Why hasn't Apple included a Blu-ray drive in any of their computers?
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted September 23rd 2006 3:10PM
posted September 23rd 2006 3:10PM
You've heard us discuss on the Podcast a few time that despite Apple being on the Board of Directors for the BDA, they have yet to release a product with an optional Blu-ray drive. Even the latest Mac Pro, which can be configured to cost over $16K, but no optional Blu-ray drive. Sure you could pick one up from a 3rd party, but this just isn't like Apple to not include the latest and greatest hardware in their products. Robert X. Cringely has a theory and we think it makes sense. After looking at Apple's latest announcment; the iTV, we can only expect downloadable HD content to be in Apple's future, after all, why else include HDMI and Component and not S-Video? Maybe it's so people can watch HD previews, doubt it. We agree with Cringely; Apple would rather sell you a downloaded HD movie than to help you watch it via Blu-ray. He could be wrong, the HD capabilities of the iTV could just be for viewing your photos on your HDTV.
Ask as stupid question...
Apple has made a business out of downloadable content. Don't think for a second they won't want to be the pioneers in distributing downloadable HD content. They already started withQuicktime 7 and the H.264 codec. The next step was getting movie companies to produce HD trailers. Also with hard drive space being so large, storing movies on them makes sense.Now that the studios have a method for selling their movies (iTunes 7), its only a matter of time before the movies get upgraded from 640x480 to 1080p, 720p and 480p. The speed at which this takes place depends on how long the movie studios take to move over to apples movie store, and how well the "iTV"sells. Blu Ray and HD DVD is just not taking off like Sony and the DVD consortium thought. Plus the prices are just too high for something that doesn't really do much more than DVD. Having to buy all of your movies all over againin physical form doesn't seem to appealing, but people will purchase a downloadable HD version of a movie they own already. The price needs to be right though.
Regardless of the success or failure of Bluray or HD-DVD as a medium for distributing movies. Optical storage alone is reason enough to add higher capacity drives to computers. I suspect Apple's reluctance to add Bluray to its lineup has more to do with a seamless end-to-end solution than some angle for enhanced cash-flow. If iMovie, Final Cut Pro, etc. aren't ready for Bluray, Apple won't release the hardware.
OK, this is totally, TOTALLY stupid, folks. Apple is in the downloadable media business, TRUE. And I think they are going to have HD content, TRUE (and I've been predicting an iTV like gadget for over a year on hdforindies.com).
BUT...I think the rason why there isn't a Blu-ray drive are manifold:
1.) I think Apple wants to intro a burner, not just a player - so wait for MWSF for that move, possibly paired with an 8 proc system
2.) they could go third party, but they have their favorites - they historically like to start with Pioneer - see past machines
3.) To NOT include a Blu-Ray (even the player) just to try to encourage downloadable, lesser quality content is just dumb. Dumb idea to think of, dumber to do.
4.) Blu-ray movie support is non-trivial - look at the home entertainment PC sector - you have to have a secured monitor, a secured optical disk, a secured OS, a secured player, etc. Not all the pieces are in place yet, and Apple doesn't like to release partial or incomplete or difficult to use solutions. When they ship a drive, it'll WORK, and not just be "sorry, data only, no movies" or some such nonsense.
While I'd love to buy into the conspiracy theories, this one just doesn't make much sense. There's more to Blu-Ray (or, for that matter HD-DVD) than movie playback. Professionals working with a Mac Pro are probably more excited to have a Blu-Ray drive for the massive data storage possibilities than for simple movie playback. This conspiracy, however, may come back to haunt us if Apple fails to deliver Blu-Ray playback through DVD Player in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Apple may want to sell HD movies, but its not gonna happen any time soon.
Studios arent even releasing DVD quality movies for download, are they going to suddenly be releasing HD-spec movies for download? So that in 3 months the deDRM program gets on the net so that people can start distributng the movies theyve downloaded?
And, the HD downloads would be most likely be the same or more expensive and definitely more restricted than the HD-DVD/BD counterparts.
HD-DVD and BD is all about control over content; downloading doesnt give studios that control.
I need to put this in a post that isn't the win-a-TV thread, as there's thousands of replies....but that TV isn't HD! It would be illegal to sell a 1024x768 TV in the UK as "HD Ready". At a minimum, the horizontal needs to be 1268 over here.
More importantly, what about internal HD DVD burners for the Mac Pro? Anybody got something like that? And will DVD Studio Pro support it.
THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO COMMENTED.
if this was the ENGADGET end of things this would be filled with a bunch of HD-DVD and BLU-Ray fanboys trying to say which optical media is better, thus staying of the original topic.
Apple won't cripple their pro systems for the sake of downloads. That'd be like them not including CD drives to boost music download sales. It's an absurd assumption.
Mike,
Blu-ray burners are available for the Mac Pro already as is softare, just not from Apple.
Jerome,
Here in the states the CEA considers 1024x768 HD.
Camperton,
DVD Studio Pro supports HD DVD already, not sure about Blu-ray.
Cuz blu-ray sucks. Duh!
man? you know how long it would take to download a 15gb movie? let alone a 30gb, 50gb, 60gb!! i'll take Disc's for now. what if your hard drive crashes, gets dead. sure i could rescue the hard drive with linux if im lucky but you can't playback HD DVD or Blu-Ray in Linux. & if thats no luck will you be able to download the movies again for free? if so than again you would have to download again! So heres to 50 tera hard drives
img eL- Just because BDs and HD-DVDs can hold that much doesn't mean the movies will necessarily be that large- DVD Studio Pro already allows compression of hi-def quality movies onto an ordinary 4.7GB DVD, thanks to the magic of H.264. now, yes, it's still going to be a bear trying to download 4 and a half gig, but it's easily something that could be done overnight or even quicker if a future release of the iTunes store supports torrenting.
Ben Drawbaugh- DVD Studio Pro does NOT support true HD-DVDs yet, nor Blueray- the "high Def DVD" option in Compressor is only compatible with Macs running Quicktime 7- its basically an H.264 quicktime movie on an ordinary DVD. It wont play in a set-top box. Maybe we will see an announcement at NAB this fall, but I wouldn't hold my breath. like many others have said, Apple waits until all parts of the solution are available and dependable, and that is hardly the case yet.
It's got absolutely nothing to do with downloadable content. Did Apple stop bundling DVD drives just because they put movies on iTunes? And certainly not CD-ROM's (though admittedly those have other PC uses).
Everybody pay attention, here's the answer: Apple doesn't launch hardware until they have enough of them on hand to launch "right now." Ever. And everybody in the know knows that there is a shortage of Blu-Ray drives and components. Its that simple. They won't launch hardware until they have enough of them to meet their projected demand. And that clearly isn't "right now."
Sure, and the fact that Apple still doesnt have a tuner card has nothing to do with the fact that they sell TV shows.
>"It would be illegal to sell a 1024x768 TV in the UK as "HD Ready". At a minimum, the horizontal needs to be 1268 over here."
Where did you get that idea?!?!?! the majority of HDTVs ("HD Ready") here (UK) ARE 1024x768. The only resolution requirement is at least 720 horizontal lines.
As for Apple, they are not ready with HDCP graphics cards etc to have a blue-ray drive. Probably not done disc burning support either yet (fully).
Because blue ray sucks and will lose the war just like beta did.
See here:
THEY HAVE BLU-RAY DRIVE!
http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/08/02/first.mac.blu.ray.drive/
ANOTHER SOURCE:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20060801234813.html
and another...
http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=6353
Just google it!
Everyone assumes that Apple has already decided that blu-ray is the format they will support, but if you look at Apple's public statements it is clear that they support both blu-ray and hd-dvd, I think they are waiting for a clear winner to emerge.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/apr/17hd.html
"Apple is committed to both emerging high definition DVD standardsBlu-ray Disc and HD DVD. Apple is an active member of the DVD Forum which developed the HD DVD standard, and last month joined the Board of Directors of the Blu-ray Disc Association."
Dave is wrong, unless he isn't...
It could be that it costs too much.
It could be that it costs too much.
Thanks, Glenn, for pointing that out. As usual, I don't think we can underestimate Jobs' market wisdom. Clearly they don't want to fully support a format that may lose out in the short-run. It may even be an indicator of his lack of faith in Blu-ray, in particular, as the format of the future.
Honestly, just read Cringley's take on it (as noted in the article). It's much clearer and thoughtout than any of the other shortsided ramblings on this page.
Its a pretty big jump between downloading MP3's from a store and HD Movie downloads, An MP3 album is often in the 100's of MB's if that, HD Movies are 15-20 GB, thats 100+ times bigger.
It takes time.
In the Windows world, people regularly ship things before they are ready, and users expect to have things not work.
Apple isn't going to ship a Blu-Ray drive until they can support it. HDMI playback with Blu-Ray requires that the operating system take extreme security precautions to prevent piracy of HD content. Content is encrypted and re-encrypted a number of times, and the OS must prevent the user from stealing content at a number of places: it's tough to make something "just work" when it's full of lockouts designed to make it "not work".
Even though Cringley has valid points and I think that most of his article could happen. I just don't think that this is the only reason why Apple hasn't included any kind of hi-def optical device in any of their products.
I think in a drop of the hat Apple could incorporate hi-def recorder support into any of their software. The software that is out their already, from Final Cut, Final Cut Express HD to iMovie HD, and DVD studio; all are practically waiting to include this final step. The real problem why Apple has not gone all guns blazing to supply a solution to hi-def optical recording demands is a supply issue.
Toshiba and Sony are not making enough blue laser devices fast enough. Can you imagine Apple went ahead and offered a Blue-Ray recorder in a MacPro with DVD Studio support. This would be one popular system, so popluar that I think Apple at this time would have a difficult time finding a supplier that could fulfill all the demand.
If Sony can't secure enough Blue Lasers for their PS3 and if Toshiba is trying to make enough for their own drives along with the XBOX addon drive, who is going to supply Apple with the drives they need?
this is so apple can make a new gen of all the computers mini imac pro macbook macbookpro with blueray in without an opt out, as an ecuse to keep prices up
Apple is one to drag its feet when new technologies arrive. Just look back to when USB 2.0 came out. They waited until it proved itself as a technology, and there was consumer demand for it.
This may be inconvenient, but it allows Apple to uphold the "Just Works" of their systems.
Blu-ray has not proven its self yet, and Apple is not going to offer it till it has.
JP wrote: "Apple is one to drag its feet when new technologies arrive. Just look back to when USB 2.0 came out."
That is about the most obsurd thing I've ever read on Engadget. If not for Apple, USB may never gained any ground. It was their inclusion of USB 1.0 that finally forced others to add support and finally pull away from serial and parallel.
Now, by the time USB 2.0 came out Apple was already forging new ground with firewire 400 (which in real world tests is faster than USB 2.0) and worling on Firewire 800.
Apple was also the first to move away from other slow technologies as the floppy drive and blah blah blah (I could go on but there are plenty of way for you to educate yourself, Google is your friend).
I don't believe that Apple wants to prematurely jump into the BD vs. HD-DVD battle. I think they have some far greater cards up their sleeve. Sure, eventually they'll want content producers to be able to burn high def disks, but I'll bet it shows up in a CTO config first. There is no reason for Apple to get caught up in a cat fight over high def formats when they have a far more imaginative and ambitious strategy and architecture they are just starting to unveil with iTV and the iTunes/iTunes Store revamp.
The age of the disk-centric media generation has matured with CDs and DVD. As it ages, there is no logical reason for high def disk formats to replace it when there are so many alternatives. Look at the longevity of CDs and DVDs. By the time a high def disk format gets settled, deployed and matured, it will already be archaic. Newer holographic, flash RAM and download technologies are already nearing a point where they could quickly surpass either BD or HD-DVD in features and functionality. Look for Apple to completely disrupt many technologies next year. After all Jobs said that it was the year of HD a while back... he just didn't tell us which year he was referring to.
For a great analysis of the beginning of Apple's roll out of it's new home theatre architecture, starting with iTV and iTunes/iTunes store revisions, read "Hidden Dimensions - Apple's Magic Sauce for Home Theater" by John Martellaro at MacObserver:
http://www.macobserver.com/columns/hiddendimensions/2006/09/21.1.shtml
Jim
my guess is becasue they don't have a name for it yet. what could it be? the super-duper drive?
Apple will make Blue Ray Players on thier next line of Macs. Just be Patient Engadget!!!!!