgrade the thing and people will eventually stop buying it: then you can say (if you're Apple) "oh it wasn't selling, so we axed it".

Again, take it up with Intel. Type Sandybridge, go to the wikipedia page that pops up, scroll down to workstation processors and look at the roadmap. You'll see things like Q4 2011 and Q1 2012. Those are the things to watch out, very important stuff.

Also, one must have a very bad memory if they can claim that they don't care about these post pc devices and only about their macs. How easy people forget that without the iPod, Apple would have been bankrupted. These toys is what kept Apple going, and indirectly what made possible for us to use the Mac.

 

[Bear]

It is only an excuse if you are already prejudiced in favor of BR. Otherwise, what you have are explanations and reasons. And quite frankly, netflix is always delayed in its catalogue. As for Apple or cable rental services, they are built into your TV. All you do is pick up the remote. No more convenient than that, and the quality is impeccable, even on a 120" screen.

Streaming video through Apple or cable rental service is only as good as the quality of your internet connection or cable company. Obviously you are not familiar with Comcast Cable in the US or you would not be talking about impeccable quality.

 

[Atlantico]

No reason huh? What about the fact that it would involve coding software, and thereby using resources? What about the fact that it would conflict and compete with the itunes movie store and their belief convenience of delivery is importanr that maximal quality? Are those not reasons? What do you call them?

No, that's no reason. One; Apple has plenty of resources, and two it doesn't conflict with the iTunes store since what it offers is so much worse quality than BD - I don't call these reasons, I call them excuses.

That's all they are. Apple can choose to use resources on anything it pleases, in fact on the hardware side, Apple has already used the resources to make every single Mac BD compatible - just boot into a Windows partition and hook up a third party USB BD drive. It plays fine.

Software side, it needs to make a player and allow the DRM (which is by the way less intrusive than Apple's own DRM) - it's a job for a couple of coders for a day or two. Week with QC.

If they offer BTO BD drives, they'll fast recuperate any cost involved.

iBug 2 explained above how BD doesn't even interfere with iTunes movie sales (not available in most places on the planet anyway)

 

[JohnDoe98]

Streaming video through Apple or cable rental service is only as good as the quality of your internet connection or cable company. Obviously you are not familiar with Comcast Cable in the US or you would not be talking about impeccable quality.

Should that be Apple's problem? They want to move things forward in the most convenient way possible. If that means industries need to innovate to keep up, isn't that a good thing? Apple's media competes very well with DVD quality, and soon all their devices will be quite capable and ready to transition to a higher 1080P content, which, given the convenience and overall quality, will be well situated to compete with BR. So again, what is all the fuss about?

 

[mrklaw]

Well, Apple wouldn't implement Blu Ray for that small minority. I'm sure there are many Mac users who would like to have the alternative to buy Blu Rays and watch them at their iMacs etc. I'm one of them. But I'm not crying my eyes out because Apple doesn't implement it. There are other methods to watch Blu Rays on macs, although a bit convoluted.

My problem with them not offering it, is that Apple is telling you how to view your media. They don't do that with music - they have a CD drive and an app that plays CDs. They have a DVD drive and an app that plays DVDs.

There is no logic to suggest that the only reason they aren't supporting bluray is because of their itunes video store. Based on that logic they wouldn't play DVD/CD either. The simplest solution is likely just cost. Although offering it as BTO they could cover the licensing cost with that and not impact all users.

 

[Atlantico]

The problem is that when people accuse Apple of doing something bone headed, it turns out an amazing success in couple of years. So everyone has to swallow their words. Same with praising. People think Apple has done something great, and it turns out a downer later on.

You cannot know if a giant company like this did something "right" or "wrong" without waiting several years and seeing the consequences.

The only thing one can know is that if they like it or not. I don't like iPad, I don't want to use an iPad ever, but if that's where the industry is going, so be it, I'll have to use it eventually. So personally I don't think iPad is a great invention, but it's hugely successful and a correct move for Apple.

I agree on your iPad sentiments, both that I don't see much point in an iPad, but it is doing good things for Apple, so God bless them.

However, it's rather obvious to see that the lack of BD support is not a stroke of genius and is probably harming Mac sales and Apple by extension, more than ever helping. Professional video is put into question, you can edit and burn BD video but can't watch it on the same machine, etc.

Now it's been going on for a few years. I think I've given it enough time to realize that, yes: that particular move was and still is bone-headed. (i.e. unwise and stubborn)

 

[iBug2]

Software side, it needs to make a player and allow the DRM (which is by the way less intrusive than Apple's own DRM) - it's a job for a couple of coders for a day or two. Week with QC.

Also means paying loyalties.

 

[JohnDoe98]

No, that's no reason. One; Apple has plenty of resources, and two it doesn't conflict with the iTunes store since what it offers is so much worse quality than BD - I don't call these reasons, I call them excuses.

That's all they are. Apple can choose to use resources on anything it pleases, in fact on the hardware side, Apple has already used the resources to make every single Mac BD compatible - just boot into a Windows partition and hook up a third party USB BD drive. It plays fine.

Software side, it needs to make a player and allow the DRM (which is by the way less intrusive than Apple's own DRM) - it's a job for a couple of coders for a day or two. Week with QC.

If they offer BTO BD drives, they'll fast recuperate any cost involved.

iBug 2 explained above how BD doesn't even interfere with iTunes movie sales (not available in most places on the planet anyway)

In their primary markets, every BR disk movie rental is a potential loss of a itunes movie rental. They do compete. You can ignore that if you like, but Apple sure doesn't seem to share your perspective. Honestly, if Apple thought, long term, BR was something that would add to their profits, they would have included it. The act that they didn't should tell you something.

 

[iBug2]

I agree on your iPad sentiments, both that I don't see much point in an iPad, but it is doing good things for Apple, so God bless them.

However, it's rather obvious to see that the lack of BD support is not a stroke of genius and is probably harming Mac sales and Apple by extension, more than ever helping. Professional video is put into question, you can edit and burn BD video but can't watch it on the same machine, etc.

Now it's been going on for a few years. I think I've given it enough time to realize that, yes: that particular move was and still is bone-headed. (i.e. unwise and stubborn)

No it's not really obvious at all. I don't think lack of BD support is harming mac sales nor would it bring more mac sales if it did support it. At least not considerably.

You need to realize the small impact of BD support on Macs on iTunes store, and even though I claim that the impact won't be huge, it still would have some. Probably when all things are considered together, BD is a no go for Apple, and that's why they are not doing it.

We have no idea how much Apple would gain and how much money they'd lose from adding BD support, that's Apple's job to calculate.

 

[cirus]

And if CDs are so valuable why is it their resale value has become virtually non-existent as opposed to how the situation was 5 years ago?

Cause people could download the music off the internet. . 1000 songs of frost wire is a good deal compared to paying ~$1.00- $.25 per song

 

[Bear]

Should that be Apple's problem? They want to move things forward in the most convenient way possible. If that means industries need to innovate to keep up, isn't that a good thing? Apple's media competes very well with DVD quality, and soon all their devices will be quite capable and ready to transition to a higher 1080P content, which, given the convenience and overall quality, will be well situated to compete with BR. So again, what is all the fuss about?

The fuss is that the bad cable services have nothing forcing them to fix their issues. Which are not only the quality issues, it's the data caps. In a lot of places in the US you have only one choice for broadband. No competition, no pressure to fix things.

 

[Atlantico]

I am not sure, in mine it is blue. Yours? By the epway, what is the numer one music store in the world?

That's a pretty meaningless metric. What store sells most furniture in the world? Does that mean IKEA is about to conquer everything? Or does it just mean that they (individually) sell a lot?

And if CDs are so valuable why is it their resale value has become virtually non-existent as opposed to how the situation was 5 years ago?

Well, considering there's no resale value at all from downloaded music, that's a strange point to make.

I don't resell CDs anyway, nor ever bought used ones. But if I wanted I could. Not so with downloaded music.