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

[LethalWolfe]

Please, we've been through this, and you're still arguing semantics. Nobody cares if "Full HD" was created by marketing departments. Hype or not, 1080p is a significant leap in resolution over 720p. There has to be some way for people to tell the difference when seeing something written on the side of a box.

Way to completely miss the point. Of course there is a difference between 720p and 1080p but neither is more 'true hd' than the other. They are both HD according to the ATSC (the organization that makes the standards). It's like saying the only 'true Mac' is a Mac Pro because it's the biggest. Yes, marketing departments love putting bigger numbers on the side of the box (ghz, megapixels, etc.,) to quantify 'better' for the lowest common denominator shopper but that doesn't mean we should buy into their spiel hook, line and sinker.

I'll pick a broadcast quality 720p monitor over a 1080p bargain-bin HDTV from Walmart any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Image size and image quality aren't the same thing.


Lethal

 

[krzyglue]

Wanting to store a bunch of discs in your room baffles me. The industry is moving away from physical media.

Disappointing how you try to turn that argument around while simultaneously missing the point entirely. The POINT is some (perhaps many) people plainly prefer optical-media, for WHATEVER reason (internet bandwidth rendering streaming implausible, perceived quality, etc.). They would enjoy the OPTION to play their blu-rays on their MBP while on the plane, for example.

 

[janstett]

I hate optical discs and can't wait for Blu-ray. Seriously. Downloadable movies are superior in almost every way.

In terms of quality, they are inferior in almost every way. WTF are you thinking?

 

[jettredmont]

That said, I think the only reason they don't adopt blu-ray drives is because it would cut into their iTunes sales lol Steve is a pretty smart cookie though... we'll see...

Not that anyone will read this, but ...

Steve knows how simple accounting works. A 22% profit margin on a $1,000 computer is $220. That's a LOT of rental downloads. In other words, for this argument to make sense as the reason Apple isn't putting BluRay into their computers, you'd have to assume that every purchaser of their computers (on average) makes about 73.6 MORE $2.99 rentals over the course of the lifetime of that computer than they would with a Blu-Ray drive installed (again, a $2.99 rental of a hi-def stream is pretty competitive with a Blu-Ray disk rental and certainly less expensive than purchasing the disk for a single viewing).

I don't think Apple makes anywhere near that many HD rentals via iTunes. In fact, I'd be surprised if the HD rental business is even a non-negligible profit center for Apple. It's a stake in the ground, staking a claim on the future, not a reason for Apple to sabotage current profits to hold off the inevitable.

Personally, I completely agree that the old plastic disks are past their useful lifetimes. I'd much rather put 300 movies on a $100 terabyte drive than have to store 300 DVD jewel cases and disks, and I'd much rather be able to scan through that library of movies in a searchable and filterable interface on my 50" TV than leaf through the jewel case covers or read the sides of those jewel cases to find what I'm looking for. Even if the quality is lower (ATV quality instead of DVD quality, or ~DVD quality HD instead of BluRay quality), the convenience and durability of bits instead of disks is a huge benefit.

Would having a BluRay in my Mac lessen how often I rent from iTunes? Probably not. I like the convenience of renting from iTunes on occasion. Of course, it's really rare that I even do that, more often renting a disk from RedBox or the like to watch for the night, or if I like it a lot buying the DVD, ripping it to my media library, then putting the DVD in cold storage as disaster recovery ... maybe I'd switch to renting BluRay disks for the real visual movies, but that's eating into the DVD rentals a whole lot more than the iTunes rentals (which, really, again, compete with DVD rentals of quality, not BluRay, despite the "resolution" being 720p).

 

[janstett]

Why would anyone want a hard copy? To me, it's like having a bank account. Would you rather have your employer pay you in hard cold cash or wire it automatically to your bank account? For personal purposes, hard copies of movies don't make sense. Why have piles of DVDs or Blu-Ray discs when you can just store them on an external HD? Discs take up space and I doubt you watch them very often.

I've had just the opposite experience. I have about 4 TB on a RAID 5 NAS. I never would have had space to rip all my DVDs (I collected about 200-300 over the years). So I ripped a few of my favorites, and more recently HD cable rips of some other favorites.

As my music collection has exploded to include a lot of hi-res music from all kinds of sources, I've had to clear off space, and guess what goes, because it takes up a lot of space and you don't access it that often? That's right, movies and TV shows get moved off into deep storage.

So in the end, storing content you don't have room for and access only infrequently is a perfect reason to still have a "hard copy".

 

[Mac'nCheese]

Not that anyone will read this, but ...

Steve knows how simple accounting works. A 22% profit margin on a $1,000 computer is $220. That's a LOT of rental downloads. In other words, for this argument to make sense as the reason Apple isn't putting BluRay into their computers, you'd have to assume that every purchaser of their computers (on average) makes about 73.6 MORE $2.99 rentals over the course of the lifetime of that computer than they would with a Blu-Ray drive installed (again, a $2.99 rental of a hi-def stream is pretty competitive with a Blu-Ray disk rental and certainly less expensive than purchasing the disk for a single viewing).

I don't think Apple makes anywhere near that many HD rentals via iTunes. In fact, I'd be surprised if the HD rental business is even a non-negligible profit center for Apple. It's a stake in the ground, staking a claim on the future, not a reason for Apple to sabotage current profits to hold off the inevitable.

Personally, I completely agree that the old plastic disks are past their useful lifetimes. I'd much rather put 300 movies on a $100 terabyte drive than have to store 300 DVD jewel cases and disks, and I'd much rather be able to scan through that library of movies in a searchable and filterable interface on my 50" TV than leaf through the jewel case covers or read the sides of those jewel cases to find what I'm looking for. Even if the quality is lower (ATV quality instead of DVD quality, or ~DVD quality HD instead of BluRay quality), the convenience and durability of bits instead of disks is a huge benefit.

Would having a BluRay in my Mac lessen how often I rent from iTunes? Probably not. I like the convenience of renting from iTunes on occasion. Of course, it's really rare that I even do that, more often renting a disk from RedBox or the like to watch for the night, or if I like it a lot buying the DVD, ripping it to my media library, then putting the DVD in cold storage as disaster recovery ... maybe I'd switch to renting BluRay disks for the real visual movies, but that's eating into the DVD rentals a whole lot more than the iTunes rentals (which, really, again, compete with DVD rentals of quality, not BluRay, despite the "resolution" being 720p).

I read it.

 

[scoobydoo99]

Quality.

I am not a poor college student watching movies in my dorm on a macbook. I am a tech geek who makes a good living. Not rich. Just good. There are quite a lot of people like me, too, who enjoy having a big television, nice media center, or dedicated home theater. It only takes a good living to afford that these days, and it's getting more affordable all the time. I don't need to settle for watching my movies on a 17" laptop or tiny 32" television where I can't discern the difference between DVD, Blu-Ray, and Streamed "HD."

So many people in here claim the Blu-Ray is dead at the hands of streaming video. Now, I fully buy the argument around on-demand convenience, cloud storage, subscription-based services, etc. I'm no dummy. That really and truly is the future. But the future isn't nearly as close as you think. And while those are solid, theoretical arguments, not a single one of them is the reason behind my home movie-watching setup.

Quality. That's the motivation behind my having a home theater. Everything else be darned. First and foremost, I want an awesome experience watching movies. That's why I've invested thousands of dollars into heart-pumping surround sound, a huge high-definition screen, etc. Inferior media spoils it all.

Physical DVDs upscaled to 720p by my 9-yr old HTPC running Windows 98 have superior sound and video to anything I can download from iTunes. You say that Blu-Ray is bested by streaming? Streaming hasn't even bested decade-old DVD technology yet.

There's a reason people go to the theaters and a reason why they buy big TVs. Movie-watching is supposed to be awesome, not convenient. Blu-Rays are frakkin' awesome. Even DVDs are awesome relative to streamed movies. Streaming just doesn't solve the right need when it comes to blockbuster movies.

Perhaps you misunderstood. I am not a poor college student either. And I make far better than a good living. My home theater includes a 60" Kuro (because plasma is superior to LCD for low-light home theater viewing), custom 7.1 in-wall audio, etc etc. I was even an early adopter of Blu-Ray back when they made HD/Blu-Ray combo players for $1000 (I gave the player away, btw b/c it wasn't worth selling). But the reality is that when given a choice, I prefer surfing my Apple TV from the couch and queueing something up immediately vs. handling physical media and waiting. Yes, if I really wanted the absolutely most stunning presentation of Avatar (if I was interested in watching it), I would want to watch it on Blu-Ray. Also, I recognize that streaming is inferior, which is why I prefer to watch content that is synced to the AppleTV hard drive. As far as backup, I use 2 1TB externals solely for backup of my movies and TV.

My intent was to express my belief that the media consumption habits of consumers are changing. Just as LaserDisk was a niche market for many years, I'm sure Blu-Ray will hang on as well. But I don't think it will be as successful as DVD was. And, as I said, I expect that local or cloud storage and streaming will improve in speed and quality. Just look at today's rumors of 1080p for an imminent Apple TV-type product. It will happen. In the meantime, I enjoy the convenience of my digital content on my AppleTV, iPad, iPhone, MacBook Pro, and Cinema Display. No it's not what my TV and audio systems are capable of, but I don't mind. I just wanna laugh at Sheldon or see whats up with Sookie and Bill, and then move on

 

[LethalWolfe]

Not that anyone will read this, but ...

Steve knows how simple accounting works. A 22% profit margin on a $1,000 computer is $220. That's a LOT of rental downloads. In other words, for this argument to make sense as the reason Apple isn't putting BluRay into their computers, you'd have to assume that every purchaser of their computers (on average) makes about 73.6 MORE $2.99 rentals over the course of the lifetime of that computer than they would with a Blu-Ray drive installed (again, a $2.99 rental of a hi-def stream is pretty competitive with a Blu-Ray disk rental and certainly less expensive than purchasing the disk for a single viewing).

IMO, when Apple finally takes TV from 'hobby' to 'full speed ahead' status they don't want a competing product like Blu-ray sitting in their machines. It's not about how lukewarm video on the iTMS is today it's about how hot Apple thinks it can make it tomorrow. Jobs wants to be in control and he wants everyone in Apple's walled garden.

Apple, MS, and Sony are all jockeying for position to be the digital hubs in people's living rooms and while MS and Sony are in the lead now Apple's MO has been to hang back and deliver a better product after learning from the mistakes of the trailblazers.


Lethal

 

[MacCommander]

You can call Steve stupid and greedy, but last time I checked he just paraded Apple's market cap over Microsoft's (while taking no salary OR bonuses). He must be doing something right.

Do you know anything about economics? It didn't matter when Microsoft had a higher cap and it doesn't matter now that Apple had a higher cap. There is a lot more to the whole picture.

 

[MacCommander]

I hate to break it to some of you living in a dream world but most people in the US still use optical media. Jobs not wanting Blu-rays hurts Apple customers.

 

[janstett]

iTunes Store, and even Vimeo, YouTube, et al. all offer content that is much higher than DVD resolution. What year do you think this is?

That's only half the equation -- the other half being bitrate.

 

[toke lahti]

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... we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.

Just skipped 1100 replys, but I sense a ridiculous reality distorsion here.
"More and more", "will be", "may see", yeah right...

Unless Apple is going to build new global internet, like today, there's no chance that this will happen globally within this decade. Maybe after that, but that means for average Mac user "wait for another 5 years to get those nice movies in good quality to your Mac".

Comparison to high end audio formats is just plain wrong. If you look at global statistics, iTunes movies are like those audio formats. They are selling far more bd-players/burners than Apple sells anything hardware combined. They are selling as many bd-movies than appstore apps. Why the other one is remarkable and the other "is beaten"?

In Finnish when someone says as stupid things as Steve here, we say that a frog came out of his mouth. This is in a same level than when Nokia's CEO recently said that phone cameras will soon replace professional dslr's.

For MS's part, they were forced by the movie industry to only output high-res video to HDCP protected displays and video cards...

Isn't the situation identical with OsX & iTunes movies?

To people who like OsX & bd-movies this means that you will have to install yourself other os & bd-drive to your Mac. Windows is so expensive just for playing bd-movies, that I just wish, that someone would make "bd-playerOS", which would only mimic bd-player and would cost only fraction of windows & bd-player software right now.
Or could that be done in linux?

 

[krzyglue]

Interesting, I noticed how they built 'click2flash' right into the OS,
and that's because?

So that those who want the OPTION of running the flash whatever can do so, and those that don't have the OPTION of not doing so.

I still think the iPhone is the best smartphone on the market right now, but the above is sadly more than can be said for it.

 

[janstett]

Actually, mine is. I purchased all 15 seasons of ER in HD a few weeks back and downloaded them all in a few days. I do that kind of stuff all the time and my ISP has not complained in two years.

Obviously you don't have Comcast.

My smaller cable co was bought by them and they informed me there is a 250 GB cap on my "unlimited" and I was violating their terms of service by using so much bandwidth. All this by streaming music to my iPhone.

And of course they don't provide you with a way to measure your bandwidth usage nor any kind of warning when approaching it.

If I truly had unlimited bandwidth, I'd be happier about the prospects of online media.

 

[krzyglue]

Here's one. I have two actually (only using one, though). One is a fiberLAN connection, an ethernet port in the hallway... that one has 100 Mbit up- and downstream, I can push it to about 80-85 Mbit. I pay $33/month for that one. The other is cable w/ 100 Mbit downstream, 10 Mbit upstream. Costs slightly more and has slower upload speed so I opted for the other one.

The catch? I live in Sweden. Most Swedes who live in apartments/condos have either one or both of those connections, and those who don't can get 60 Mbit DSL. So why do we have this? Well, one of the benefits of living in a quasi-socialist country is that when the government feels something is worth investing in, they'll throw in a few billion and just do it. So we had this nationwide rollout of fiber infrastructure in 1999-2000. They then allow privately owned carriers to hook up with that network, so they take it from there (i.e. the city limits).

I'm not sure how this stuff works in the US but I'm guessing it's a slow process with no government interference/assistance, probably involving negotiations with grumpy land owners who don't want no stinkin' infrastructure on their properties... too many cooks etc.

Oh dear, how I envy your connection

*stares down at $30 CAD bill for 6mb DSL*

Funnily, relative to the States Canada is also quasi-socialist, and yet we have nothing like what you speak of in Sweden. EDIT: Well, okay, a couple of condos downtown do, but nowhere else.

 

[toke lahti]

...the convenience and durability of bits instead of disks is a huge benefit.

Are you suggesting that hdd's are more durable for archiving than optical media?

 

[krzyglue]

Don't you all realize it has nothing to do with wanting to restrict your ability to play back blu-ray disks and everything to do with not being willing to compromise their operating system coding by building in all the protection that the content companies want?

I have clients that moved off of windows because of the copy protection being built so deep into the audio and video stacks in vista/7. It was screwing with their software in random ways.

I have no desire for apple to bend to the level of drm they want into the os itself. While I would love blu-ray drives for high density backup, it would be to confusing for consumers to have a blu-ray drive they couldn't play protected blu-ray disks in. External hard drives of 2+ TB are getting to be a better deal anyways.

Karl P

That's why Windows XP can play blu-rays right?

 

[toke lahti]

But the reality is that when given a choice, I prefer surfing my Apple TV from the couch and queueing something up immediately vs. handling physical media and waiting.

Good for you.
Sadly many home theather hobbyist care more about picture quality than you.
And nobody's here or elsewhere is trying to take that aTV away from you.
Giving bd as option, wouldn't take anything away from Apple now.

I guess this is all about longer evolution of Apple's walled garden. When in 2015 all Macs have years had sdxc-slot and other connectors slowly dropping away, Apple announces that since the internet still isn't fast enough, they are starting distributing movies in sd-cards. With a nice premium, of course.

 

[toke lahti]

Jobs not wanting Blu-rays hurts Apple customers.

Yep, good for Apple, bad for its customers.
Over 1200 replys in this thread is hard evidence that there is lot of mac people that would like to have an OPTION for bd-movie playback in OsX.

 

[greenmeanie]

Good move Steve.
I am surviving just fine without it.

 

[iSlave]

Just man up and get a real computer - a PC. Stop wasting your time on these overpriced, Fisher Price activity centres that Apple themselves no longer care about.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

How is that an easy solution when Apple will lose alot of revenue from offering that option? I suppose I'm not the only one that is thinking about "himself."

And you don't think they might be losing customers for "Macs" because they don't offer modern video standards??? Besides, not offering Blu-Ray solely because they want to push iTunes smacks of more tying type anti-trust violating behavior (using one product to try and force sales of another product instead of letting those products compete on their own). OSX is a publicly available operating system. Its job is to support 3rd party software. Jobs is purposely denying support for a type of software solely because he wants you to buy HIS software through iTunes instead. That's just wrong and I'm sorry people like you cannot see it. If Jobs doesn't want to be in the operating system business then he might as well kill the "Mac" right now and get back to selling toys and gadgets.

So a statement from 2008 (or 2009) retroactively becomes a lie because some of the licensing mess he was commenting on finally got straightened out in 2010? I'll remember that for the next time that you tell me what your local weather is...

The licensing issue was solved not long after he made the statement and amounted to about $29 per computer to get the latest storage and video standards. The Mac is supposed to be a professional video platform yet you cannot even use industry standard high definition devices on it. It's pathetic. It's Steve's ego run completely amok. The Mac is not heading in the direction it should be heading in (i.e. getting ahead and staying ahead of the Windows market). Macs have sub-standard video chips/cards these days (making a mockery of a once famous computer known for its high-end video output) and now they have sub-standard video standards dating back 15 YEARS while Blu-Ray has been available now for over 4 years and has been the DEFACTO STANDARD for HD delivery now for over 2 years. Apple is no longer dragging their feet. They've decided it would be better to cut them off than stop dragging them. It's ludicrous behavior from the king of ego himself, Steve Jobs. You don't need Blu-Ray. This reminds me of Bill Gates. 640k (DVD/SD) ought to be good enough for everyone!

 

[iEdd]

The halo effect is taking a hold of me though. Planning on an iPad in the near future and maybe a Mac puter later on.

Hurry. Seeing as they don't upgrade them anymore, you better get in soon while they are still relevant to modern computing.

(half-serious)

 

[Data]

Just bought the 2 disk special edition Blade runner in glorious FULL HD Blu Ray, it would be so nice to be able to watch them on my superduper 27inch more then HD iMac, but hey steve says i should watch crappy lowbitrate downloadversion of it instead. Oh wait i'm not in the US so i can't even do that,no movies for download available in the EU.

I just wish steve would come to his sences and start wanting the best on his devices and for his costumors,instead of shareholders and that damned low quality itunes store.

Stop that bag of hurt bull and get back to given your costumors the best experience they can have on there devices, please,pretty please ,steve.

2005 you said THIS THE YEAR OF HD steve, its now almost 6 years later and and i still can't watchREAL HD on the machine i bought from you.
And seeing that all other brands offer it,the bag of hurt must be pointing to your wallet if you would allow it instead of that your cotumors would agree with you and find it a bag of hurt aswell.

Please stop being a baby about this stuff,and give the quality we want movie wise on our great macs,thank you.

 

[Ironworker808]

Hurry. Seeing as they don't upgrade them anymore, you better get in soon while they are still relevant to modern computing.

(half-serious)

It's not too surprising, considering Jobs' comments at D8 about moving to mobile products.

Honestly, I doubt I'll ever get a Mac. iDevices fit me just fine. I"m a super casual user. Browsing, some light gaming, email....that's about it! There are much cheaper machines to do that on rather than buying a Mac.

The phone and the pad should take care of my iNeeds nicely.