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

[LethalWolfe]

I already said I didn't want to backup movies, I don't know why you're discussing this. Hard drives are best for computer backups performed regularly by Time Machine or a similar application.

No they aren't. Tape backups are the best way to backup data but are cost prohibitive for consumers. Mechanical HDDS are the more prone to failure compared to solid state memory, tape or optical. Because of the volume of what I need to backup I do everything to a mirrored pair of HDDs that are only hooked up during the backup. If a power surge fries your machine it will most likely fry your Time Machine drive as well.

Flash memory capacity easily beats out that of blu ray; BDXL too. Flash memory also allows for wider bandwidth, which as films increase in quality, will fade out optical media due to it's lack of bandwidth.

Flash memory is still much more expensive than optical and the cost of writing data to a flash drive is going to be much higher than stamping optical media. Flash media would be my pick to replace optical but it is going to be a number of years before the numbers work out in its favor.


Lethal

 

[DoFoT9]

No they aren't. Tape backups are the best way to backup data but are cost prohibitive for consumers. Mechanical HDDS are the more prone to failure compared to solid state memory,

and the fact that solid state memory CAN stop working without any notification doesnt indicate to you that its less prone over mechanical disks? i think not. solid state is still most certainly in its infancy, and its reliability is highly questionable. i would trust a mechanical hard drive any day over a solid state one (yes, even SLC based ones).

also, tape is pretty solid for backups - the technology is old and proven apart from its apparent negatories

 

[LethalWolfe]

and the fact that solid state memory CAN stop working without any notification doesnt indicate to you that its less prone over mechanical disks?

And HDD always give ample notification before they fail? Nothing is foolproof but all other things being equal I'll take the media w/o any moving parts vs the one that has a lot of moving parts w/a lot of tight tolerances.


Lethal

 

[iEdd]

Optical media still remains the most stable for backups. Tape can rip and break; hard drive mechanisms can fail, or be rooted by magnetic fields; flash can be destroyed/wiped by static or overvoltage.

HDDs/SSDs only give convenience factor to backing up. For archiving, they are far too fragile.

 

[KnightWRX]

No.

Yes. Ask any half competent IT person. (Btw, you just did).

I already said I didn't want to backup movies, I don't know why you're discussing this. Hard drives are best for computer backups performed regularly by Time Machine or a similar application.

Hard drives are horrible media for backups. They are mechanical and their MTBF is low. Optical media is longer lived.

And why are you again saying you don't want to backup the movies ? when you buy a Blu-ray disc, it is already backed up on a long lived medium. And if you lose that medium, you replace 1 movie, vs all the movies on your failed hard drive.

Are you not getting any of this ? Hello ?

Flash memory capacity easily beats out that of blu ray; BDXL too. Flash memory also allows for wider bandwidth, which as films increase in quality, will fade out optical media due to it's lack of bandwidth.

How fast can you write out Flash memory ? Yes this is important, maybe not for you that's accessing the media as read-only, but for the vendor that's making the movie copies to sell. Blu-ray, DVD, CD, you can press dozens by the second. Even the fastest memory controller running in parallele on multiple drives can't even begin to approach that kind of speed of duplication, driving costs up.

GG.

Refer to above answer.

Too bad it's a bad example.

Optical media still remains the most stable for backups. Tape can rip and break;

But tape can contain much more data. LTO-5 is now up to 1.5 TB on a single tape before compression. And I've rarely seen archival tape rip and break, VHS this ain't.

 

[DoFoT9]

And HDD always give ample notification before they fail? Nothing is foolproof but all other things being equal I'll take the media w/o any moving parts vs the one that has a lot of moving parts w/a lot of tight tolerances.

Lethal

it depends on your level of expertise. i don't know about you, but i can tell when a hard drive is failing or getting close to its end of life. you can even roughly calculate these things before hand by using MTTF, average usage, uptime etc and put it in your calendar! with an SSD you do not have that luxury and must always have a direct backup.

put it this way, i would rather backup an SSD using a mechanical hard drive then use an SSD to backup a mechanical hard drive.

 

[iEdd]

it depends on your level of expertise. i don't know about you, but i can tell when a hard drive is failing or getting close to its end of life.

You can't always. They can fail catastrophically without any indication.

 

[Repo]

No they aren't. Tape backups are the best way to backup data but are cost prohibitive for consumers.

For clarification, when I say "best", I'm taking into consideration cost, time, ease of use, etc, and since I was speaking of consumer needs, this would further prove my point, that for an average consumer, HDD backups are they "best" choice.

Flash memory is still much more expensive than optical and the cost of writing data to a flash drive is going to be much higher than stamping optical media. Flash media would be my pick to replace optical but it is going to be a number of years before the numbers work out in its favor.

Agreed. However, if movies begin to move to flash memory, supply and demand may aid in the reduction of cost.

Yes. Ask any half competent IT person. (Btw, you just did).

When it comes to your average consumer, HDDs are the best balance of cost effectivity, reliability, and time efficiency, for daily backups.

Hard drives are horrible media for backups. They are mechanical and their MTBF is low.

I've never had a hard drive fail on me. Even if one did, the chances of the original and backup failing at the same time, are slim.

And why are you again saying you don't want to backup the movies ? when you buy a Blu-ray disc, it is already backed up on a long lived medium. And if you lose that medium, you replace 1 movie, vs all the movies on your failed hard drive.

I agree with you that it's a bad idea to store all of your movies solely on a HDD. However, if you buy a movie on dvd or blu ray, it's not "backed up", unless you make a secondary copy of it.

Are you not getting any of this ? Hello ?

No need to be defensive. Just a friendly discussion.

How fast can you write out Flash memory ? Yes this is important, maybe not for you that's accessing the media as read-only, but for the vendor that's making the movie copies to sell. Blu-ray, DVD, CD, you can press dozens by the second. Even the fastest memory controller running in parallele on multiple drives can't even begin to approach that kind of speed of duplication, driving costs up.

It's easier to "burn" more flash devices at once than to burn more optical disks. Burning a flash devices requires a USB (or what have you) port to transfer the data, while disks require their own burner. Mass producing flash devices would just require more ports. I've mass produced dvds before, and it takes a good amount of time.

 

[skier777]

Agreed. However, if movies begin to move to flash memory, supply and demand may aid in the reduction of cost.

What time frame are we talking about here. I dont think you realize how far away these things are.

A blu-ray movie is 25 or 50gb, and costs probably a quarter max for the disk, and can be written in a matter of seconds. It gets sold for around twenty bucks.

A movie that came on a flash drive, say 32GB or 64GB if you include special features. These cost say 20 bucks a piece, take minutes to write to and would have to turn around at a price of about 45 bucks to make any money.

As for supply and demand, let me tell you if theres not enough for blu ray to drive the price of the movies down, then theres not enough to warrant flash media. Plus I really see no benefits of flash whatsoever over optical.

 

[LethalWolfe]

it depends on your level of expertise. i don't know about you, but i can tell when a hard drive is failing or getting close to its end of life. you can even roughly calculate these things before hand by using MTTF, average usage, uptime etc and put it in your calendar! with an SSD you do not have that luxury and must always have a direct backup.

put it this way, i would rather backup an SSD using a mechanical hard drive then use an SSD to backup a mechanical hard drive.

I've had disks go bad slowly, I've had disk go bad quickly and I've had disks other people have sent me be DOA. There is no guarantee that a mechanical HDD won't fail instantly.

For clarification, when I say "best", I'm taking into consideration cost, time, ease of use, etc, and since I was speaking of consumer needs, this would further prove my point, that for an average consumer, HDD backups are they "best" choice.

I will agree that size and convenience make HDDs the most viable choice for large consumer back-ups even if it is the least reliable medium (which is why all of my backups are done using mirrored pairs from different manufacturers). Robust consumer backup is an elephant in the room, IMO.

It's easier to "burn" more flash devices at once than to burn more optical disks. Burning a flash devices requires a USB (or what have you) port to transfer the data, while disks require their own burner. Mass producing flash devices would just require more ports. I've mass produced dvds before, and it takes a good amount of time.

Mass produced CDs, DVDs, etc., are not burned they are stamped and, depending on the machine, can output 10's of thousands of clones a day from what I've read.


Lethal

 

[Repo]

I really see no benefits of flash whatsoever over optical.

Smaller, lighter, more durable, larger capacity, larger bandwidth, no moving parts, etc.

 

[xbjllb]

Um, check <this link> to see who's "posting away" here.

Cool, thanks! I win!

Because I never claimed that no blu-ray on Macs IS a BFD to me, my clients, and everyone else in my industry. And OUR combined total investment gives us the right to complain UNTIL THE SITUATION IS RECTIFIED, ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.

Since most consumers who backup do it regularly, doing so on blu ray would be time consuming and a waste of money.

And having even 500 hard drives vs. 1000 optical discs is a massive waste of space. It only takes me 2 hours to write a 50 gig disc on my latest internal Blu-ray drive, at that's only at 1-2x. Speeds will increase.

Optical media may be here to stay, but it's no secret we have the technology to make blu ray obsolete. Sony though, has enough companies under their thumb that it could take a while. In the end, it's us that lose.

Downloading speed technology won't be adequate worldwide for Blu-ray sized delivery within any reasonable amount of time for at least a decade.

And Sony has nothing to do with that.

you are 100% correct, i mean BD haters, ive seen so many posts here saying Macs should come with bluray for the last 6 months.

And they're going to keep coming and keep posting until Apple gets the message and OVERRULES the Emperor.

You can't always. They can fail catastrophically without any indication.

I've had hard drives in constant use for 10+ years (Seagate). The only secret to keeping a hard drive alive is keeping a fan as close to it as possible (without vibrating it), and NOT relying on whatever fan in whatever case they might come with. I only had to lose one hard drive from heat, and from then on my current twenty (external and internal) have external fans blowing right on them. Including my Tower. Is it noisy? Yeah. Is it dusy? Yeah.

But I will never lose a hard drive. Or a backup.

With one exception, and that was when Seagate had that bad batch, it failed a day or two out of the box with no data loss to me, and they replaced it asap.

What time frame are we talking about here. I dont think you realize how far away these things are.

A blu-ray movie is 25 or 50gb, and costs probably a quarter max for the disk, and can be written in a matter of seconds. It gets sold for around twenty bucks.

A movie that came on a flash drive, say 32GB or 64GB if you include special features. These cost say 20 bucks a piece, take minutes to write to and would have to turn around at a price of about 45 bucks to make any money.

As for supply and demand, let me tell you if theres not enough for blu ray to drive the price of the movies down, then theres not enough to warrant flash media. Plus I really see no benefits of flash whatsoever over optical.

The only advantage flash has over optical is the Emperor doesn't have an obvious mental problem against it.

The days when companies send out hundreds of thousands of flash drives to distribute promotional product the way they did optical discs?

NEVER.

Emperor Jobs and his apostles are going to lose this one, and lose big.

But who knows? Maybe Willie Wonka will be happier in an asylum running nothing, while someone who knows how to service CURRENT clients runs Apple.

 

[Repo]

Mass produced CDs, DVDs, etc., are not burned they are stamped and, depending on the machine, can output 10's of thousands of clones a day from what I've read.

I've seen machines that can turn out around 800 an hour or so.

And having even 500 hard drives vs. 1000 optical discs is a massive waste of space. It only takes me 2 hours to write a 50 gig disc on my latest internal Blu-ray drive, at that's only at 1-2x. Speeds will increase.

Already resolved.

Downloading speed technology won't be adequate worldwide for Blu-ray sized delivery within any reasonable amount of time for at least a decade.

And Sony has nothing to do with that.

Already resolved.

 

[linux2mac]

I've never had a hard drive fail on me. Even if one did, the chances of the original and backup failing at the same time, are slim.

+1

My colleague has an Xserve that has been running 24/7 since 2002. He even purchased the emergency repair kit which included an additional HD and has not needed it. The original HD's are still going strong.

 

[skier777]

Smaller, lighter, more durable, larger capacity, larger bandwidth, no moving parts, etc.

Smaller: Easier to lose, and it still has to be packaged in some kind of case at the store.
Lighter: I just compared a blu ray disc to a flash drive, I could barely tell the difference.
More durable: Numer of flash drives that I've had break: more than i can count. Blu ray discs broken: 0. Granted, the wear and tear is spread over far more discs.
Capacity: 25GB $1-2 per disc. 50GB ~15 bucks. For flash memory, 32GB runs $40 and 64GB flash is about $100. Bluray discs in development include a 1TB disc set to be released in 2013.
Bandwidth: flash will always win out on the read, but takes longer to write, better for the end user, slower for the factory to produce.
No moving parts: flash wins this one.

 

[AidenShaw]

I've never had a hard drive fail on me. Even if one did, the chances of the original and backup failing at the same time, are slim.

My colleague has an Xserve that has been running 24/7 since 2002. The original HD's are still going strong.

Repo and linux2mac's colleague lived charmed lives - congratulations.

I typically deal with 2 to 5 hard drive failures a week - but no data loss since everything is on RAID-60 with a hot spare for every 14 drives.

And, BTW, if your original and your backups drives are identical and purchased at about the same time - the chance of simultaneous failure is much higher than you might think. Since many failures are related to manufacturing problems, you might have both drives from the same "bad batch".

For flash memory, 32GB runs $40 and 64GB flash is about $100.

Where do you find an SDXC card for $100? Newegg shows $220 for the cheapest 64 GB SDXC, and the cheapest 64 GB CF for $160. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007962 600006236&IsNodeId=1&name=64GB

 

[JAT]

Downloading speed technology won't be adequate worldwide for Blu-ray sized delivery within any reasonable amount of time for at least a decade.

And Sony has nothing to do with that.

Already resolved.

What? What is "resolved"? I recently switched from the pay-mega-bucks TV model to internet only. I have the 2nd fastest cable hookup available to me, and it cannot handle even one bluray-level stream. It can just barely handle one Netflix HD stream. So I only stream HD when nobody else is "online", which is seldom.

 

[Eidorian]

Where do you find an SDXC card for $100? Newegg shows $220 for the cheapest 64 GB SDXC, and the cheapest 64 GB CF for $160. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007962 600006236&IsNodeId=1&name=64GB

Many people don't take into account size and density. USB flash drive prices tend to be the standard but not so when you're trying to cram that capacity into a Micro SD.

 

[AidenShaw]

Many people don't take into account size and density. USB flash drive prices tend to be the standard but not so when you're trying to cram that capacity into a Micro SD.

I was looking at SDXC, not micro form factors. (AFAIK, no 64 GB µSDXC cards are available.)

It didn't even cross my mind that someone would suggest that Hollywood would ship movies on USB thumb drives. That's absurd. Buy a movie on a dongle vs something that can be inserted into a slot on the device? LOL

 

[Eidorian]

I was looking at SDXC, not micro form factors. (AFAIK, no 64 GB µSDXC cards are available.)

It didn't even cross my mind that someone would suggest that Hollywood would ship movies on USB thumb drives. That's absurd. Buy a movie on a dongle vs something that can be inserted into a slot on the device? LOL

Replacing pressed optical media with flash memory is suggested all too often.

 

[Repo]

And, BTW, if your original and your backups drives are identical and purchased at about the same time - the chance of simultaneous failure is much higher than you might think. Since many failures are related to manufacturing problems, you might have both drives from the same "bad batch".

True, which is why my HDDs are from different manufactures, and bought around a year apart.

 

[KnightWRX]

It's easier to "burn" more flash devices at once than to burn more optical disks. Burning a flash devices requires a USB (or what have you) port to transfer the data, while disks require their own burner. Mass producing flash devices would just require more ports. I've mass produced dvds before, and it takes a good amount of time.

Uh ? Mass producing DVDs is much faster than Flash, no matter how many ports you have. You do realise they are not burned but pressed ? You don't need a burner per disc, you just need 1 press.

I garantee you that the massive array of USB ports attached to multiple redundant memory controllers for the Flash writing array is not going to be as fast and is going to be much more expensive than a single optical disc pressing machine.

Again, since you missed it twice now : Discs are PRESSED, not burned.

Replacing pressed optical media with flash memory is suggested all too often.

And every one of those suggesting it believe that mass produced DVDs/Blu-rays/CDs are burned using any household type burner, and require many minutes to write out, same as Flash would on a USB controller.

 

[Repo]

Again, since you missed it twice now : Discs are PRESSED, not burned.

Sorry, my bad. Yes, stamping is very fast.

 

[Reddkryten]

Again, since you missed it twice now : Discs are PRESSED, not burned

I'm gonna go totally off topic here but, do you know how prerecorded VHS tapes were made? Were they just hooked up to a big array of VCRs to put the video on there? Or was their some other process at work, like how prerecorded DVDs are pressed?

No real reason for asking, it's just I find stuff like that fascinating.

 

[AidenShaw]

Aliens

I'm gonna go totally off topic here but, do you know how prerecorded VHS tapes were made? Were they just hooked up to a big array of VCRs to put the video on there? Or was their some other process at work, like how prerecorded DVDs are pressed?

No real reason for asking, it's just I find stuff like that fascinating.

The masters were sent to alien star ships along with blonde virgins, the aliens sent us plastic VHS cassettes back.

VHS didn't die because of DVD - we just ran out of blonde virgins.