No consumer cares what programming hoops it might take to get Blu-ray disks to play on a computer.
There's more to the world than what consumers care about. It's humorous to me that people who complain about DRM and Apple's lack of flexibility are suggesting that Apple should be forced to participate in an unjustifiably oppressive DRM scheme, beholden to an inflexible third party. You'd think they'd be happy that someone was taking a stand against more and more invasive DRM, even if that meant a little sacrifice. But of course it's all about convenience and their wishes and not about the actual principles of the matter.
The problems with the requirements of implementing Blu-ray aren't primarily technical. They're principled. Some amount of DRM is reasonable (undesirable, yes, but reasonable). Blu-ray crosses that line. Apple doesn't stand to profit from the decision--iTunes video isn't making buckets of cash and Macs work with over a dozen digital video stores, and of course they lose out on a handful of sales. But like they did with the music industry, they've drawn a firm line. The explosion of Blu-ray combo packs has shown it to be a success, and those combo packs are driving faster Blu-ray adoption, with benefits on all kinds of devices as a result.
Blu-ray's audio and visual quality enhancements outweigh that encroachment in a disposable, dedicated box, but many people, including myself and evidently Apple, feel that the burden far outweighs the benefit when it comes to infiltrating a computer, which is not suited for the benefits and can't justify the onerous DRM.
I stand by my now modified statement that no argument, no matter how well constructed or expressed will be acceptable to those of us who desire Blu-ray capability as an option under OS X on a Mac.
I absolutely agree. And that's what makes such people tiring and unreasonable. They don't care about the realities and refuse to recognize that taking a highly vocal, absolutist stance on an utterly trivial issue isn't going to make anyone care more about it, least of all Steve Jobs.
Apple has made a reasonable decisions not to serve those customers. Those customers as a result have at the very worst the slight inconvenience of not being able to watch a Blu-ray film under OS X, and a wide range of alternatives to pursue from a wide range of companies.
As such, I've actually given up on Apple for this purpose (and the option of better GPUs on their laptops and iMacs) long ago and buy only the minimum Mac I need for work and home.
And that's a perfectly reasonable response.
I just think it's sad that so many people continue to defend the short-sighted arrogance of Apple's "spiritual" leader (and for many Apple borders on religion).
That he's arrogant doesn't make him wrong or short-sighted. Both the market data and I disagree that Blu-ray has any meaningful impact on the computer market. If that ever changes, Apple will reconsider.
What's really sad is the polarization and histrionics. For every brainless Jobs worshipper, there seem to be two people with the exact opposite obsession.
Steve Jobs has always been arrogant and highly decisive, and he's far from infallible, but he's clearly been right far more often than wrong. None of that is news.
