Sorry, it's funny reading this as I try to navigate the "BD-Live" features of Sleeping Beauty on BluRay.

I think Apple's (Steve's) call is spot-on. BluRay as a storage medium IS great, and I wish I could get a burner in my notebook to store videos, backups, etc... BUT, apart from higher-res movies, I have a real problem with:

1) An entertainment disc that wants my SSN to unlock the special features (NO LIE, THIS IS MESSED UP, DISNEY!)

2) Bonus features to chat with/email your friends - but only if they own the same disc already?!?!

3) A confusing combination of features not supported by every player, and players that support features differently (Internet, resume playback, etc)

4) Players that won't play burned videos of my own home movies, unless I hand-edit the project files to remove arcane bits of pseudo-copy protection.

I don't think Steve said BluRay was evil, or bad, or superceded totally, TODAY, by another format. He said that it was too painful for them to really jump into the pool for their product lines. And after just trying to manipulate ONE commerical disc (from Disney, with Jobs on their board) on my new work PS3 (we're looking at BluRay for a client), I'm already done with even trying to play with this format for another year or two. It's too confusing, and just meant to "get in my way" - like the first few DVDs times 10,000, or exactly like the first few iterations of Flash (when people had no idea how/when to use it).

I say "Yay, Apple!" for avoiding the license costs for now, allowing a third party market to exist for external players if there is any demand, and waiting until the costs go down, and the functionality/end-user convenience goes up.

As for the laptops - I was waiting to see the new configs today... I think for my personal machine, I'm going to get a Dell Mini 9 and squeeze OS X onto it... But I'd love to have a new Macbook/MBP for work.

I'd pay to see a movie based on the Robocop Vs. Terminator comic...

We watched the Met's "Romeo and Juliet" at the crack of 10am - live, in HD... For all of seven minutes. Then they claimed storm winds, but for the life of me it looked like projector issues... And suddenly we were an hour behind playing catchup. Everyone got two free movie tickets (per person) at the end as an apology, but by then I had a full refund pocketed.

I just have issues with why they bother tout the live aspect. If all our issues were really feed and not local server/projector, then having a pre-download would be vastly superior. Also, they could run it at a more Opera-friendly time of day (10am was a bit early, to sync with a 1pm in NYC).

The extras - like seeing backstage between scenes, getting candid moments with the actors/singers, and even the hokey interviews during the intermission were all nice bonuses - due to show up on HD-discs, no doubt, but definitely a 'special' thing they could've used better to get people in the theater.

Was surprised this is their second season, given all the issues - but also they left out little things, like the "turn off your cellphone" reminder, which are just overly obvious to the movie theater industry, but maybe not in the Opera world?!?

Anyway, given that it was free, plus movie tickets, it's hard to fault the event. But, as someone who sees this kind of simulcast/remote event as one of the pillars of keeping movie theaters in operation longterm, they have a LONG way to go to get it right. I definitely wouldn't pay them double a movie ticket for what I got - 4 hours filled with delays, blackouts (audio only), and stoppages to rewind/replay the parts that were missed.

They could also learn a lot from the small-box TV world... Netflix/downloads are still the best way to watch a movie, rather than any kind of on-demand/streaming option. There was no true benefit to seeing it live even when it did work - you can't FEEL the singers' voices hitting you in the front row... So, again, I just don't get why that aspect was valuable or important. It's not like my friends at the Met in New York were going to call and ruin the ending for me if I didn't watch it at the same exact time.

(That said, I can see how that would be the case with something like the Superbowl - but then the point of watching that with a theater full of strangers is, what exactly?)

It's an interesting experiment. But like all things - they need more content, and a more "regular" schedule to follow to really bring in a steady stream of customers.

The best would be for Apple to use the backend infrastructure provided by Google for calendars, email, storage, etc, and provide tight integration to the iLife apps. They already* do this by having an AOL user account login from within iChat (though adding Yahoo/MSN would be nice, guys)... And, from all indications, Apple and Google like each other, and aren't overly consumed with eating each others' business - and they're both fairly anti-MS/fighting Redmond initiatives that encroach on their space. Given things that people are saying about Leopard, it seems that it would be even easier to have this kind of integration work seamlessly for the end user, even for things like Time Machine, which could use gDisk for storage (and for which there could be an integrated option to buy more gDisk space through iTunes/Finder/Time Machine interface). Just an idea!

Any chance that the .Mac-based chats are using a Jabber server, and thus that JABBER-BASED chats can now all be transparently encrypted? That would be cool. ;)