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

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Great. Good work Steve. Time to send the dinosaurs (optical and physical media storage) packing.

Don't understand why anyone would want Blu-Ray. If you want to see the movie go to the cinema (the only way to properly experience a movie) or download/stream it.
 
And I don't understand why you want to have less options then more? Some ppl like collecting movies, keeping them for the future, ... I'm not really one of them but i do enjoy buying cd's for example. Whats next? No optical so i can't rip my cd's anymore? I might rent movies on iTunes if it were available in Belgium which makes Jobs point completely stupid.
 
We are years off having the quality of bluray via streaming or through itunes. Bluray is also a good storage media, all those photographers and media types out there would love to get their hands on bluray im sure.
 
Intriguing - I can only guess that Apple TV is about to get a revamp and they may start focussing on this more as a consequence. I don't want to play my BluRay movies on my Mac, but I'd love to have BluRay as a backup mechanism. External drives are all nice etc, but I'd like to stick my Aperture library on one relatively cheap disk that I can stick in a dust-proof cover and store away for 5 years. I don't want my backups on a constantly rotating time-machine backup in the corner.

Grr.
 
If Jobs' suggests that Blu-Ray isn't a necessary choice because Downloading films is a better choice (which it clearly isn't), then why even have a DVD Player on Mac?

I don't think the answer is that Jobs' doesn't like Blu-Ray, the answer is that he knows placing a Blu-Ray drive within a Mac would only cannibalise sales of HD movies on iTunes. Since Apple have deals with so many movie companies, it only makes sense on their part to try and make the most of the investment. This may have made sense about 6/7 years ago, but HD movie downloads don't cut it for me. Blu-Ray's are getting cheaper all the time (in many respects, even cheaper in the U.S than here in the U.K) and looking at the prices of the iTunes Movies, I will never pay that much when I can buy the physical format cheaper, and then rip the film onto my Hard Drive.

Jobs once said that "Choice is good". 'Choice' would be to offer a Blu-Ray drive as an upgrade option on the Apple Store. The guy is increasingly getting stubborn as Apple gain more and more control, compared to when they had such little foothold some 12 years ago and they were making products that were not just challenging conventions, but were ahead of their time.
 
baryon said:
2 backups is the ideal way to go, and no I don't have enough money to have two 1TB drives. And now you're saying "1TB? Just delete the stuff you don't need!" Well 1TB is becoming a standard hard drive size today and I work with Photoshop a LOT, one average PSD file is around 100 MB. I have tons of them, but I don't want to keep everything on my laptop.
Click to expand...

You work with photoshop and you don't have enough money for a 2nd external hdd? You need to start charging more.... most graphic pros i know earn enough in an hour to afford a top of the range 2tb hdd. And yes you are correct ... keep one backup by computer for use and another somewhere safe in case of fire. No big deal but I seriously can't see how blu-ray will help you.. the disks will only become corrupt after 3 years of sitting around.
 
this guy is rly starting to piss me of lately. its obvs just so he can sell his stupid resized 720p movies on iTunes. A MBP or iMac should be able to handle Blu-Ray in the year of 2010. even if its just to save the iMovie or whatever files if mac wants to stay "on top" of videoediting.

And news flash there isnt just the US - we barelly have streaming offers here and dont get me
started on the word "buffer" and why should I download a protected file in crappy 720p quality if i can get a BD with cover inlay and everything with better sound, extras, diff languages etc for about the same price.

and i want to have something in my hand for the price i pay not just some stupid file somewhere on my hdd + the reason of bds etc breaking o come on my cds and dvds r all still playing just fine where my hdd on the other hand died twice within a year
 
Agree or disagree with him, you can't deny the man knows his stuff. With that said, I would like to at least have the option for a BD drive. Internet speeds in the U.S. are a joke, and now we're all getting invisible caps placed everywhere. Optical media is not going anywhere, anytime soon. At least not until the bandwidth situation greatly improves. This is totally a business-related decision on his part, nothing more nothing less. As others have said, it gives rise to the possibility of cannibalizing iTunes sales. Simple as that.
 
Consumerism and too much control

Just buy a Blu-ray player or even better, buy from iTunes. This is the real motivation here. All this "bag of hurt" talk and whatnot is BS: Apple is part of the Blu-ray Disc Association. This type of control and attitude really starts to irritate me, regardless how much I like Apple products.

Moving away from the consumer standpoint things get more serious. I bought the Mac Pro for computer science, music creation, video editing. Had to pay top dollar for it in Europe. You just don't know how lucky you are overseas when it comes to Apple product prices!;) From a professional standpoint this attitude is unacceptable. We got to a point now when Mp-s are overpriced workstations with limited warranty, outdated graphics hardware and drivers, crippled multimedia abilities. All the iGadgets are great, but for professional use the "other options" are becoming more and more viable with these decisions.

Excuse me getting carried away with this, but I used to be very passionate about Apple for professional use. Always dreamed of Macs when I had my 386SX back in the day. All this consumer gadget mania is fine by me, but please do not limit professional users who use Macs to create.:apple::apple::apple:
 
'meh, 720p video will be good enough for a big 27 inch hi-res iMac screen that people sit right in front of... '
said Steve, as he left to promote his new phone with an incredible 326ppi display that he'd gone on and on about...

Later, Steve ate all his cake, safe in the knowledge it would still be there in the morning.
 
Of course SJ would say this. He has a big time vested interest in downloads and makes huge amounts of money for both the downloads themselves and the iToys that consume them. He would actually have to license Blu-Ray. God forbid :eek:
 
Watching a few YouTube videos at 320p every day is enough to push me over my internet download quota for the month. 720p movies? That's probably a quarter of my monthly download quota gone in one movie.

Until there are decent unlimited plans that do not cost a fortune (no, not the plans advertised as "unlimited" but have download caps in fine print), I'll continue to buy my CDs/DVDs/Blu-Ray discs thank you very much.

And most people I know will always opt for the physical version so that they will not kill their download quota. Partly the reason why I have not, and will not, get things on the internet that I can get elsewhere. Blu-Ray movies included.

People need to stop thinking of their own country and think globally when they talk about the internet.
 
Seriously, if one wants to watch Blu-Ray, just use a standalone player hooked up to your big-ass HDTV...
Else, just back it up on a NAS and problem solved...
 
It is frightening to hear the man himself put into words an argument so baseless that hitherto only the most ardent fanbois had tried to put it forward.

What a selfish greedy douche.

Who cares how well downloads are doing relative to bluray? The format has UNDENIABLE merits over other technologies. The only Apple users that don't want bluray drives are those who view Jobs as some sort of messiah and the fact that most Windows machines come with them as standard makes Macs look even more overpriced to potential switchers than they've ever been before. All that should be reason alone to include it. Nevermind the lack of ultra-high speed internet in many markets or the fact that bluray is apparently still outselling digital downloads 6:1 and growing three times as quickly:

http://www.dvd-intelligence.com/display-article.php?article=894

This just makes me so angry. I don't mind spending 3 times more on computers than most people but telling me a commonplace feature I want and need is actually of no use to me just to protect your piddling revenue stream from infant markets like digital distribution is a real kick in the teeth.

I have an Apple TV. Its a piece of $h!t. I want a mac mini with bluray and an eyetv dongle. I've been waiting for over 4 years to buy one. It now costs twice as much but still doesn't have a bluray drive. The ironic things is that if I had such a device, I would not only watch all my DVDs and blurays on it but I would probably download much more videos from iTunes. In 2 years' time, when blurays are still dominating digital downloads, maybe Jobs will change his tune, but he strikes me as a stubborn man.
 
Another reason (along with Apple's general attitude as of late, or Jobs's at least) that for my next major upgrade I might be returning to the PC. Being dictated on what we do and do not need is getting tiresome. I'll be the judge of that thank you (that includes the "hurr, just get a Blu-Ray player" crowd).

Blu-Ray has a very significant quality difference over downloads, unless you download something encoded at Blu-Ray quality obviously. And I'm sorry but show me an ISP that will let you download 25GB every couple of days and I'll show you an ISP that is either extremely expensive or going out of business. (As well as the fact it'd take an age, whilst driving down to Blockbuster or posting back a Lovefilm packet takes all of 5 minutes. Instant gratification my arse!)
 
People people, please... OS X as it is, supports Blu-Ray stations. Just buy the cheapest Blu-Ray reader you can find, stick it in an external case, hook it up through USB/Firewire, and your done.
There is software out there for Mac that will let you break the Blu-Ray encryption; from there on out, it is just a matter of either transcoding it or straight copying the movie to a NAS and watching it through Plex or whatever.
If you *really* want Blu-Ray on your Mac, there are enough relatively cheap and easy ways to go about it.
I know it should be easier than this, but it is possible.
 
We've seen the future and it's the Mac mini. That's right... The Mac mini! Apple's compromise (and Steve's too) is HDMI. I'll bet you that all Macs will come with an HDMI connector. You want to watch a Blu Ray movie? Hook up your BD player to the Mac via HDMI. You want Blu Ray storage. Hook up your BD burner to the Mac via USB or FireWire. That'll probably be as good as it'll get folks!
 
Yeah probably. I don't know about optical media per se, but the time of popping in discs to watch a movie is starting to fade.
It is just so much easier to back up your movies on some network attached disk, and watch the stuff via a mediacenter.
So it really only comes down to breaking that encryption ones, whichever way you want. From there on out, you can watch as many BR movies you want, even on your Mac...
 
Soliber said:
Seriously, if one wants to watch Blu-Ray, just use a standalone player hooked up to your big-ass HDTV...
Else, just back it up on a NAS and problem solved...
Click to expand...

That's genius. Complete genius. So, your options are:

a) Use blurays outwith your family network of macs as you already have been able to do for ages. Yeah, well why would anyone want to put a bluray drive in their computer anyways? Come to think of it, why did we need DVD drives in our computers? Its not as if anyone would want their expensive mac computer to double as something else useful for the money, with the same ease-of-use and elegant GUI we expect of all our apple devices. Its not as if its increased data storage reduces the need for NAS's and the like. Its not as if people can create film-quality HD productions on a Mac that they might want to burn to an HD disc.

b) Buy $100s of dollars worth of storage space and spend hours ripping your blurays to it so that you can watch the files thru your mac. What a coup-de-grace! Useful for the small percentile of mac fans who have both tons of time and money AND are attracted to macs for some reason other than their notorious ease of use, ie fanbois who like shiny objects and will defend BS feature omissions to the death rather than dare question His Jobsness.

Besides, you forgot option c): Rant about it, make empty threats to leave the mac platform and change little more about your behaviour other than to side with your Windows-using friends more during your ongoing platform arguments.
 
More like a BAG OF CRAP!

Get over it, Jobs. We want 1080p streaming, nothing less! :mad:
 
What's the big deal?

People shouldn't be watching blu-Ray on a computer screen anyway and if you are mad enough to want to buy a mac mini as a blu ray player...

Blu Ray players are less than £99 now buy one and add it to your cinema setup where it belongs not the computer screen.

As for those moaning about large storage space you can add a blu Ray drive to any mac today (including the new mac mini and iMac) and if you don't know how you really don't NEED that extra space enough. Go with an external instead and burn to it with Toast.

I've removed all the optical drives from my Macbooks and I
Mac and replaced them with SSD's for dual raid 0. I've had no need for optical media for about 5 years now apart from the occasional OS update I use an external drive for.

Really this is a bad moot point that no one should be arguing with. Stick a blu ray in your mac and burn with it and buy a proper play for a minimum of 50" screen to reap the rewards of it.
 
Blu ray will never happen for 2 reasons:

1- blu ray movies are a direct competitor to itunes
2- sd memory will be the new dvd just like cds replaced floppies
 
I'd hate to be working at Pixar, busting a gut getting the very best image quality, only to have the boss declare that HD movies are only fit for downloading...which is kinda like saying, "who gives a crap if it's not great quality?"

edit: yeah, I have a PS3 and a large blu-ray collection. Not really the point is it. Oh dear, Blu-Ray is expensive and complicated to license. What's wrong, Apple not making enough money? Profit margins too narrow? Sorry but the more I think about it, the less impressed I am...
 
nickane said:
That's genius. Complete genius. So, your options are:

a) Use blurays outwith your family network of macs as you already have been able to do for ages. Yeah, well why would anyone want to put a bluray drive in their computer anyways? Come to think of it, why did we need DVD drives in our computers? Its not as if anyone would want their expensive mac computer to double as something else useful for the money, with the same ease-of-use and elegant GUI we expect of all our apple devices. Its not as if its increased data storage reduces the need for NAS's and the like. Its not as if people can create film-quality HD productions on a Mac that they might want to burn to an HD disc.

b) Buy $100s of dollars worth of storage space and spend hours ripping your blurays to it so that you can watch the files thru your mac. What a coup-de-grace! Useful for the small percentile of mac fans who have both tons of time and money AND are attracted to macs for some reason other than their notorious ease of use, ie fanbois who like shiny objects and will defend BS feature omissions to the death rather than dare question His Jobsness.

Besides, you forgot option c): Rant about it, make empty threats to leave the mac platform and change little more about your behaviour other than to side with your Windows-using friends more during your ongoing platform arguments.
Click to expand...
If you want to burn an HD disc, just buy an external BR burner, they're not that expensive anymore.
My point is: you can wine and annoy other people with this stuff and in the mean time do friggin' nothing, or you can try to fix "the problem" by yourself.
Have we all become such sheep that we cannot do things on our own anymore, but instead have to rely on the tools one company so graciously gives us?
I love my Mac, but I've had a couple of minor issues myself, e.g. that overscan problem which I can't rectify via my TV nor via OS X. Did I start a useless rant about how there should be a slider or whatnot in OS X? No, I just looked around and found that Plex has overscan settings. Problem solved. In one swoop, I also got to know a very nice Mac mediacenter, so I'm all the more happy.
If one is really is so clingy on BR, so that a Mac computer is immediately loosing value because of the lack of BR, well than a Mac is not for you. Buy a PC, nobody is stopping you.
 
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