Someone isn’t on board.
“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,” said turtleneck enthusiast Big Steve Jobs in response to a customer’s complaint that the new Mac Mini didn’t come with a Blu-ray drive.
When said customer fired back that it was filesharing and piracy that lead to the dominance of the MP3, Jobs continued. “No, free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue.”
Though I agree that piracy is probably largely to blame for downloadable formats rising to prominence, Steve has a point – Blu-ray could be pretty inconsequential quicker than we think. But even if he’s right: Apple is one of the companies on the board of the Blu-ray Disc Association. Sup with that, Steve?
The irrational conspiracy theorist in me would tell me that Jobs plans to burn Blu-ray to the ground from the inside, and that the fact Jobs also has the most shares in Disney (a Blu-ray supporter) is all part of an elaborate plot. But it probably isn’t. And with the current state of content delivery being what it is, any sneaky plot on the part of Jobs would be kind of irrelevant anyway. Saying ‘Blu-ray will eventually lose to digital’ is about as prophetic as saying ‘the Sun will eventually explode’.
By the way, guys, the Sun will eventually explode. Imagine if that began tomorrow. Would totally ruin my day.
Why doesn’t anyone leave comments on this site?..
Anyways I agree with Mr. Jobs. BD and other forms of physical media will probably go away in a few years time. Why bother going out to buy a Blu-Ray for 30 bucks when you can (legally) download it at nearly the same quality instantly for half the price or stream it for pennies over Netflix?
The customer complaint is about not being given the choice of using it or not. Jobs again being arrogant and telling people what they should use and how. Jobs is a visionary and can see what’s ahead, but he’s also arrogant and does not care for customers if they do not agree with him.
I also agree that digital download will be the way of the future. The only thing that is holding me back currently, which is bandwidth.
Well, Mac Pros and Macs in general without Blu-ray are a no go! A Mac Pro with 2.26 GHz costs $3,299. An upgrade to 2.93 GHz lets the price jump to a whopping $5,899. Then add memory and hard disc and it is a fortune. And video cards for Macs top out a 512 MB…. that is MUSEUM TECHNOLOGY, not a useful computer.
A Dell or HP comes with Blu-Ray burner and player and player software for $2,000 – $2,5000
I know it is a Xeon, but hell there is no software to take advantage. A Mac Pro is not an Xserve!
Final Cut Studio without Blu-ray support is toast. I NEED today to make video editing and authoring for Blu-ray. So Macs are DoA (Dead on Arrival)! Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, Encore CS5 and After Effects CS5 are so cool! Try it with a 2 GByte video card, if you want you can have even Dual SLI cards in PCs… it is a world of a difference. I give a damn for iApps!
Ever tried to really work with HFS Extended Journal? It is a pain… why was ZFS canned? It is a shame!
OK, I got it Apple Computer Inc. is now Apple Inc. OK, accepted. But the iPad drops the network connection all 15 min. It is not just on Steve Jobs keynote, it is on every iPad. The iPhone OS 3.2 to 3.2.1 improved it a little bit, now the connection drops only all 25 min. Beside, the iPad, iPhone and iPod have the “best web experience” with a dropping connection and no Adobe Flash! Come on, get real guys!
The iPhone 4 drops the connection when I hold it just normal. The iPhone 3GS work fine with the very same AT&T network. So it is not AT&T, but Apple. Apple is going it solo with the iOS 4 / iPhone OS 3.x
Apple went solo with the Mac and Microsoft Windows made it Mac OS X a niche. Apple is creating a closed system (like 25 years ago!) again and this time they will lose it against Adobe / Google and the Android OS ecosystem.
Every Apple has at least an 50% premium on top of normal price. Since Apple changed from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. it become so arrogant. Apple is the new Microsoft, but much worse!!!!