IT Professionals

Still No Blu-ray On The Mac

Posted by on Jul 2, 2010 | 5 Comments

There should be an image here!I’m not entirely sure why Apple maintains the stance that Blu-ray is not needed on the Mac. Considering it could be used as a data backup tool, it seems fairly foolish not to provide it as an option. In both Linux and Windows, Nero allows for Blu-ray data writing. Yet Mac remains the only platform leaving this functionality on the sidelines — why?

Some might think it has to do with keeping costs down — licensing costs for Blu-ray playback among other possibilities. I happen to believe that the issue is actually Steve Jobs being dead set on Blu-ray being a dead technology. Seriously, he sees Mac users backing up to something Apple controlled or getting their video content from iTunes. Everything is done over Wi-Fi or the data cable — nothing via an optical drive.

I can understand this perspective, but I also think that Apple is limiting the Mac experience (again) by making choices for the end user. Let the end user choose to upgrade to this option or not. Is that really too much to ask?

[Photo above by Cha già José / CC BY-ND 2.0]

[awsbullet:peter jackson blu-ray]

  • http://descasa.i.ph Silverlokk

    Could it be that Jobs believes that local storage is superfluous, and that we will save mostly to the cloud? And that he hasn’t removed DVD(R/W) drives because they doesn’t add much to the cost of the Mac anyway?

  • http://www.australianguy.com Dean

    My first thoughts on reading the headline was licensing fees since the Macs came down in price a little while back.
    After reading part of what you wrote I thought “Yeah! I guess if other manufactures can do it cost effective then so can Apple.”

    Final thought is that it may be a matter of “control”, a word being tossed around a lot with Apple right now, but I can’t help wondering if people actually use Blue Ray very often. It hasn’t yet been adopted as the de-facto standard in movie format here in Australia yet and we still have a much greater DVD selection, so I don’t know how this compares to the US. We were about 7 years behind in the VHS to DVD transition.

    Being it control though, as my reasoning as well, I can’t help but to go back also to cost and wonder if that still factors into the “control” aspect in the way that its a way, assuming the customer isn’t thinking its a big deal, to also continue to charge a little extra and make that bit of profit until Blue Ray is more of an all around expectation.

    Other computers for sale here also don’t have Blue Ray and if I had one I’m not sure I’d know what to do with it. As I’d still prefer external hard drives and as for something like giving a friend my entire *ahem* library of *cough* family videos and sing along recordings, I don’t know anyone else who has a Blue Ray drive, or I probably do and just don’t know about it.

    The point is that if it isn’t the standard then it makes sense that Apple isn’t going to spend the expense. We’re just now getting the camera on the iPhones that most people were expecting last time around, for example.

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  • Grant

    I am getting tired of hearing about owners of large businesses stroking their own egos. Leave it to the user to decide what they want.

    Linux looks better and better everyday, beside the steep learning curve. Oh well I guess back to stroking egos?

  • Howard Blair

    It’s all about control and the fact that Macs *have* to be sold as a preconfigured unit. Nobody but Apple, including Psystar, is allowed to decide what ships as standard equipment in a Mac, therefore Jobs & Co have decided that nobody gets a Blu-Ray unless Apple allows it, and people would expect to be able to play Blu-Ray movies if they got the drive…which means Apple has to license a Blu-Ray decoder.