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".

I wonder if Blu-Ray can maintain a capacity advantage over HD-DVD in the long term.

My understanding is that a dual-layer HD-DVD-RW can have 50 GB capacity; existing players should be able to play these. The capacity of prestamped HD-DVD disks is limited by the manufacturing process.

If HD-DVD catches on, could they improve the manufacturing process to make a disk that looks like a 50 GB disk to the player? This transition might be as or more difficult as the transition to manufacture Blu-Ray disks, but it would be easier to justify to support a format that already has commercial success.

Toshiba also has demoed a 45 GB triple-layer HD-DVD disk. It may be tough to manufacture, but, again, it's much safter to make an investment in a commercially viable format than one with an uncertain future.

In the name of the moon, Barry Manilow will punish you.