I think you misread, then. He acts elitist because he assumes since I do not share his views, I must be some redneck hiding in a bunker eating food from a can. You can see similar snobby reactions in any thread involving Walmart. I think a new one went up today, actually.
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Steve Jobs Suggests Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac Anytime Soon
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I think you misread, then. He acts elitist because he assumes since I do not share his views, I must be some redneck hiding in a bunker eating food from a can. You can see similar snobby reactions in any thread involving Walmart. I think a new one went up today, actually.
No I don't think he thinks you are a "redneck" (I apologize if I offend any). From the context of the statement, a "bunker" in this case refers to a "bomb shelter." Typically when people build a bomb shelter, they store canned goods to get them through the fall out. The inventory of canned goods in a bomb shelter is usually "pork and beans." I myself have enjoyed canned pork and beans and I am far from a "red neck." I wear designer jeans that are way over priced along with fine Italian leather shoes from the likes of Gucci, Prada, and Dolce & Gabbana. I hate it when I travel and the baggage handlers scratch my Luis Vuitton bags.
I can tell you that it is 100% fact that those fancy bags are treated much more harshly than "regular" bags. Not that they don't beat them all up pretty badly, but one of those bags rolls off, and it's usually, "Oooh, look at the pretty bag!" *smash*
On topic, I think BR on Mac is now to the point that Steve Jobs thinks he'll look stupid for making it playable on Macs. Everyone would laugh and say, "Welcome to last decade, ******," and it will mostly highlight the negative side of his position on it, rather than be accepted as a breath of fresh air. That, and as we all know, he wants to grab and control money made by forcing more to iTunes.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL....
BTW: Did you know that if you hold the new Verizon iPhone wrong - you get a loss of signal?
Obviously not anytime soon
- Jobs though only a few people wanted Blue-Ray.
- Jobs was wrong.
- iPod/iPhone demographic doesn't give a damn.
- Mac users feel neglected.
- Some PC users think the whole thing is funny.
- Mac users on the defense.
- SCORE PC:1 / MAC:0
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Yeah, I think he was just trying to insult me, but I just thought it was awesome. I wish I did have a bunker.
If all the rednecks of the USA start buying iPhones at Walmart, Apple sure would be happy! Redneck money is still green.
I think we're well past the point of no return for Blu-Ray on the mac. I honestly think that when the 27 inch iMac came out it was basically primed for Blu-ray. If the rumors on this site (at the time) were right - it got pulled at the last minute. I don't think they'll back track now for the reasons you listed.
I would buy more television shows from itunes if they were priced under what it would take to get it on blu-ray (or DVD), and if they released them a day after broadcast.
Just a quick check on Mad Men Season 1- $34.99 for itunes' version of hd? No thanks. $20 for itunes SD? Bleh. I can get the Blu-Ray for $20 off amazon, or in the mail on disc on Netflix, and all I had to do was wait.
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LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL....
BTW: Did you know that if you hold the new Verizon iPhone wrong - you get a loss of signal?
I heard, so I just simply avoid holding that way
Obviously not anytime soon
- Jobs though only a few people wanted Blue-Ray.
- Jobs was wrong.
- iPod/iPhone demographic doesn't give a damn.
- Mac users feel neglected.
- Some PC users think the whole thing is funny.
- Mac users on the defense.
- SCORE PC:1 / MAC:0
+1 to you sir.
I'll add something new here
F sony
...and the segment of Folks who would merely like the Option of buying BD feel denied, even though they've never really built a good business case to:
(a) show that the overall costs of supporting the Option would be entirely borne by just those who wanted it (ie, wouldn't be detremental to those who don't care)
(b) show that offering the option would be clearly beneficial (profitable) for both Apple's bottom line (short term) and strategic interests (long term).
In the meantime, there's still a marketplace opportunity here for someone to develop & sell an aftermarket niche product, not unlike what others have done with the Modbook (Mac Tablet), or the ActiveStorage (XServe replacement).
-hh
Why is this a necessary condition?
Such a narrow focus on "bean counting" would make sense if Apple were a struggling underdog - but quarter after quarter of obscene profit margins should mean that Apple can "do the right thing" even if under microscopic examination the margins for feature "X" aren't as good as for other features.
And the bean counters have a hard time with the "halo effect" - would people who don't buy the BD option choose to buy an Apple because the option is there, and would the lack of the option push others to buy Windows systems?
The only rational explanation is that the turtlenecked overlord is simply lying about the "bag of hurt" thing, and the real reason for Apple's lack of BD support is to further fatten the bloated pig that is Itunes (application+store).
If my income stream depended on Apple's support for pro systems and applications, I'd be very worried.
And "ActiveStorage" is an Xsan replacement - it doesn't even begin to replace an Xserve - it doesn't even run Apple OSX!
NASCAR and Budweiser sure figured that one out quick!
I haven't priced shop TV boxed sets in a looooong time but that sounds kind of high. I definitely have no interest in BD versions of TV shows and not iTunes either for that price. For now, I will stick with Hulu unless there is something I can't watch on Hulu -which has not happened yet. Then again I don't watch much TV.
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Hi Xavier Barry Jullian Lazuras Larry Barrison.
Hello!
They'd gain more than they realize, because they'd be helping the platform gain even more acceptance and sell to more creatives who need it. The way they utilized DVD.
Only because then Macs are soon to be extinct, and justifiably so.
In their place; a fad toy phonemaker on its last legs, competing against easily bettered and far cheaper product. Shortly after the bubble in their bottom line pops.
And pop it will.
"I've seen it before, and I'll see it again... history just keeps repeating itself."
"This isn't the thread we are supposed to read. You can go about your business. Move along...move along"
The first half is that even a non-BD Mac can't become even more expensive than it already is, because of the Public's longstanding perception (regardless of if it is pedantically right or wrong) of what's become known as the "Apple Tax".
Apple's leadership (Tim Cook) has made tremendous strides in closing the price gap through supply chain efficiencies - - but because Apple doesn't compete on the low end (or pursue narrow 'commodity' margins), there's still a gap ("Tax") that persists. To add even $10 to all Macs' MSRPs undermines their work because it is moving in the wrong direction.
But if that were really true, then wouldn't we have had Firewire 1600 three years ago and FW3200 last year?
Ditto for USB3 and other "Leading Edge" items...we can all easily go find the MR threads on the complaints in this area. The evidence we have says that Apple has been very blunt nosed pragmatic in every thing that they do, particulary when it comes down to the essense of the cost:benefit of each hardware or software investment.
The halo effect is a stragetic interest...but the product still pretty much has to make it on their own. When we look at the non-Mac product lines such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad, they have consistently been financially successful in contributing to Apple's bottom line (short term) and was as that halo of strategic interests (long term).
A noteworthy exception to this has been the "hobby" of the Apple TV ... but I believe that the current indications are shaping up that it had a quite long gestation period and is just now finally gaining some traction. Time will tell.
The other contributor to this is that Apple has a long history of "Getting Out Of The Business" in product areas which they don't find particularly profitable (or noteworthy for growth?). The classical example are the Apple LaserPrinters. The basic philosophy appears to be that they don't want low profit margin items, which also tend to correlate to "Low Profit Margin" customers.
"In most industries bad customers are those who do three things: they order rarely, they pay slowly or not at all, and they make unreasonable demands. They want a product or service but they don’t want to pay for it. So they end up being tough to deal with or unprofitable." - Gary Ahquist (Booz Allen Hamilton)
That's a clearly emotional response. The rational explanation that I'd expect is that the relevant Apple Business Units have cranked the cost & benefit numbers (inclusing BU interactions) and they don't see it as having a favorable return on investment (ROI) within the overall Corporation. Yes, this very well could be that BD is probably a risk to the iTMS profitability, but the overall picture is unlikely to be this simplistic.
For example, by what specific percentage would adding BD to the Mac increase Mac sales? Assume that this excercise requires that the current profit margin is to be maintained: since adding BD can't be done literally for free, unless BD significantly alters consumer price elasticity principles effectively means that the problem is fully constrained: the Mac design will have to be cheapened somewhere else to hold your manufacturing costs constant so to avoid a price increase, since that would reduce consumer demand.
Increasing levels of participation on a thread are manifestations of increasing interests. If it isn't direct (such as income), it simply must be something else. So who moved your cheese?
The main customer's capability requirement is "Run XSan".
Buying an Xserve to do this is one way of satisfying this requirement, but to assume that it is ONLY way to meet the customer's requirement is tunnel vision. To redefine the requirement to: "XSan run on OS X" is scope creep. It may be justifyable scope creep, but that requires a (cost:benefit) to quantify it for business planning purposes.
IMO, Apple seems to look beyond current profits and current business at its longer term prospects. What they apparently saw here was that OS X on the XServe simply wasn't a necessary condition for supporting XSan - it was effectively a requirements 'overkill', which carries a cost.
Similarly, at the low end of consumer requirements, OS X Server on a mini satisfies their performance needs at a fraction of the expense, so the XServe was requirements overkill here too. Reportedly, the mini Server has been outselling the XServe for awhile, and with the mini satisfying that requirement, this also allowed Apple to gain production efficiencies through manufacturing convergence streamlining (there's Tim Cook's fingerprints).
As such, the XServe effectively got caught in the middle as a less than optimal solution to these two basic main customer needs ... as a deoptimal solution for "everyone", the right business decision is to kill it.
-hh
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That's a nice sounding argument until you consider any of the many BTO options on the Apple Store when you buy a mac. They only need to charge extra to people who actively want the option. You can go on the Apple Store right now and add thousands of *insert your currency here* on almost all the computers Apple sells.
configuring a 27 inch iMac...
Add an apple remote? $19 please. Oops! 'Apple Tax' for something optional that used to be included free! Maybe you should e-mail them about that.
Faster processor, magic trackpad, more RAM, more HD space, pre-installed software... all add to the price. All optional.
Apple did, of course. Then again, I'm not worried about that. Just annoyed. Curiously enough, though, not as annoyed as I thought I would be. So far windows 7 has been good enough that I'm looking for a Win 7 home machine.
It's become less about "moving on" and more about reaching 5000 posts just for the fun of it! But please, contribute one or two more posts. This is post 4919.
Not at all. After all, the computers are still selling and those that really need the drives (such as myself) use the other options available to us without the whining.
There's really no "magnitude" on this topic. You have a handful of sites, many of which have member overlap with a group of folks going on and on and on about the topic. That's my magnitude. That's just a group of folks that need to get it over and move on to something else.
This is the part I'm interested in. What ARE the costs involved in altering the code in OS X to allow BD playback? My guess is that they already have this code written, but choose to omit it from the public versions. Could they just copy/paste the code into 10.6.7 or whatever for free, then? Is there some huge fee they would have to pay to someone in order to legally allow Blu-ray playback in OS X? If so, does Microsoft pay this fee? Why would they, if it's not worth it?
On the other hand, does Apple not know how to program the OS to allow BD playback? Did they just never bother to even try to write such code? Did they try and fail to make it work right, and abandon it?
Which makes more sense? Greed, or lack of technical skill?
It's not about installing BD drives into Macs, it's about dropping the code into the OS so it will play, and the only reason not to do this that I can see is greed.
It's just as easy for me to tell you that you're a whiner, and that you need to get over the fact that others want to keep discussing it.
See how that works?
Sure, and the key question is going to be that if Apple were to offer BD as an option, how much would they end up charging for it?
If we follow the setting of "no tax on the non-BD Mac", then the cost of adding the option is more than just the physical BD player: there is also the amortized expense of the OS X revisions to support the BD licensing requirements. While this sounds trivial it isn't necessarily so.
IMO, there's two main costs involved. There's the tangible direct costs of making the changes to OS X's code & maintaining it, which is easy. But there's also the less tangible indirect costs of what I'll simplistically call "Control", which is hard. Simply put, the latter requires ceding to some of the DRM requirements, which places constraints on Apple's current & future freedom of OS evolution & features...and trying to figure out how to place a discrete, tangible cash value on this. That's why it isn't easy.
IMO, it is this latter factor that is the primary source of Apple's reluctance to adopt BD. One technically viable approach to this problem is to purposefuly fork the OS X source code, into a current and a BD-supported version*. Thus, if someone wants a BD Mac, they buy the Option which consists of two major pieces: $199 for the BD optical drive ... and (figuratively) $1999 for the customized OS X variant that supports BD.
* - my prior point was that this doesn't necessarily have to be done only by Apple.
FWIW, my figurative price tag was selected at an arbitrarily high $1999 to make a point: we can't really quantifiably say how much value Apple places on OS X and in keeping it free of externally-imposed constraints. And similarly, for a business who really sees value-added in authoring their HD movies in BD on a Mac, an extra $2,000 one-time expense isn't really a stopper...its just a cost (tax deducible, no less) of doing business.
It is clearly a business decision. But is its basis in 'greed'? Who proved that? Why can't it not be steeped in a reluctance ... perhaps a fear? ... of allowing their product (OS X) from being constrained by an external entity?
Afterall, this is clearly a downside business risk that involves a "Trust Me!" from the Blu-ray Disc Association, and we all invariably act to protect our own self-interests...including businesses such as Apple - - and also the BD Disk Association.
Frankly, I'd not claim that it is 'Apple greed' until someone posts a solid definition of exactly what & where that invisible line gets drawn.
-hh
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