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Apple customers have finally stopped asking for Blu-ray

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 27 Oct 2012 12:25 User comments (15)

Apple customers have finally stopped asking for Blu-ray

According to Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller, customers have finally stopped asking for Blu-ray drives in their Macs.
Many of the new Macs, especially the popular Mac Air ultrabook line, do not have an optical drive to begin with, so that may be helping Apple's case.

In 2008, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs made headlines when he called Blu-ray "a bag of hurt." At the time, Jobs said: "Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It's great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we're waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace."

Two years later, Blu-ray had become mainstream but Jobs reamined anti-Blu: "Blu-ray 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."

Schiller said this week in an interview that native Blu-ray support is probably never coming to Macs: "Schiller pointed out that one major application for optical drives, software distribution, has gone largely digital. As for video, he said that "Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology...So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks."

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15 user comments

127.10.2012 13:01

People pay that much for a computer without a dvd drive!?
I find it sad.

227.10.2012 13:26

they do what ever Apple wants

327.10.2012 16:13

I care less about what CrApple do or undo, they ask to much money for something that have a lot less value. Hope this web-site had less CrApple news. Thx.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 28 Oct 2012 @ 5:02

428.10.2012 01:05

Didn't it take MS forever to support Blu ray?
And it seems there is 3rd party support...

http://www.macblurayplayer.com/

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 28 Oct 2012 @ 1:06

528.10.2012 10:41

This would be similar to the reason why the latest iPhone has one the smallest screens available in a smart phone -- arrogance. Apple is out of touch and yet claim to have their finger on the pulse of the public/consumer. Okay, maybe the tech-illiterate public. Streaming will likely never be a direct replacement for Blu-Ray -- it's not even a direct replacement for DVD resolution. Apple is just greedy and doesn't want to pay a licensing fee.

628.10.2012 10:59

Originally posted by GernBlan:
This would be similar to the reason why the latest iPhone has one the smallest screens available in a smart phone -- arrogance. Apple is out of touch and yet claim to have their finger on the pulse of the public/consumer. Okay, maybe the tech-illiterate public. Streaming will likely never be a direct replacement for Blu-Ray -- it's not even a direct replacement for DVD resolution. Apple is just greedy and doesn't want to pay a licensing fee.
Ya but Blu ray will only be around for 10ish years at best, so in a way it is future thinking. The trouble is optical discs will be around for another 20-30 just because there is no huge jump coming for silicone based data storage.

728.10.2012 12:32

We got a standalone DVD-player when our first kid was 3, and started to watch DVD:s for ages 3andUP, whup de doo, that was 6 years ago, so we were late adopters with a reason.

Then later I wanted to play some computergames and bought a powerful laptop that came with a HD-DVD-drive, and then ofcourse 3weeks later it lost the war, so I bought one disk 50%off to test the drive, and liked the resolution so much that I switched to 720p.mkv right there and then.

We don't need the extras and warnings so the solution is simple, download ftw!

828.10.2012 13:55

Originally posted by ZippyDSM:
Didn't it take MS forever to support Blu ray?
And it seems there is 3rd party support...

http://www.macblurayplayer.com/

yes, MS took time but they finally did; and blu-ray can provide the best video despite limitations.
i don't know how that works in OSX since OSX does not have native support. windows version of macblurayplayer does NOT work. it failed to read my blu-rays.

Originally posted by GernBlan:
Streaming will likely never be a direct replacement for Blu-Ray -- it's not even a direct replacement for DVD resolution.

+1
itunes quality or the like will never match or be even close to blu-ray quality.

Originally posted by ZippyDSM:
Ya but Blu ray will only be around for 10ish years at best, so in a way it is future thinking. The trouble is optical discs will be around for another 20-30 just because there is no huge jump coming for silicone based data storage.

download option may not be future thinking either unless quality files are offered. web is also getting saturated, therefore, offering quality files will be harder since filesize may increase.

Originally posted by himpo:
We don't need the extras and warnings so the solution is simple, download ftw!

if the download means itunes quality, blu-ray is still FTW.

928.10.2012 14:09

The only reasonable conclusion that CrApple didn't come to put a bluray in their computers is that Sony was to take a bite & CrApple simply isn't going to have any of that.

Not to mention there is the myriad of other playback/burning software companies that have to be catered to in order to get the proper handshake happiness together within their machines & that just takes away from the bottom dollar.

It's Apple economics. As someone else stated, "Arrogance..."

1028.10.2012 16:59

Originally posted by ZippyDSM:
Originally posted by GernBlan:

-- arrogance.(+1)
Streaming will likely never be a direct replacement for Blu-Ray -- (+1)
Apple is just greedy and doesn't want to pay a licensing fee. (+1)
Ya but Blu ray will only be around for 10ish years at best, so in a way it is future thinking. The trouble is optical discs will be around for another 20-30 just because there is no huge jump coming for silicone based data storage.
Actually BD for their Capabilities will be sub-existing together with DVD's; just like today Vinyls & CD's. or just like 30,000 years ago diff. humans species did (8).

Originally posted by LordRuss:

Sony was to take a bite on CrApple (+1)

It's Apple economics. (+1)

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 28 Oct 2012 @ 5:01

1128.10.2012 20:15

Apple supporters have been wanting bluray support since the beginning. You too would stop asking for it after being ignored for 6 years.

1229.10.2012 00:17

apple wont put bluray or optical drives simply because they want users to buy stuff off then and only watch stuff they have purchased off them.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 29 Oct 2012 @ 12:18

1329.10.2012 02:02

The demand is gone because the customers are gone. Anyone who was waiting for a mac with a BD drive installed from the factory gave up and bought a PC long ago. Sure, windows took a while to get native BD support...but Windows PCs have been available with BD drives and 3rd party BD software pre-installed since before the PS3. That's part of the beauty of a PC...you can get the $250 laptop that does little more than Netflix and Office (a bit like a high-end Apple, except with a DVD burner), or you can get the $10,000 supercomputer...or anything in-between.

And yes...I know you can install a BD drive in a mac with 3rd party software...but anyone with enough knowledge to actually hold a screwdriver would probably save their money and just go hackintosh.

141.11.2012 12:11

What do you mean MS supports BR? If you mean the OS allows installing BR drives and 3rd party software (Pdvd, TMT, VLC), yes it does. I will define "MS supporting BR" when it can play the disk natively without installing codecs or other programs. I am talking, buy a pc, pop in a BR disk, open WMP, and press play. Of course I am talking pre windows 8.

151.11.2012 14:39

The only reason Apple users have stopped asking for it is that Apple keeps refusing to give it to them. Just buy an external one. They're cheap as chips. If you can afford that much for Mac in the first place, you can afford $75 for a drive.

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