First, let me point out that you base your opinion on more of your opinions, so I don't see how that substantiates your first opinion any further. It does clarify your thought process though which aides in understanding your point.
At first glance, that might seem like a fair statement. But no, when one looks at it just a bit closer, it is evidently incredibly wrong and patronizing to boot. I'm not substantiating an opinion on the dates of Mac Pro upgrades. Apple does not state a dec. 2009 upgrade to the Mac Pro. That's that. No opinion. No judgement call. Nothing. Just that fact.
This statement is presented or positioned as fact, which it is not. Let me break this apart to address the relevant part of the compound statement. Your opinion that BD support harms no one is false. It does harm competing formats, such as HD-DVD, and iTunes downloads. Apple is a business that has it's principle responsibility to it's shareholders. If Apple added support for BD and shipped Mac's with BD drives they would be reducing their own sales of iTunes content and increasing their expenses for BD licenses. As others have previously pointed out this would be a stupid business decision. As a shareholder of Apple I agree with Steve's assessment of BD as being "a bag of hurt" for Apple.
What a load of utter drivel. Of course the statement of BD support as harming no one is presented as a fact. But you claim it hurts competing formats such as HD-DVD and iTunes downloads.
Well good news, you're wrong, they're not hurting. For one HD-DVD has been discontinued since February of 2008. It's viability can't be harmed any more than being discontinued, obviously. But you're right, that conceivably the very few people who actually buy video from iTS might stop doing that if Apple supported BD, just like the music store is suffering because of the CD support found in Macs. (sarcasm, high level)
Don't you have any connection to reason or reality? An honest question. Because these things aren't a zero-sum game, obviously. And then you bring up the utterly nihilistic and pathetically banal "Apple is a business", obviously without any personal knowledge of business or whether this would actually hurt or help Apple to make money. So you're saying that all your fretting against this is just based on your armchair-CEO opinion that Apple might lose money on the whole by supporting BD, despite *any* evidence to support that, especially in light of the practically *zero* negative effect CD or DVD support has had on Apple or the iTS. Yet *obviously* in direct competition.
As a shareholder of Apple myself, I'm ashamed to know that other shareholders (or at least they claim so on the internet) are this daft. HD-DVD? Wow that's a stupid comment. Honestly. (Really honestly) And yeah CD support doesn't harm the iTS one bit.
I can just as well claim, that as a shareholder, I want Apple to make more money by supporting BD and securing the high-end high-margin market of professional workstations. You want to waste Apple's money and resources for low-margin and non-starter download model, thus costing Apple money in the end, when Apple's only goal should be to make money for the shareholders. I base that on the fact that BD is much better established than downloads and the fact that more and more ISPs are introducing download quotas that nip this nascent download market of movies in the bud.
In short it is nonsense that HD-DVD (discontinued) is hurt by BD support and that iTS is hurt by supporting physical discs, as is evident by the fact that Apple already supports physical discs and can easily support the niche of downloaded content as well.
The above passage points out the principle, and very rational, reason for not supporting BD on Mac's.
Quite the contrary, in fact it was all to easy ripping it apart. You know how I did it? You see I just used the huge cracks in the "rationale" you put forth to get a good grip and then just tore. It. Apart. More importantly I demonstrated the logical fallacy that supporting BD would in any way hurt Apple itself, in fact it hurts Apple even more that their machines are *not* perceived as the choice machine for multimedia. For the same people who are interested in using computers for playing BDs are the people most likely to buy or rent movies on-line, simply by virtue of being the people who already accept or need to use computers in that manner. (i.e. using them as movie players)
I would prefer Apple continue doing what they have been trying to do and improve digital downloads; Rather than compete with themselves and increase their expenses while doing so. There are several areas that need to be addressed with digital downloads.
Your every single attempt of reasoning, is so ingrained with logical fallacies. Like this; to present that Apple *either* improve downloads or start competing with themselves. And the latter "option" is wrong in any case, as history demonstrates (i.e. CDs and the iTMS) In fact the movie rentals and sales have been a complete flop compared to the music selling business of the iTS (which is market leading), and yet that is the area where Apple has direct "competition" (as you claim), while it is doing very poorly on video (not even close to being market leading) and actually restricts and ostensibly tries to funnel users to buy their inferior 720p, low-bitrate videos.
Lastly I'll adress the storage aspect of BD support. I believe Apple will greatly improve the iDisc component of MobileMe and will function more like syncing your documents vs a network connected disk as it is now. I also have a feeling Apple will integrate TimeMachine support into MobileMe. If my content can be synced to the cloud like my mail, contacts, & calendar there will be little need for a physical backup medium requiring large capacities.
Dropbox is already lightyears ahead of iDisk in the short time of its existence, while iDisk has had a decade to become marginally useful (and is still put to shame by the young Dropbox). It seems that experience is being trumped by wishful thinking on your part. Either way, BD has the advantage of being a physical media, that cannot bet affected by magnetic fields and is light and durable, easy to replace and can already hold an acceptable amount of data with a roadmap of impressive proportions. (e.g. 100+ GB discs in the future)
I back up on a HD and disks. I also use Dropbox. Things I don't back up are movies, because I already have them backed up on DVDs/BDs when I buy them. This is another aspect of BD that people like to glance over, namely the fact that every movie you buy comes with a printed backup. It isn't mechanical, it isn't magnetic, but a completely static physical image, that if left in its cover, will never degrade. That saves the extra cost of buying HD for backup and/or online storage such as iDisk.
So for the most personal files and stuff I back up on Dropbox for free (2-3 GBs), the rest on dual HDs (mirroring) and DVDs (though I'd prefer BDs because then I can back up my iTunes collection that I bought on iTMS, all my photos on one, all my personal data on one) so in the end I need about 3-4 BDs to back all the most crucial data (the irreplaceable data) - while all my movies and purchased apps are already backed up on the most durable CDs/DVDs/BDs, the printed ones.
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