Yup. Hopefully they won't force us to watch their videos only - that is, they don't make, for example, videos of non-iTunes Store origin but still having a H.264 video track absolutely not playable via hardware acceleration. Today, they "only" make it impossible to play back non-iOS-native containers (mov/mp4/m4v) in hardware in AppStore apps - hope they don't further make their restrictions even more strict. (For comparison: Symbian, for example, not only allows hardware MKV playback, but even plays them back in its built-in player.)
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Phil Schiller Claims Customers Aren't Asking for Built-In Blu-Ray Anymore
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Yup. Hopefully they won't force us to watch their videos only - that is, they don't make, for example, videos of non-iTunes Store origin but still having a H.264 video track absolutely not playable via hardware acceleration. Today, they "only" make it impossible to play back non-iOS-native containers (mov/mp4/m4v) in hardware in AppStore apps - hope they don't further make their restrictions even more strict. (For comparison: Symbian, for example, not only allows hardware MKV playback, but even plays them back in its built-in player.)
I agree with you completely. Don't try to steamroll what people say they want or need - simply acknowledge it doesn't make business sense for you to do it.
Looking at my 2011 iMac I couldn't tell if it was the 2011 model or the 2012 model.
This is crap. Apple's position on blu-ray has always been crap. No DVDSP for blu-ray. No blu-ray player built in. The real reason is twofold: 1) Apple doesn't want to pay for the license fees, the upgrade costs for DVDSP, and 2) they are pushing itunes (a competing product).
There are two blu-ray issues. One is producing or authoring blu-rays on the Mac with DVDSP, and two watching blu-rays on the Mac. First, there is no good reason why DVDSP (DVD Studio Pro) wasn't updated to author blu-ray. Business people and ordinary prosumers want to be able to make their own blu-rays. On the other issue, watching blu-rays, my kids grandma doesn't know how to watch movies from the cloud, but she can put a disk into the blu-ray player.
There are two blu-ray issues. One is producing or authoring blu-rays on the Mac with DVDSP, and two watching blu-rays on the Mac. First, there is no good reason why DVDSP (DVD Studio Pro) wasn't updated to author blu-ray. Business people and ordinary prosumers want to be able to make their own blu-rays. On the other issue, watching blu-rays, my kids grandma doesn't know how to watch movies from the cloud, but she can put a disk into the blu-ray player.
agree, maybe Apple shouldn't build floppy, optical, etc but it should at least provide OS support for external 3rd party devices. If the customer wants optical or blu-ray they will still have the option to add-on external.
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Do you have any evidence to substantiate this claim? From what I've seen BluRay disks seem to be very popular now that the price has finally come down and the range is growing fast.
iTunes HD downloads are great if you have unlimited ultra fast broadband which most people still don't have. Otherwise buying disks still makes more sense for most people.
Of course it isn't. Currently, the ATV is by far the best most closed set top box-alike. Other (non-disc-based) standalone media players allow for both network streaming from local NAS / UPnP / FTP etc. sources and local files, including, of course, even MKV ones. ATV? Home Sharing only (requiring a desktop computer to be switched on all the time) and, of course, no fancy video containers at all,only the pretty restricted iOS-native ones (mov/m4v/mp4). The same applies to e.g. bitmap subtitles or non-AAC/AC3 audio tracks.
All the complainers said the same thing when Apple lead the industry in getting ride of the floppy drive.
All of the complainers said the same thing when Apple lead the industry in getting ride of ADB/PS2/MIDI/Parallel/SCSI in favor of USB.
All fo the complainers said the same thing when Apple lead the industry in getting ride of VGA in favor of DVI and then getting ride of DVI in favor of Display Port.
Shall I continue?
All of the complainers said the same thing when Apple lead the industry in getting ride of ADB/PS2/MIDI/Parallel/SCSI in favor of USB.
All fo the complainers said the same thing when Apple lead the industry in getting ride of VGA in favor of DVI and then getting ride of DVI in favor of Display Port.
Shall I continue?
Simply look at the rise of Netflix. They transition from DVD rentals to streaming in a blink of an eye.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/tech...umes-third-americas-internet-bandwidth/44264/
This is HUGE
BR movies have superb image quality. Also, Blu-ray burners can be used to get a lot of storage (50 GB or so) in some cases. The thing with the downloaded digital media is about control/profits, not a technical one. Having said the latter, I can understand the lacking of any ODD in Apple products, by the sake of good design (aesthetics and functional) and less weight
But also, the thing is, are a lot of better externals drives than the Apple branded/provided.....
At $8-10 per 50GB, using Blu-Ray disks for backup is *more* expensive than buying a tradition 3.5" HDD for the same purpose. The HDD will, generally speaking, be more durable, and resistant to environmental effects than the Blu-Ray discs. Additionally, it will require less space to store it, and when the data is no longer needed, can be used *again* to back up new data.
It won't be long before 64GB SD cards are cheaper than Blu-Ray discs, and those are even better from a durability/storage space stand point. (16GB cards are already in the same price range as Blu-Ray discs.)
I guess you haven't been reading the thread. Let me catch you up. If Apple isn't going to have BD - OK - most people can accept that. It's the fact that the OS doesn't support it and won't.
Have a nice day.
Too bad in this case iTunes Store is simply not a replacement for a, quality- and support-wise, far superior and established system. (Again: the IQ, AQ and subtitle support of Blu-ray is vastly superior to what Apple offers.)
Yes but Blu-ray isn't adaptable. Remember when Apple was able to automatically upgrade movies purchased through iTunes at 720p to 1080p versions for no cost? Can Blu-ray do that?
I seriously wonder if Apple is out of their minds. It´s one thing to not include bluray, but leaving out an optical drive altogether on a desktop machine? Come on, motha******. I´m seriosly upset about this. Here´s why:
1) I´m a professional photographer, thus handling large amounts of data. Some clients ask for tiff files, which, at 20MP+, tend to be large. So we´re talking about 2 GB of files or more with tight deadlines on a regular basis. I usually burn a DVD for the client, send/hand it over and everything´s fine - now try doing the same via the Cloud. Hopeless when you´re on location in the middle of nowhere. If I had a dollar for every night we spent sending files on a crappy line from a remote village in the alps or wherever, I´d be a rich man.
And there are still "white spots" on the map when it comes to broadband connections. I know a few villages, slap-bang in the middle of germany, where people make their connections via satellite. Or ISDN, if they don´t want to spend 50€ per month. Oh and there´s a 6GB/month limit on it, which translates to roughly two movies in 720p from the iTunes store. Facetime, Skype, voip? Not with a 700ms ping. These folks are big fans of optical drives, I tells ya. I don´t know how the situation is, say, in the US midwest, Australia or the UK. Or any other part of the first world, but it certainly isn´t how phil seems to imagine it.
2) The presentation of the iMac made clear that Jony Ive (and most probably Phil Schiller, too) likes thin edges. Would an optical drive fit in that concept? Nope, it doesn´t. And so they turned that old mantra of "form follows function" (once a big selling point of their products) on its head. People work with these things, folks. It´s not all just watching movies, 'making beautiful cards in iPhoto' or Facebook.
3) I want to backup my data how, when and where I want. Timemachine is all nice and fancy, but I don´t feel comfortable with just that. I have backups in various forms and in various places that will survive even if my house is hit by a bomb. Because they´re not in my house - try doing that with timemachine. Blurays would´ve made that easier.
4) I don´t like the iTunes Store. It is quite comfortable, sure, and it looks nice. And it´s cheaper than Blurays, too. The quality is okay aswell, at least in HD. But there´s so, so many things wrong with it. I live in Germany and thus I am bound to the german store. I do have an account for the US store, too, because some apps or movies I want aren´t available in Germany. But I always have to buy iTunes codes from shady sources in order to buy something. Not cool.
Not to speak of the horrible german synchronisation most movies suffer from. There are bi-lingual versions, yes, but it´s just a handful and not really worth mentioning. And some movies are missing completely.
I have a few other points, but let´s leave it where we are for now.
Sure, you say, the iMac isn´t for me. Go buy a mac pro, you´ll say. But you know the answer to that: The current one is preposterous and the next one isn´t announced before sometime in 2013. And if I had to guess, I´d say it won´t have bluray either.
It would´ve been a consolation if they spec´d their external optical drive (for those stuck in 2005, yes, phil) with BR - but no. All these fancy things like unibody retina macbooks, fusion drives and what have you aren´t worth a penny if you forget who these things are made for and what their actual needs are.
I´d like Apple to go and ask some of their professional customers what they need. And then go and improve on top of that without leaving things out.
Sorry for the long-ish rant, but I had to vent that somewhere.
/e:
Bluray does 1080p from the start. You can scale it down, though, so it gets even better.
1) I´m a professional photographer, thus handling large amounts of data. Some clients ask for tiff files, which, at 20MP+, tend to be large. So we´re talking about 2 GB of files or more with tight deadlines on a regular basis. I usually burn a DVD for the client, send/hand it over and everything´s fine - now try doing the same via the Cloud. Hopeless when you´re on location in the middle of nowhere. If I had a dollar for every night we spent sending files on a crappy line from a remote village in the alps or wherever, I´d be a rich man.
And there are still "white spots" on the map when it comes to broadband connections. I know a few villages, slap-bang in the middle of germany, where people make their connections via satellite. Or ISDN, if they don´t want to spend 50€ per month. Oh and there´s a 6GB/month limit on it, which translates to roughly two movies in 720p from the iTunes store. Facetime, Skype, voip? Not with a 700ms ping. These folks are big fans of optical drives, I tells ya. I don´t know how the situation is, say, in the US midwest, Australia or the UK. Or any other part of the first world, but it certainly isn´t how phil seems to imagine it.
2) The presentation of the iMac made clear that Jony Ive (and most probably Phil Schiller, too) likes thin edges. Would an optical drive fit in that concept? Nope, it doesn´t. And so they turned that old mantra of "form follows function" (once a big selling point of their products) on its head. People work with these things, folks. It´s not all just watching movies, 'making beautiful cards in iPhoto' or Facebook.
3) I want to backup my data how, when and where I want. Timemachine is all nice and fancy, but I don´t feel comfortable with just that. I have backups in various forms and in various places that will survive even if my house is hit by a bomb. Because they´re not in my house - try doing that with timemachine. Blurays would´ve made that easier.
4) I don´t like the iTunes Store. It is quite comfortable, sure, and it looks nice. And it´s cheaper than Blurays, too. The quality is okay aswell, at least in HD. But there´s so, so many things wrong with it. I live in Germany and thus I am bound to the german store. I do have an account for the US store, too, because some apps or movies I want aren´t available in Germany. But I always have to buy iTunes codes from shady sources in order to buy something. Not cool.
Not to speak of the horrible german synchronisation most movies suffer from. There are bi-lingual versions, yes, but it´s just a handful and not really worth mentioning. And some movies are missing completely.
I have a few other points, but let´s leave it where we are for now.
Sure, you say, the iMac isn´t for me. Go buy a mac pro, you´ll say. But you know the answer to that: The current one is preposterous and the next one isn´t announced before sometime in 2013. And if I had to guess, I´d say it won´t have bluray either.
It would´ve been a consolation if they spec´d their external optical drive (for those stuck in 2005, yes, phil) with BR - but no. All these fancy things like unibody retina macbooks, fusion drives and what have you aren´t worth a penny if you forget who these things are made for and what their actual needs are.
I´d like Apple to go and ask some of their professional customers what they need. And then go and improve on top of that without leaving things out.
Sorry for the long-ish rant, but I had to vent that somewhere.
/e:
Bluray does 1080p from the start. You can scale it down, though, so it gets even better.
if id want a lame file to sit on my hdd id just download it for free from one of those many sites, at least these are not drm protected
but i dont. ... i rather have some nice packaged BD limited edition that i can put on my BD shelve. god i sound so old fashioned but thats my opinion lol for the money i spent on movies/tv i wanna be able to "grab" it ^^
plus half the price is also nice
but i dont. ... i rather have some nice packaged BD limited edition that i can put on my BD shelve. god i sound so old fashioned but thats my opinion lol for the money i spent on movies/tv i wanna be able to "grab" it ^^
plus half the price is also nice
This is completely unacceptable. It's beyond completely unacceptable.
You pretend that the next optical drive format doesn't exist for years, and then when people start to give up hope, you say "see? They're not asking for it anymore!"
Go to hell, Schiller. Just go to hell. This is no way to treat customers who are used to being at the cutting edge of technology.
You pretend that the next optical drive format doesn't exist for years, and then when people start to give up hope, you say "see? They're not asking for it anymore!"
Go to hell, Schiller. Just go to hell. This is no way to treat customers who are used to being at the cutting edge of technology.
Last time I checked (which, admittedly was a little over a year ago), quality internal laptop DVD drives wholesaled at about $15 for tray-loaders, and around $35 for slot-loaders. (The vast majority of the market uses tray-loaders, so the slot-loaders are more expensive.) I haven't seen external drive prices drop enough to indicate that those prices have changed significantly.
It surely won't happen as it'd be pretty lethal for Apple's iTunes Store business.
Apple are not usually associated with the "good enough" solution, yet this is their choice with movies and TV.
If all your movies are on Blu-Ray, wouldn't you like the option to watch them while away and have your computer with you?
I understand optical drives disappearing. I understand Apple not making their own Blu-Ray external drive. I don't understand their video making software not being compatible with the highest quality distribution option. Final Cut Pro is supposed to be for professionals.
More native support for external Blu-Ray drives would be a nice step in the right direction.
iTunes provides a lower quality option for higher cost compared to Blu-Ray. I won't be making the switch until iTunes improves on both fronts. In the mean time, I would like better support for Blu-Ray.
No download can compare to blurays.
Also you can get BRs for $5-$10.
Also I have not found a 3D Download that is even worth watching.
I love 3D movies.
