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

[AidenShaw]

I think from a backup perspective, cloud backups are very convenient, but for restoring any large amount of data, that could be very time consuming, depending on your connection. Most ISP downloads are much faster than uploads, so that could work.

For me, the slow upload speeds are the deal-breaker for cloud backups - even if cloud storage weren't horrendously expensive. 24 hours a day isn't enough time to do the backups.

Obviously, hard drive storage is cheap and local and if you care about your data, you have multiple drives (or a RAID solution) to have multiple/protected copies.

I use multiple RAID drives - since some RAID failures destroy all of the data in an instant. (A simple, single drive failure is recoverable. A controller failure that destroys the array is not.)

The optical solution is good for things that don't change, like completed Final Cut projects or music or movies (there's that DMCA concern being raised again). I've looked into putting larger-than-4Gb projects on BD, but at this time, it's not a solution that I'm using, mostly a financial decision (saving my money for a RAID solution).

You mean "larger than 8.5 GB, right" .

 

[chillywilly]

You mean "larger than 8.5 GB, right" .

Well, I still have several 100 spindles of single layer blank DVDs, so until I run out, it's 4gb limit for me. I do use double layer blank DVDs for some projects, but only if they don't fit on a 4gb DVD (I do a lot of short - 5 min or less - videos in Final Cut)

 

[xbjllb]

Your right. But then, I've dropped numerous other products (not Apple) and have the same thing. A tangled slinky. Electronics are made pretty tough for the most part, but you drop it enough times, something isn't going to work - Apple products or made by other companies.

I've never dropped my towers, and I never will.

I never dropped my iMacs either. Nor my first G4 iMac either.

Mobile? No thanks.

Perhaps my industry differs from yours in that I do not require a BD player. I am sorry you feel betrayed by Apple. But from my view point, I come from a world full of over two decades of Windows let downs and I am just amazed at how well OSX and Mac hardware operates.

Well that explains it. We ALL start out as fanbois. As I did when I came from Amiga, and my Mac was cutting edge and did all I needed it to and then some.

Your tune will change too as soon as Jobs drops something you use daily, or refuses to implement a standard feature you need to supply what your clients are screaming for with nothing but BS lame excuses and outright lies as to why.

You'll get there soon enough.

 

[linux2mac]

For me, the slow upload speeds are the deal-breaker for cloud backups - even if cloud storage weren't horrendously expensive. 24 hours a day isn't enough time to do the backups.

I recommend FiOS for you. Then you can watch BD quality streaming movies while you are backing up your entire data center.

And which industry is that?
Do you work in all of those industries and regularly tour the local shops? In my area, I actually do belong to the local ad fed. Our companies take turns hosting the monthly get togethers for discussions on various topics, mainly it's an excuse to just talk shop and drink booze.
.

Oh my goodness, here we go again.

Let me clarify. A close friend of mine and colleague is a highly regarded commercial photographer and videographer in my metropolis. He uses Macs. Back in my Windows days I asked why he used Macs and his answer was because it was the best OS. His studio is in a professional building with many of the tenants consisting of advertising firms and other professional photographers. When I walk by their offices ( two to three times per week) I can't help but notice the iMacs and the Mac Pros visible through the glass windows. I have met some of my friend's advertising colleagues that utilize his photography services and they have also told me Macs work the best.

I am not going to get into a debate with you over why Macs are better because it is pointless to argue with someone who likes Windows and I have no interest in converting you. I have zero issues now that I use OSX compared to the numerous headaches I had from Windows not working because its just Windows. I will be willing to bet that the majority of forum members here that are Advertising/Photography/Videography professionals use Macs.

Well that explains it. We ALL start out as fanbois. As I did when I came from Amiga, and my Mac was cutting edge and did all I needed it to and then some.

Your tune will change too as soon as Jobs drops something you use daily, or refuses to implement a standard feature you need to supply what your clients are screaming for with nothing but BS lame excuses and outright lies as to why.

You'll get there soon enough.

I understand your pain now. That explains the rotten apple. Sorry to hear that Apple has let you down. If Apple let me down after all the money I spent in the last year buying their products, I would be really upset too. But what would be my alternative? Boycott Apple by going back to Windows? As much as I would be angry with SJ and Co., there is no way I could go back to that horrendous experience I had with Windows. I would probably go back to Linux desktops ( I still prefer/use Linux servers) before ever going back to Windows again.

 

[toke lahti]

But what would be my alternative? Boycott Apple by going back to Windows? As much as I would be angry with SJ and Co., there is no way I could go back to that horrendous experience I had with Windows.

Although I will try win7 in near future, my alternative is to boycott new Apple products. I buy used ones. Why buy new, if thay lack the same features or even more?
I won't buy a new Mac before it has bd.

 

[KnightWRX]

I use multiple RAID drives - since some RAID failures destroy all of the data in an instant. (A simple, single drive failure is recoverable. A controller failure that destroys the array is not.)

That's why I hate controller tied hardware RAID. Just use software raid, that way if the controller fails, just swapping it out with anything else will restore access to your data.

 

[MisterK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I usually prefer downloads myself, but my iMac, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini already have optical drives and I'd love to watch some of my Blu-Rays on them. This isn't even an arguement about what the future is. I don't think the "superdrives" my macs have are the future either. I just want an option of a BTO blu ray drive. This is only about Apple proving the worst of the haters right by overplaying their hand. It's all about iTunes of course, but I'm more concerned about playing my media than "supporting" the store. They're doing just fine. If downloading is the better option, then the person will download. If they prefer much higher quality of Blu-Ray, then let them do that. How can downloading be seen as the winning option when Apple won't even allow a fair fight. I think apple's dismissiveness of Blu-Ray is a "bag of ****".

 

[MisterK]

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People saying "why would Apple give users the option of Blu-Ray? It would cut into iTunes sales!" are missing the point. Everyone knows this is their motivation. Some of us just put our own priorities over those of our computer manufacturers'.

I'm willing to pay for a Blu-Ray drive. Let me decide. Apple is telling me that if I want the best quality, I have to go elsewhere. I like everything else about Macs. This is starting to feel like a bad breakup.

 

[toke lahti]

Albeit I would prefer if we switched to something a bit more practical than optical disc format, similar to an SD card, since it'd be more compact and durable.

This is probably why Apple keeps putting those sd readers to macs.
Anyway solid state memory's prices are making it clear that this can only be the choise of future. Just like streaming/downloading/"cloud for everything".
Bd would be ideal choise for majority for now.
I just hope Apple would "live in the now" like the rest of us.
But seems to be that they either live in the past (dvd) or in the future ("bd is obsolite"). Talking about parellal universes...

There's also big difference having your music or movies "on-line" (= in the cloud / in hdd / in subsciption) or as a hard copy in the shelf. Lots of music is listened hundreds of times. Most of moveis are only watched few times. Why bloat 99% of your hard drive space with movies that you only watch once a year.
Same goes for ripping / downloading.
If it takes 5 minutes to get a song that you will listen for 5 hours for the next 10 years, it isn't a big hassle. But for a movie, if the process for watching it takes about same time than you will enjoy it for the next decade, it won't be worth the trouble.
At least when there is better alternative; insert bd, start watching in a minute.

 

[KnightWRX]

This is probably why Apple keeps putting those sd readers to macs.
Anyway solid state memory's prices are making it clear that this can only be the choise of future.

Anyone even remotely suggesting this doesn't even begin to understand how low the costs are for mass duplication of optical media. We're not talking about you burning a few blanks in your basement here, we're talking pressing and shipping out a million copies of the same movie. Flash memory would need to be written once for each copy, the operation lasting several minutes. In the same time you've written out one copy of a movie, you've pressed maybe a thousand blu-ray discs.

Not to mention a disc press is much cheaper than a massive controller and storage array, interconnects, and all the other equipment necessary to write out to Flash in parallel at decent speeds. Flash memory is not the future.

 

[toke lahti]

Someone once said here on MR that Apple hardware is the dongle for using OS X. There's a lot of truth to that and being happy with the status quo, criticising others for not falling in line just because you personally don't see the need for a feature, doesn't mean it's needed or useful for many others.

This "dongle for OsX" is just too true!
And for conspiracy theorists it might also be the reason why Apple is holding back new features for macs, even when all other computers have them.
If macs would have all new features, they might get too popular, hence gain too big share of the market and then because of anti-trust laws, they would have to separate OS from hardware.

 

[AidenShaw]

Lol

That's why I hate controller tied hardware RAID. Just use software raid, that way if the controller fails, just swapping it out with anything else will restore access to your data.

That solves part of the problem. It's very common for the total loss of a RAID array to be a wetware problem, not a firrmware or hardware problem. If the operator uses the wrong procedure to replace a failed drive, or types the wrong command - POOF !!

And, unfortunately, software RAID-5 or RAID-6 is so slow compared to a hardware controller with a battery-backed write cache that software RAID can be unusable.

I recommend FiOS for you. Then you can watch BD quality streaming movies while you are backing up your entire data center.

This has to be one of the most smug *and* hare-brained suggestions ever posted on MacRumours.

- I should move to a different part of the country where FiOS is available?

- FiOS at 50 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up is $145/month - note that USB 2.0 is in theory 24 times faster, and in practice about 15 times faster.

- Just one of my systems (my HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server) has 6 TB of disk space, of which 1.7 TB is data which needs to be backed up (the rest is redundancy for the 1.7 TB, nightly backups for the last 18 months for the 8 PCs in the house, and free space).

- It would take more than six months 24by7 at 20 Mbps to backup just the important data on that one system.

- Verizon would charge an additional $160/month for 2 TB of backup space (if they'd even allow that, their website shows 250GB for $20/month as the highest offering).​

Backup my datacenter to a drive that's less than a tenth the speed of a USB drive? I think that the people who say that you make stupid posts just to keep an argument going are correct....

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Oh my goodness, here we go again.

Let me clarify. A close friend of mine and colleague is a highly regarded commercial photographer and videographer in my metropolis. He uses Macs. Back in my Windows days I asked why he used Macs and his answer was because it was the best OS. His studio is in a professional building with many of the tenants consisting of advertising firms and other professional photographers. When I walk by their offices ( two to three times per week) I can't help but notice the iMacs and the Mac Pros visible through the glass windows. I have met some of my friend's advertising colleagues that utilize his photography services and they have also told me Macs work the best.

I am not going to get into a debate with you over why Macs are better because it is pointless to argue with someone who likes Windows and I have no interest in converting you. I have zero issues now that I use OSX compared to the numerous headaches I had from Windows not working because its just Windows. I will be willing to bet that the majority of forum members here that are Advertising/Photography/Videography professionals use Macs.

No argument of Windows vs. Mac was intended, I was really asking which industry you work in and remarking how my local industry has changed because of Apple's new priorities.

I think Mac OSX is better. I love it.

What I dislike is Apple's line of machines solely because they price me out of the power I need, and refuse to support options or software I need to do my job. Thus our company (not my choice, my boss) and a few others dumped the mac.

Any less time spent on OSX is less time spent enjoying what I'm doing.

 

[KnightWRX]

That solves part of the problem. It's very common for the total loss of a RAID array to be a wetware problem, not a firrmware or hardware problem. If the operator uses the wrong procedure to replace a failed drive, or types the wrong command - POOF !!

That's why RAID is not a backup solution, it exists to make your data's availability better.

 

[AidenShaw]

That's why RAID is not a backup solution, it exists to make your data's availability better.

Absolutely agree - but if your backups aren't available, then there's little point. That's why disk-based backups are often stored on RAID arrays.

Also, while backups can be used to restore failed drives, they are also useful to recover from user errors like accidental deletion or corruption of files. RAID won't help there, because RAID will delete all copies of the file when the user makes a mistake.

My Windows Home Server backup schedule for my 8 PCs is:

• A backup of each system (selected volumes) is made every night - systems will wake from sleep/hibernate, backup, and go back to sleep.
• Nightly backups are saved for 14 days
• Weekly backups are saved for 12 weeks
• Monthly backups are saved for 36 months
• (There's no difference between the backups - the "monthly" is the first "nightly" of the month, the "weekly" is the first "nightly" of the week.)

This gives me a fair chance of recovering a deleted file, especially if I notice before too long.

Obviously, Time Machine has similar features.


(Knight - I assume that you know this, just expanding to help context.)

 

[chillywilly]

I've never dropped my towers, and I never will.

I never dropped my iMacs either. Nor my first G4 iMac either.

Mobile? No thanks.

I've dropped Dell and HP servers before and some parts don't survive too well. Haven't dropped any Apple towers, so I'm right there with you on that one.

So curious to know what mobile products you do use, if they are not made by Apple.

 

[toke lahti]

Not to mention a disc press is much cheaper than a massive controller and storage array, interconnects, and all the other equipment necessary to write out to Flash in parallel at decent speeds. Flash memory is not the future.

It doesn't have to be based on flash, it can also be reram or something else.
Anyway, the hardware costs are getting non-important when they are less than 10% of retail price.
And it will be a lot cheaper and easier to duplicate sd card than vhs tape. Nevertheless they made pretty nice business out of selling vhs movies.

 

[xbjllb]

I've dropped Dell and HP servers before and some parts don't survive too well. Haven't dropped any Apple towers, so I'm right there with you on that one.

So curious to know what mobile products you do use, if they are not made by Apple.

When I outgrow my tracfone (go ahead laugh) and my $100 per YEAR bill (not laughing now) and feel like throwing away $100+ per month on smartphone bills, I'll probably go Android. Most people know they can reach me at home where I work from and still have two landlines.

I would never want to take any computers out of the house to work anywhere else although I'm lucky enough to have a couple of towers and iMacs (last MATTE screen models), enough for each office in my home (oh and one in the kitchen.)

At one time I was CONSIDERING a macbook pro, but without a BD burner no way in hell. And no optical drive period?

Not in this universe.

 

[aydin1979]

well, this is shame because Blu ray can be very good when it comes to the HD movies or backing up your system. it's quite disappointing!

 

[KnightWRX]

Absolutely agree - but if your backups aren't available, then there's little point.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't agree at all that Cloud based backups are sane. I prefer the daily incrementals, weekly fulls, monthly offsites rotations on good old magnetic tape, with some kind of snapshotting mecanism (be it ZFS, volume shadow copy, LVM or even systems level like VMWare's snapshots or even full disk snapshots like Hitachi's Continuous Access/Business Copy) to take care of quicky user oopses.

If I could afford LTO media for my house, my GF would probably be pissed at our tape rack and my asking to not to forget to switch the media out.

 

[chillywilly]

When I outgrow my tracfone (go ahead laugh) and my $100 per YEAR bill (not laughing now) and feel like throwing away $100+ per month on smartphone bills, I'll probably go Android. Most people know they can reach me at home where I work from and still have two landlines.

I would never want to take any computers out of the house to work anywhere else although I'm lucky enough to have a couple of towers and iMacs (last MATTE screen models), enough for each office in my home (oh and one in the kitchen.)

At one time I was CONSIDERING a macbook pro, but without a BD burner no way in hell. And no optical drive period?

Not in this universe.

Not laughing at all. Some people only need to make phone calls and not that many of them.

And some don't need computing other than at the office and at home. A good friend of mine is like this. It's all good.

 

[linux2mac]

No argument of Windows vs. Mac was intended, I was really asking which industry you work in and remarking how my local industry has changed because of Apple's new priorities.

Okay, I understand.

I am a developer and IT consultant. Although my development career began in the Windows world as a .NET developer my primary focus is LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP). There is not much need for me to use BD here but I can also understand from the numerous posts how the industry of others could benefit from SJ including the option for a BD player.

I think Mac OSX is better. I love it.

+1.

I wish I would have switched earlier, but I had once drank the Windows Kool Aid. I recall that long before my Mac days, a college friend and long time Mac user (20 years +) asked me why I didn't use Macs. My answer then was, because "Macs are not for business." How wrong I was - LOL

What I dislike is Apple's line of machines solely because they price me out of the power I need, and refuse to support options or software I need to do my job. Thus our company (not my choice, my boss) and a few others dumped the mac.

That's too bad. If I couldn't do my job because SJ and Co. refused to provide me with the options/software I required, I would be upset too.

Any less time spent on OSX is less time spent enjoying what I'm doing.

I can relate to that. I don't know what I would do if I worked in an environment that required Windows again. I could not do it.

 

[marshallbedsaul]

hmm it is a money business and steve wants to make his money

 

[Crunch]

Almost 100 pages in a thread about an optical drive that will never be. In fact, the DVD drive, or Super Drive, whatever you want to call it, will disappear altogether next year. No more optical drives of ANY kind, so get your wallets and pocket books out 'cause you're buying an external...no, not Bluray drive, unless you're getting it from another manufacturer. I haven't used optical drives in my non-Apple laptops in over 7 years! All source files are on Flash drives or on hot-swappable hard drives in the second drive bay. And to those who argue that you can store a "phenomenal" 50GB per Bluray, I must say that I remain unimpressed. I can store 10 times as much on a 500GB hard drive that sits in my hot-swappable drive where there was once, and how about this for irony..., where there was once my Bluray drive. LOL True story!

Guess what else No HDMI either. And no USB 3. And no eSATA. Even hard drives' days are numbered...

Meet Intel's Light Peak and solid state flash. Boy, 10Gbps with the potential for 10 times that speed down the road and the replacement of all the display ports and transfer technologies eliminated and tossed into one powerhouse solution. Think of how much more space that will open up for both thinner and lighter MacBook Pro's, along with connections of almost any kind at speeds over 15 times faster than those of SATA III (6Gbps) which isn't even "out" yet.

 

[iEdd]

Almost 100 pages in a thread about an optical drive that will never be. In fact, the DVD drive, or Super Drive, whatever you want to call it, will disappear altogether next year.

I doubt it. I mean it would be all well and good for the neo Apple users who's computing needs are met by an iPad, but some of us need to get stuff done.