Steve Jobs Suggests Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac Anytime Soon

[linux2mac]

As far as getting up to insert a BD disc, my estate server is in a centralized part of the estate (the media room) and I usually ring one of the housekeepers to do that and route it to whichever of the five 80" plasma displays I happen to be at at the time. I rarely see the inside of the media room, unless it's the one off the home theater where I keep the popcorn. I like making my own, unless there are going to be a lot of guests.

I sincerely hope one day we'll all achieve my lifestyle.

A former teacher once told us, "the empty barrel makes the loudest noise." To this day he has never been wrong.

 

[toke lahti]

Again, there were non-firmware upgradable Blu-ray players for sale in 2009.

All bd-players have had firmware that can be updated.
What you can't upgrade is profile.
While there are still older than 2.0 profile (no bd-live) players sold, you can't blame manufacturers for offering a cheaper model. At least 2 years you have been able to buy bd-live-players if you pay enough.

And most people buy dvd's and windows pc's. That's not the issue. Macs are targeted to early adopters. They want bd and hook their computers to bigger screens. Those computers are called HTPC.

Blu-Ray movies are mastered at 1080p (well the vast majority are, only a very scant few launch titles are anything less).

Many older movies are authored from hdcam master, which can be only 1080i if the same master has been made for broadcasting.
You know that hdcam is 1440x1080 3:1:1 8-bit?

At least Apple was smart enough to save us from this useless new Apple TV!

Yep, also in Finland's Apple Store they are still trying to sell their old inventoryl with unbelievable price.

As I've said of others making this same assertion, unless you are privy to Apple board meetings or strategy sessions, this is an ignorantly uninformed opinion.

Well, maybe there is very small amont of something else than greed, but let's take an example:
Why macs don't have esata?
One single port and many mac users would loose their mind?
"Too many ports, I can't find the right one anymore!"
Or is it that Apple gets small amount of money out of every fw port or chip sold?

If you need to exchange data between macs and pc's using external hdd's, macs not having esata makes the procedure a whole lot slower or more expensive. Pc's usually don't have fw800, so you have to use fw400. eSata would be twice as fast. Or you have to buy enclosures that have both esata & fw800, which are rare and double the price.

 

[Burger Thing]

Apple sometimes does 180s on their decisions. Lilo777's comment stands. Steve can spout crap about Blu-ray all day, you never know when it will come to Mac and Apple suddenly touts its openess and willingness to work with industry standards.

Ha Ha, yeah. At the end, it will probably boil down to a marketing research analysis to compare which option is more profitable: Offering BD Drives for Macs (and try to sell more Hardware) or selling movies via iTunes. If they see that they lose out in sales, then BD will become an option and the marketing department will work overtime.

While Apple has gained world wide popularity as a brand tremendously, the iTunes Shops is lacking behind. In many countries you can't download movies, tv shows, etc. And IMHO it is too restrictive (the country where you have your iTunes account must be the same as the Credit Card you are using). That leaves many Fans out in the dry.

I have read an article in a chinese newspaper recently stating that they expect BD to become quite popular in China. Not sure if that article had much substance because China has been developing their own standard: CBHD but let's say that it does, then it might be an influencing factor in Steve's decision to offer BD or not.

Personally, I don't really care too much about it to have it on a desktop computer at home, but I do respect the wishes of those who see a desire in it.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Many older movies are authored from hdcam master, which can be only 1080i if the same master has been made for broadcasting.
You know that hdcam is 1440x1080 3:1:1 8-bit?

HDCAM supports 24p which can easily have the pulldown added during playback to get 60i. I would be incredibly surprised if a film shot at 24p was only mastered to 60i. 24p is becoming, has become(?), a de facto standard for mastering because it can easily be changed into other frame rates (25p, 60i, etc.,).


Lethal

 

[JAT]

If you have a Profile 1.0 player besides the PS3, good luck watching the special features on Blu-Rays that use Bonus View or BD-Live.

Luckily nobody actually watches that crap after the first try. BD-Live has been the most useless feature any media format has had. They put any decent extras on the disc.

So you're saying it is ok for people to piss money away? Forgive me if I remain dubious about Blu-Ray's specs being finalized when Profile 1.1 was billed as "The Final Standard Profile," and then there are things like from earlier this year:

I don't think I've even heard that term til your post, and I've been watching BD carefully since before it was shipping. Marketing, LOL! Profile 2.0 added things that were promised from the beginning. Any versions before that were understood to be incomplete by anyone paying attention. If you want to be an early adopter of new tech, you better know all the facts. (and not get them from marketing crap, LOL!) The first players couldn't even play all the audio codecs.

It's up to individuals whether they want to piss money away. I laughed at people who bought $1000+ Profile 1.0 machines, and waited another year to get a complete 2.0 model for under $300.

 

[xbjllb]

I think you're the one who needs an education, apparently you don't understand the adoption bell curve or the purpose of an "early adopter". Such a person is one who lives on the bleeding edge -- while it may be a smaller number of people, these people are influential to their colleagues, friends, and family, and make recommendations to them in kind. These are the people you want to get on your side. Having one early adopter can lead to 50 "normal" users down the road. Apple used to understand that. Fail to win early adopters and you're in trouble down the road.

But now take a look at how the Macs have withered since the rise of the iDevices. The Mac Pro is an overpriced joke and is often several generations behind in technology. The video card issue in particular annoys the hell out of me, selling us 3-generation old technology at 3x the price of the PC. The complete lack of Blu-Ray on Macs is another prime example of Apple missing the boat on the early adopters, people they used to covet. No netbooks, no mid towers, no Blu-Ray, outdated hardware, POS Apple TV, garbage pseudo-HD on iTunes, the lack of a Mac Mini geared to the HPTC market with Blu-Ray and PVR, the list goes on and on. Apple used to be on the bleeding edge of technology and specifically media production and consumption, but no longer.

So here's the part you don't understand -- the early adopters, the people who influence other people's opinions are turning away from the Mac and can't recommend Macs because they don't do many media things as well as a PC can, and that's a fact. A really sad fact given how Apple has portrayed itself throughout its history.

Right now, on the Macintosh side of the house, Apple is riding a wave of chic image backed up by nothing behind it. That good will smoke will disappear rather quickly. Meanwhile Apple is driving away the very people that it used to covet, and eventually those chickens will come home to roost, there is only a market lag preventing this trend from being visible today. The next wave that the early adopters are pioneering today is turning away from the Mac because the platform is becoming restrictive like a pair of mittens. This will not show huge differences today but it will down the road.

So now we know who has been exposed as ignorant, and it is YOU.

TALK ABOUT HITTING THE NAIL ON THE HEAD! BRAVO!!

Thanks for confirming our assessment.

Thanks for confirming mine and humanity's assessment of YOU and your little friend, there.

A former teacher once told us, "the empty barrel makes the loudest noise." To this day he has never been wrong.

You must be new here. That was the softest of soft replies.

I'm almost embarrassed by it.

Furthermore, what your teacher said doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever, because it's not true in nature. An analogy has to be physically true in the first place to make sense. It's not even good zen.

An empty barrel makes a click.

And you thought your teacher was profound all these years. Pity.

Let me guess.... Obama at Harvard.

 

[Hal Itosis]

Furthermore, what your teacher said doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever, because it's not true in nature. An analogy has to be physically true in the first place to make sense. It's not even good zen.

An empty barrel makes a click.

And you thought your teacher was profound all these years. Pity.

Let me guess.... Obama at Harvard.

What a pile of cat dung. Blah blah blah. You missed by a mile bozo... because you ASSumed the teacher was talking about a gun. Think "barrel".

If something so simple eludes you, how can you understand the more technical stuff (like: if you want to watch BD, then buy a BD player... duh).

 

[Burger Thing]

I'm almost embarrassed by it.

Furthermore, what your teacher said doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever, because it's not true in nature. An analogy has to be physically true in the first place to make sense. It's not even good zen.

An empty barrel makes a click.

Oh dear...

 

[iEdd]

Oh dear...

+1

Interesting he posted that when he was "embarassed by it".

 

[toke lahti]

HDCAM supports 24p which can easily have the pulldown added during playback to get 60i. I would be incredibly surprised if a film shot at 24p was only mastered to 60i.

The difference between 24p master and 60i is that the latter has softened picture to avoid interlace flicker. If there's only one master, it's probably 60i.

Now that almost none interlaced hd screens still exist, this is of course legacy burden, but those 1080i masters has been made for a decade, so it will take quite a while before most of them are remastered.

Meanwhile Apple is driving away the very people that it used to covet, and eventually those chickens will come home to roost, there is only a market lag preventing this trend from being visible today. The next wave that the early adopters are pioneering today is turning away from the Mac because the platform is becoming restrictive like a pair of mittens. This will not show huge differences today but it will down the road.

I guess the market lag is about 5 years in computers.
Already single-chip MP is unbelievably overpriced and underpowered dinosaur.
What they are going to take away after next price raise?

Problem here is that the only option to macs is windows.
I don't believe windows will ever get the usability and stability of OsX.
Both ways, quality drops.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

I think personally Apple should include BD, as Blu-Ray is in the iTunes credits, plus BD is popular, but not as dvd due to the current high disparity in cost. Blu-ray drives are common in most laptops these days (readers and writers) as the cost of the drives are dropping quickly. Even if Apple included BD readers with a BD writer option, this would be a big selling point. As for the download / physical media argument, I vote physical media as its a hard copy - no drm (hell even remove all copy protection with a decrypter). This also saves time and download quotas on your own internet account.

The only thing I have noticed which is very rare, are slot loading BD-R / BD-RW drives similar to the DVD drives Apple use in their MacBooks / MacBooks Pro's. All of the BD / BD-RW drives I have seen are all tray loading which are larger and more bulkier and wouldn't fit the current design.

 

[LethalWolfe]

The difference between 24p master and 60i is that the latter has softened picture to avoid interlace flicker. If there's only one master, it's probably 60i.

Now that almost none interlaced hd screens still exist, this is of course legacy burden, but those 1080i masters has been made for a decade, so it will take quite a while before most of them are remastered.

I don't think that's an accurate statement (at least not in the US). It doesn't make sense to master a 24p movie to HDCAM 60i when a 24p master is easier to make and is more versatile.


Lethal

 

[kingtj]

All these VERY subjective opinions, stated as facts ....

First of all, what's all this whining about Mac Pros coming with "video cards 3 generations behind"? As far as I can tell, Apple has actually tightened things up in recent years, so the new cards offered are no more than 1 generation behind....

That's actually one area where I'm finally happy with Apple, after YEARS of frustration!

The truth is, it's nonsense to shove the very latest in video card tech. into a computer 99% of the time. The drivers are usually so immature and buggy, they don't take full advantage of what you just paid for, and you're paying the highest possible price premium for a card that's only incrementally better than the model behind it.

If you're that obsessive about having whatever the "very newest" is, you're better off building your own PC and running Windows -- because it's been that way for the last 2 decades! Apple has never really been about trying to sell you hardware that's the "latest tech". They're about using what's out there, either brand new or "tried and true" - and rolling it all together into a package they think provides a quality user experience. Occasionally, they'll find a "cutting edge" option that nobody else was really taking seriously yet, and they'll run with it on a new product (or product line). That's just part of their overall vision of building what they think makes the most sense. That's not something people should expect to see CONSTANTLY on a Mac system.

I consider myself an early adopter user, all in all. Yet I don't get this idea that Macs have fallen so far behind that one can't recommend them anymore? Who were you recommending them to in the first place to make this kind of statement? OS X is still OS X, first and foremost. You can't run it legally without buying a Mac system -- and I don't see where anyone else caught up to the whole OS X user experience, unless you believe Windows 7 is now equivalent?

There's a lot of frustration that Apple's putting too much time into the i-devices and ignoring the Macs, but this is a see-saw we've seen go back and forth with Apple in the past, too. Personally, I'd rather see them focus on one or two things at a time and get them right than try to please everyone all the time and crank out nothing worthwhile.... The new Mac Mini looked like a pretty solid update to me, and it just came out. That's traditionally a machine Apple is accused of ignoring. IMHO, they've got the iMac lineup squared away into an excellent offering and value - so I don't see what else needs to really be done there in the short-term. Some people are hoping they do a touch-screen display version, and maybe they will? But again, I can't see how that's critical. The latest Mac Pro? Yeah, too expensive on the high-end configs and lacking some of the promised stuff.... but my 2006 Mac Pro is still chugging along nicely, doing what I need (after upgrading its video card a couple times over the years and adding some RAM). People who can cost-justify it will buy a new one -- and the rest of us can wait for next year. (I think we'll see "Lightpeak" and other goodies in the next revision since they didn't quite make it to this one.)

 

[MacNewsFix]

Luckily nobody actually watches that crap after the first try. BD-Live has been the most useless feature any media format has had. They put any decent extras on the disc.

I don't think I've even heard that term til your post, and I've been watching BD carefully since before it was shipping. Marketing, LOL! Profile 2.0 added things that were promised from the beginning. Any versions before that were understood to be incomplete by anyone paying attention. If you want to be an early adopter of new tech, you better know all the facts. (and not get them from marketing crap, LOL!) The first players couldn't even play all the audio codecs.

It's up to individuals whether they want to piss money away. I laughed at people who bought $1000+ Profile 1.0 machines, and waited another year to get a complete 2.0 model for under $300.

Wait, your argument is people shouldn't care if they can access all the content on the disks they buy? Apparently, you and I have different expectations of how the consumer should be treated.

Also, plenty of Profile 1.1 players out now for under $100.

xbjllb,

Considering your habit of posting, on average, about one post full of piss and vitriol a day since joining this forum, I cannot help but wonder what is your intent.

You seem to really have a boner for Blu-Ray and joined the forums when speculation began to mount that Apple was possibly going to start having Blu-Ray as an option in its drives. When that didn't pan out, did you lose your job as a result? Are you hoping that Steve Jobs reads your posts and reconsiders?

I've posted in the past that there are Blu-Ray options available if you have a Mac. OWC sells them. They are quite inexpensive. Toast makes it a snap to burn a Blu-Ray that can run on any Blu-Ray player.

I'll let history tell you. Talk to me in four, maybe five years.

IF this forum is still here despite Apple's demise.

Remember that gem you posted a few days ago? Even your avatar choices reflect your utter contempt for Apple. Why are you still here? Are you that lonely?

I apologize if I come off as gruff, but all you are adding is noise to what could be a great thread. As for my intentions, it is to have a serious conversation about Blu-Ray and its future on Apple products.

 

[linux2mac]

Furthermore, what your teacher said doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever, because it's not true in nature. An analogy has to be physically true in the first place to make sense. It's not even good zen.

An empty barrel makes a click.

And you thought your teacher was profound all these years. Pity.

Let me guess.... Obama at Harvard.

Perhaps an illustration might help.



My teacher was making reference to William Shakespeare's quote "The empty vessel makes the loudest sound" which is also a reference to Plato's quote "As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest blabbers." What this means is people with no brains have a lot to say or that noisy opinionated people are often stupid. I hope that helps.

 

[davelanger]

I think you're the one who needs an education, apparently you don't understand the adoption bell curve or the purpose of an "early adopter". Such a person is one who lives on the bleeding edge -- while it may be a smaller number of people, these people are influential to their colleagues, friends, and family, and make recommendations to them in kind. These are the people you want to get on your side. Having one early adopter can lead to 50 "normal" users down the road. Apple used to understand that. Fail to win early adopters and you're in trouble down the road.

Yeah being an early adopter really worked for those people that thought Beta and HD-DVD were going to be the wave of the future.

What is the point of having bluray on a mac anyways? To pirate movies?

90% of people are not going to be watching movies on their macs, they have something called bluray players for that.

And I would never trust a disc to store anything important. How many gigs is a bluray disc? 25 or so??
Its much safer backing up online some where or getting an extra HD than taking a huge gamble and backing up to a disc.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Yeah being an early adopter really worked for those people that thought Beta and HD-DVD were going to be the wave of the future.

What is the point of having bluray on a mac anyways? To pirate movies?

Some people travel outside of their home and may want to watch a movie while on the go. Some people would like to take the HD video they shoot, edit it in HD on their Mac, burn it on HD to a disc and watch it on their HDTV. Or send it out to friends and family for them to watch on their HDTVs.

Its much safer backing up online some where or getting an extra HD than taking a huge gamble and backing up to a disc.

I don't know what kind of fantastic upload speeds you get but for the average person backing up tons of stuff online isn't feasible and backing up to a HDD is one of the least secure ways to store data.


Lethal

 

[Rodimus Prime]

And I would never trust a disc to store anything important. How many gigs is a bluray disc? 25 or so??
Its much safer backing up online some where or getting an extra HD than taking a huge gamble and backing up to a disc.

On a bluRay disk it is 25 gigs per layer with a max of 9 layers which would put the max at 225 gigs


As for the rest of your agrument. BluRay is not exactly bleed edge any more or early adapters. It is main stream. I expect in the future we will start seeing software delivered on bluRay disk. Reason for it is people hate dealing with multi disk installs and I already have seen some software on 2-3 DVDs. That could easily of been shoved on to 1 BluRay disk.

As for back up. On line back up is not exactly cheap. You try getting 225 gigs of online back up for the cost of a disk. btw that would be less than a month for your online storage......

 

[KnightWRX]

getting an extra HD than taking a huge gamble and backing up to a disc.

You do understand optical media has a longer lifespan and is much more reliable than modern HDDs ? Oh wait, no you aren't...

As for online, laughable. You would trust someone else with your data ? And use up your bandwidth cap to backup stuff to some remote server in an unknown location ? And all that for cheaper than 3$ per 25 GB ? Of course not.

 

[Žalgiris]

You do understand optical media has a longer lifespan and is much more reliable than modern HDDs ?

Not that simple. What you want to say is that optical media COULD last longer. You need good brand for that and still HDD can last

The point is i think that you can't rely on one of them. Would be stupid thing to do.

 

[KnightWRX]

Not that simple. What you want to say is that optical media COULD last longer. You need good brand for that and still HDD can last

We have enterprise grade HDDs around here. Things rated in the hundred of thousands of hours of spin time with a MTBF rated in years. Not the crap sold at discount on the shelves at Bestbuy.

We swap out about 5 every week. I wouldn't even dream of storing a temp file on a single of these if it wasn't part of at least a mirrored RAID array.

On the other hand, at home, I have a stack of 10$ for 100 DVD-Rs, piled up on top of each other, not even in jewel cases. They were burned oh about 5 years ago. They were exposed to the sun sitting on a shelve for a good half of that. They still read flawlessly.

Yeah, not so simple, if you're a HDD vendor trying to peddle your wares. Hard drives just aren't a reliable form of storage, that's the first thing you learn on your first day in IT (and I mean real world experience here, as in someone just lost a disk which resulted in data loss, which for some reason wasn't backed up on any tape or optical media anywhere).

There's a reason people sing the "RAID is not a backup solution" mantra. Come play in the IT world for a few hours, and you'll sign it too.

 

[toke lahti]

I don't think that's an accurate statement (at least not in the US). It doesn't make sense to master a 24p movie to HDCAM 60i when a 24p master is easier to make and is more versatile.

Actually I think that is more accurate in US than other countries.
For the years 1998-2006 hd-masters were done only for broadcasting in interlaced format.
There were no dci or bd.
There is an article in the web about one big hollywood studio and it's release schedules, where they tell that they have massive amounts of 1080i-masters that they don't have resources to remaster from film and they are wondering should they release them on bd at all.
If I just had time to find that article...

People who can cost-justify it will buy a new one -- and the rest of us can wait for next year.

Do you really think that next year MP's will be more cost effective?
Will they finally fix memory bank issue and price for single chip version?

 

[JAT]

Wait, your argument is people shouldn't care if they can access all the content on the disks they buy? Apparently, you and I have different expectations of how the consumer should be treated.

Also, plenty of Profile 1.1 players out now for under $100.

BD-Live content is not on the disc. It is online, and much of it is available outside of the ridiculously slow BD-Live interface.

But no, that was not what I said. I said people DON'T care about junk and ARE ignoring it.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Actually I think that is more accurate in US than other countries.
For the years 1998-2006 hd-masters were done only for broadcasting in interlaced format.
There were no dci or bd.
There is an article in the web about one big hollywood studio and it's release schedules, where they tell that they have massive amounts of 1080i-masters that they don't have resources to remaster from film and they are wondering should they release them on bd at all.
If I just had time to find that article...

Saying "only" is not an accurate statement. At one of my first jobs in LA in '03/'04 we were getting 24p HDCAM masters of films. Also, not every station in the US broadcasts at 1080i. FOX and ABC, for example, use 720p60.

If you could find the article please post it (or PM it to me) as I'm interested in reading it. For TV shows and made for TV movies I'm not surprised about the studios having a lot of 1080i masters but for movies I am still surprised because DVDs are typically 24p and the player itself does the conversion to 60i as needed.


Lethal

 

[JAT]

Not that simple. What you want to say is that optical media COULD last longer. You need good brand for that and still HDD can last

The point is i think that you can't rely on one of them. Would be stupid thing to do.

On the other hand, at home, I have a stack of 10$ for 100 DVD-Rs, piled up on top of each other, not even in jewel cases. They were burned oh about 5 years ago. They were exposed to the sun sitting on a shelve for a good half of that. They still read flawlessly.

To be fair, there have been serious issues with CD-Rs and early DVD-Rs. Many failures. There were entire websites created that received millions and millions of hits due to the mess. www.videohelp.com, for instance. Things may be a bit better now, but I still only purchase the highest quality optical blanks, and you should seriously consider it yourself if you are using them for anything remotely similar to important.

I'm not surprised about the studios having a lot of 1080i masters but for movies I am still surprised because DVDs are typically 24p and the player itself does the conversion to 60i as needed.

No DVDs are 24p, unless you burned a couple yourself. They are all NTSC in 480i60 format. (other countries are 525i50 PAL, but still not 24p) Otherwise they wouldn't play on your SDTV with simple composite connections.