Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Steve Jobs Suggests Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac Anytime Soon
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
I've always loved film (should have been a film student but I'm a techie) and when I discovered hooking my VCR into a Dolby Pro Logic surround system, I was hooked. That lead to LaserDisc (at the very end), DVD, and now Blu-Ray.
When DVD took off I just went nuts buying everything I was remotely interested, stuff I had heard of but never seen etc. Definitely stuff that I should have rented and I still ponder paring the collection down to what I actually watch. At this point I only buy things I know I will rewatch and I only buy on Blu-Ray. There are also a few TV series I started collecting and I continue to fill out the collection out of habit.
At first I would just do a compressed rip (Divx/MKV, through HandBrake and similar tools) but you lose the extras and it's a generational loss of quality with the reencode. Then I decided to do a full rip to preserve quality and keep all the extras. Very quickly it became obvious I was going to eat up all my space on my NAS.
It's also possible to rip Blu-Rays but the space requirements go through the roofs. I'm running the numbers in my head for a 4-drive NAS with 4 2TB drives (approx $550-600 expense) and how quickly I'd eat that up too.
I'd like to have all my stuff ripped but storage has to increase dramatically to justify it.
I mentioned the Battlestar Galactica example before but allow me to backtrack. I came into the series late, and started out downloading crappy SD rips. I got hooked, so then I caught old and new episodes on cable for a while in SD. Then when they started airing in HD, but I didn't have the HD channel on my cable system, I'd download 720p HD rips. I collected every episode and treasured the collection. Until the Blu-Ray box set came out and it destroys the 720p cable rips. It's really a top-notch presentation on Blu-Ray and now all those 720p rips are garbage that got deleted.
Similarly, I have collected all 6 Star Wars films from HD cable rips, and they're "good enough" to tide me over, they're better than the DVDs and they are HD. But every time I look at them (on my 30" Cinema Display, in particular) all I can see is the MPEG-2 artifacting and mosquito noise and all the other problems that go with low bitrate mpeg-2. Then there's John Williams' beautiful score that only gets a 384kbps DD 5.1 treatment. I just know the score will sing in lossless True HD and the video quality will (should) be off the charts. I just know they will destroy the cable rips like Battlestar did.
Which doesn't matter, when we consider the additional information of the casual 'IRL' survey I asked a week or two ago. Its responses were that the typical price premium that posters were willing to pay extra for to add BD capability on the Mac was around $100.
And 30 users times $100 = a potential revenue for Apple of a whopping $3,000.
Of course, these 30 "loud" users do represent a larger population. Even if we ignore the self-selected statistical bias that's present and play it straight, we get a baseline estimate of 30 users out of ~500,000 MR readers = 0.006%
Apply this metric to the total Mac consumer population, the first question is how big is that population?
Last quarter's Mac sales were roughly 4 million. If we are generous by rounding this up to 20M/year and assume it is the average sales going forward from today, plus then assume a lifespan for a Mac of 7.5 years (also conservatively high), this means that the Mac installed base will be (note: NOT "currently is today"!) around 150 million units.
Thus,
150M * 0.006% = 9,000 potential customers interested in BR.
At a $100 premium each = revenue potential of $900,000.
Yes, still less than a million bucks ... and that's the gross revenue, before expenses, and futhermore, it is not per-year sales, but is distributed over the total product lifecycle.
Now to apply a what-if:
If we want to excuse these low numbers by observing that BD still needs to gather marketplace traction such that there will be increased customer demand in the future, BR sales would need to go up by ~8x to get up to a corporate "minimum visibility threshhold" of ~$1M/year gross revenue.
But is an 8x increase in Mac-centric interest in BD viable? Probably. I just happened to read today (here , referring to a weekly-updated chart that's here) that BR is ~17% of physical movie sales (current as of 5 Feb 11).
Since there's a huge chasm between 17% and even the grand sum total of all ~1600 who have posted here (0.3% of all MR readers), it appears to have adequate upside promise...
...but in looking at things slighly more deeply, this 17% is "Today BD sales", which if we make the reasonable assumption that MR readership is average on BR, then it means that there's roughly 84,000 MR posters who have already "voted with their wallet" and bought into BD.
And it also means that with only ~1600 total MR posters here, the very same observation then also incidates that the majority doesn't care about the issue enough to be motivated to make any comment whatsoever. To put a number on it, it is that ((84,000 - 1,600)/84,000) = ~98% of MR posters who are already BD users don't care (as measured by bothering to make at least one post in this thread).
As such, the demonstration of a viable business case doesn't seem to be being made on these financially-based grounds based upon the level of participation herein. Of course, what this really means that the use case needs to be made based upon other grounds (such as product positioning & marketing) in order to be successful in adding BR as a capability feature.
FWIW, to move my prior 'IRL' question in a slightly different direction:
Question #1: How much would you be willing to pay IRL to add BluRay capability to the Mac - - for the purpose of watching existing content ONLY?
(FWIW, I believe that this was the general interpretation of my prior question, for which the response was generally around $100 ... rationale seemed to be the price of a consumer BD player)
Question #2: How much would you be willing to pay IRL to add BluRay capability to the Mac - - for the purpose of creating BD content?
-hh
When Apple finally began putting DVDs in Macs, it was a very different landscape both in terms of technology (no ubiquitous use of broadband) and adoption rate. I'll expound on this issue in a future post.
As for the complexity of Blu-Ray licensing, you currently have Blu-Ray patent holders suing each other (one example). One hopes that recent moves to clarify Blu-Ray licensing by creating "one stop" licensing bodies will help, but I would temper your enthusiasm.
From: http://www.one-blue.com/qa/
8. Why is it taking so long to launch the One-Blue program?
It has taken a considerable amount of time for a number of reasons:
One-Blue will administer a unique licensing program that offers a product license instead of a format license. This has not been done before and it brings additional complexities that needed to be solved.
One-Blue will introduce many new elements (when compared to existing patent pools) aimed to create a more level playing field for licensees and for licensors.
More owners of essential patents means reaching a consensus, which takes more time.
9. Why do you refer to your program as a one-stop shop while BD4C has started a BD licensing program? Will One-Blue and BD4C ever merge?
The announcement made by BD4C has not changed the objective of One-Blue to create a one-stop shop product license for BD products. One-Blue has always welcomed, and will continue to welcome, the companies participating in the BD4C pool to join One-Blue. One-Blue hopes the licensors of BD4C will join One-Blue or merge into one entity to realize a one-stop shop, because that will result in a better outcome for consumers and the industry as a whole.
Honestly? Zero. Before you get upset, please read on.
If I was to make a deeper investment in Blu-Ray (already have a player and a few movies), I'd always want the experience to be as it's meant to be: enjoyed on a large, HD screen tied to surround sound. Therefore, I agree with the people stating that they don't see an overwhelming need for Blu-Ray equipped Macs.
Furthermore, I don't understand why some people choose to harangue some who have voiced being fans of Blu-Ray and downloads. Some have said that they enjoy BD at home in their media rooms, but use downloaded films when traveling and often on an iDevice; I don't see the hypocrisy. Unless someone always flies in roomy Upper Class Virgin Atlantic Air, I don't see the convenience or necessity to tote a laptop out just to watch a film in Blu-Ray. At that point, you're not even getting surround sound, so you're already making a large compromise.
I remain rather bearish on Blu-Ray's future based on what I'm seeing. However, for those few with a willingness or necessity to compromise, I wish you all the luck in the world that Apple one day allows you the option. It's not like I have a dog in this fight.
Respectfully,
Reed Hastings, er, MacNewsFix
(Just kidding!)
P.S. I think you are being a bit too conservative in your assessment of Apple's costs incurred by adding BD as an option. Besides licensing fees, you would also need to create an extra path in production; every time you do so, production costs go up. The demand has to outweigh the costs, and I don't see the demand.
You do realise that his 'bag of hurt' comment has to do with a lot more than just licensing costs - I mean Apple already licenses AAC and h264, it would be a matter of a few more dollars and the whole patent portfolio would be covered. I suggest you look at what Apple would also need to do in the operating system itself.
Once again, when it comes to a bag of hurt the only hurt you seem to be 'giving out' is your monumental ignorance as to what the real circumstances are.
Now there are millions of HOH/deaf people who will not be buying or renting movies online simply because there's no subtitles and closed caption support in the online media streaming industry. Hulu doesn't have majority of their stuff captioned or subtitled, Netflix only have less than 2% of their whole streaming library captioned or subtitled and don't even get me started with iTunes/Amazon, they barely have more than 2 pages worth of movies. TV shows are even worse.
Glad to see that Apple are so afraid of the obvious, they have their ACCOUNTANTS weighing in on the issue.
In any creative business, it's the ACCOUNTANTS who always destroy it sooner or later.
ACCOUNTANTS cannot ever see the forest for the trees. Nor that for Mac to retain its cutting edge cachet it has to be more than a toymaker for kids and has to keep its top of the line high end highly expensive computers, not just up to date with AND CAPABLE OF the latest technology but whatever is around the corner, WHETHER IT CUTS INTO THEIR BOTTOM LINE CONTENT BIZ OR NOT or WHETHER IT'S A BIG WHINY BAG OF HURT OR NOT.
ACCOUNTANTS are good for one thing and one thing alone; counting. Other creatives must take than info and make JUDGMENTS based on that info, and woe to the company who skips that step or, worst of all, hires more ACCOUNTANTS to do it.
Numbers NEVER tell the entire story. If they did, companies would never go out of business.
I'm a creative. I know what attracted me to Mac in the first place. I also know why I'll be leaving the platform soon if things don't turn around. I also know that I'll be following hundreds of thousands who have already left, and many more hundreds of thousands will be following me.
An ACCOUNTANT will never get it.
Surveys are fine. One can make a survey say anything depending upon who one surveys.
People who care enough to bitch publicly for YEARS, outlasting all naysayers, are the ones a smart company listens to.
Sooner rather than later.
You're really putting too much weight into these figures to prove the sun revolves around the Earth. It's too easy to poke holes in your numbers -- such as the figures that state for every Macintosh sold there are approximately 90 iPod/iPad/iPhones sold (from Apple's last quarterly results), as MacRumors.com has become iPhoneRumors there are more and more people who own iDevices but not Macs, and the fact that in market share, for every Mac user there are 19 Windows users. MacRumors gets farther and farther away from being a representative sample of the Macintosh user base every day.
It probably makes more sense to calculate the potential user base on the following criteria:
- Installed base of Blu-Ray players (30 million homes)
- Installed base of Mac users (I've heard numbers all over the map)
- Percentage of Mac users who have ever watched a DVD or rented a movie on iTunes.
- Percentage of PC users who watch Blu-Rays on their PCs.
- Number of people using a Mac Mini in a HTPC application.
- Analysis of Blu-Ray's performance both statically (how much of the market is it now) and dynamically (compare its growth year by year versus DVD) and draw conclusions based on known DVD statistics.
Given that there are no less than three companies producing Blu-Ray playback software on the PC, the market would appear to be lucrative and substantial.
Hey sparky, you're the monumentally ignorant one, as here's what Jobs himself said:
"Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. I don't mean from the consumer point of view. It's great to watch movies, but the licensing is so complex. We're waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace before we burden our customers with the cost of the licensing and the cost of the drives."
Strange, eh? I don't see any squealing about changes to the operating system in that statement, do you? In fact I don't see anything suggesting there is any technical hurdle whatsoever to be overcome. It's all crying about the "burden" of costs.
Perhaps you wish he meant items such as HDCP content protection (already used for protected iTunes content) or PAP? I'm fully aware of the HDCP and protected video/audio path requirements and they aren't rocket science -- inconvenient, yes, but not some insurmountable challenge. Apple is telling us the dog ate their homework; most of what they need is already there, as you so eloquently pointed out. Hardware-wise, it's already there as playback works in Boot Camp. The idiots at Microsoft could do it, but the cherubs at Apple are stumped?
Further, we're talking about Steve fricking Jobs here, the guy who brought the recording industry to its knees and who is the largest single shareholder of Disney. He could leverage his power to ease or eliminate the restrictions he doesn't like.
In 2010, once Blu-Ray had "settled down" and "taken off", Jobs changed his tune.
“Bluray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD – like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats. [...] No, free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue. I think you may be wrong – we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.”
Still no whining about the OS there either.
And what a coincidence, Steve Jobs derives revenue from "rental content at sufficient quality". "Sufficient Quality" meaning "good enough" which is what the new Apple is about -- not the best, but good enough.
I have thrown down this gauntlet several times and nobody has stepped up to the challenge. I'd like to hear your opinion.
- Can you not apply the same logic to DVD playback?
- Shouldn't all video be seen on the best screen in the house? Why just Blu-Ray? Why is some video on the Mac OK but not Blu-Ray? Why are you dividing the digital world by what screen you watch it on, and isn't that defeating the whole point of digital convergence and convenience?
- If Macs are not meant to be used to enjoy movies, why do they play DVDs, why do they have remote controls, and how do you explain Front Row?
- How can you dismiss the potential home theater pc applications of a Mac when Apple itself pretends to play in that space? And how can it be taken seriously in this space without supporting Blu-Ray/HDMI/mutlichannel audio?
Given the Mac has DVD playback, a remote control, Front Row, iTunes rents movies, and the Apple TV exists, it suggests Apple knows something is going on in this space -- people do watch movies on their Macs and people do want to watch content on the best screen in their house. Put those two indisputable facts together and it adds up to Blu-Ray on both sides. The fact that the Mac Mini finally adopted HDMI and multichannel audio means they obviously think people want to hook it up to their big screen TV and surround sound system. They just did a C- job of it by not supporting Blu-Ray. Therefore to claim people don't watch movies on the Mac is clearly not what Apple thinks.
Last edited:
*shocking*
No seriously, I never doubted Steve would prevent Macs from using Blu-Ray.
Why whats so shocking about it. I am not surprised. They all have the money coming at first place,so all this is politics. My opinion.
Since I converted to Mac in October of 2009, I have not even watched one DVD on my 27" iMac or my 13"MBP while on the road. I bought my Macs strictly for work because I was tired of buggy Windows.
Yes, I only watch movies in my home theater with large fixed screen and incredible sound. I get the movie experience every time I pop in a DVD or BD without noisy kids and uncomfortable seats. I could not imagine watching a movie on my dinky 27" iMac. If you could watch a movie every night in a movie theater or on a laptop screen which would you choose?
Neither is okay on a Mac by me.
I don't know. I don't use them. My Macs are work machines to me. I like having the best of everything. I have Macs because I wanted the best work machines (they are and I know from using Windows for close to twenty years). For home entertainment, my Macs do not even qualify nor does a Windows PC. LOL
linux2mac Disclaimer: I am not against the option for BD in Macs nor am I against BD.
**I felt I had to include that so that I am not falsely accused of being a "BD hating sheep and follower of the dark turtlenecked sith lord."
Last edited:
He's here to run a business, period. Apple almost disappeared years ago, and for all intents and purposes it was just about gone. Luckily, he started to make money so we can all buy, use and enjoy our MacBook's, iPhones, and iPads. If you don't want them to make a ton of money, forget about owning a computer as nice as these are. We'd be left with plastic Windows based PC's.. If you feel shorted that Apple is making a ton of money, buy some stock, that way you hedge to the company's success.
Wouldn't it be great if all companies tried to give us stuff for free, or incorporated stuff that might lose them money? Then it wouldn't be worthwhile for anybody to go into business. We could all go back to pre-industrial villages in the countryside and milk cows, and grow our own food. One could build their own computer if they chose! Good Luck!
As someone with both deaf, HOH and sight impaired people in the family, I can empathize. Apple's long history of support for helping provide as close to universal access as possible is one of the things I respect about the company.
Streaming media is still in its nascent stage, and I am confident things will improve regarding CC as its adoption grows. One of the hurdles apparently revolves overcoming limitations in technology, in particular the ones needed to pacify film studios that customers won't copy streamed films. If you want to follow the progress of subtitles being incorporated into Netflix, check out their blog:
http://blog.netflix.com/search/label/subtitles
Also, you may not know, but if you do an Advanced Search in iTunes, you can choose just to see the list of movies offering CC.
Right now, Hollywood is still trying to figure out the future of film delivery, but it seems to really be catching on. Just this month both Amazon and Hulu stepped up their offerings. Again, as its popularity grows, I'm sure download houses like iTunes and Netflix will step up their game with CC; I know a few people in my family will appreciate it, and I'm sure neither Steve Jobs or Tim Cook want to end up before a Senate Subcommittee answering questions about discrimination of the sight impaired. An incident like that is anathema to Apple and the perception it wants to its customers.
First off, this medical leave is likely so that he will be back. Once January hit the holidays were over, all these products and projects entered the final stages and were 99.9% set and 'mastered'. So Steve, who had cancer etc, takes some well deserved time off to stave off any major issues, spend some time with the family etc. It is very likely that he gets emails 4 times a day with all the various details, he gets conferenced into all calls and facetimed into weekly meetings etc.
Second, he picked Cook et all. He trained and molded them. He's probably told them his vision in detail and they know exactly why he dislikes Blu-ray and what he wants instead. What he wants for the computers, software, etc. And if anyone has drunk the Apple KoolAid it is those folks. No one is hanging around going "as soon as Stevie boy kicks it I'm putting blu-ray in the Macs, Flash on iOS and a ton of porn in the stores. Hell we'll drop all the rules in the Stores and that pesky yearly fee and money sharing. It will be awesome"
So. All that takes is folks willing to make it happen. Hulu and Netflix haven't because of costs, tech or whatever. Warners just recently released two movie apps with a solid 20 different subtitle types so at least they are trying. Apparently with the intent to keep going if these two are moderately successful. Perhaps they will be willing or already are willing to share the tech. And once that group is covered, perhaps we'll get voiceover for the visually impaired on more than a handful of old movies
Admitting to the existence of the bias doesn't make your numbers any less specious. First because you assume that the folks visiting the blu-ray threads are a representation of the whole forum and that the forum is a viable sample of the Mac world at large. But just like the tv ratings system, not all hetero asian males age 25 like the same shows and perhaps the only folks watching whatever are the 2000 you counted in your sample, rather than the 10 million you try to tell your advertisers.
You also lump together consumers, prosumers and companies. Consumers often keep a machine for as much as 7 years, prosumers perhaps in the 3-5 range and many companies 2 years at best. Hell my own shop leases our computers so we can easily change them out every year if we wish.
Plus you don't take into account what Apple would have to pay to get Blu-ray. It's great if folks are willing to have prices go up $100 or say even $200 for a BTO for blu-ray in their computer. But if it costs Apple $500 a unit to make that happen, it won't. Not at that low price at least.
Remember, that 3g chipset and antenna might only cost Apple $25, but the licensing could be the other $100.
Last edited:
Would it cost Apple more to adopt Blu-ray than other companies that have already done so? It's not like Apple can't afford to add Blu-ray. Jobs just doesn't want to do it (at least not at this time).
Lethal
How can they afford it when they only comprise 5% of the computer market and Windows 95%? (as one forum member pointed out a few posts ago.) Apple is inferior to Windows remember?
How can they afford it when they only comprise 5% of the computer market and Windows 95%? (as one forum member pointed out a few posts ago.) Apple is inferior to Windows remember?
I have a feeling that the people at Apple wallpaper their offices with money.
Lol. It's a high resolution IPS screen, and far higher pixel-density than your home theatre is. I just got back from visiting my brother who has one, and HUGE would be the word I'd use to describe it, not 'dinky'.
iTunes content doesn't come close to taking advantage of a screen that nice.
Likewise, the Mac Mini would make a great media centre under the TV if it could play Blu-ray. Right now, it's as useless as an unhacked Apple TV.
- Status