swajames

Absolutely. It's definitely overdue. Apple rarely misses an opportunity to find ways to wring a few extra dollars out of its customers and I'd have expected this to have been available long before now.

heavy_g

Remember, Apple is one of the initial members in the Blu-Ray Disc Association. The consortium that started Blu-Ray.
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/about/...Companies.html

Apple is actually one of the Board of Directors.

I'm so glad Apple is on the side that won the format wars. They have at their disposal to use the digital distribution model or Blu-Ray disc model. Either way, Apple wins.
Look what happened to HD-DVD.

Go Apple.

heavy_g

Apple's role is only to provide hardware for Blu-Ray, not content. They haven't seen vast adoption of Blu-Ray (yet), and the complexity of licensing, that's why they haven't incorporated BR hardware into their systems.

swajames

I think we all get the content and hardware point... The reality is, however, that there is indeed a general adoption of the standard now. It's absolutely become a mass-market technology - and Apple would, of course, be charging a premium for the hardware. There's no reason for them not to include the player, at a minimum as an option. I'm as big an Apple champion as anyone, but they've dropped the ball here. Apple's customer base is far from averse to dropping extra cash for premium hardware, and the simple reality is that BluRay stopped being a premium product around a year ago.

heavy_g

totally agree. i had to buy a bluRay player and a blueRay burner and install them into my Mac Pros myself.

but the truth is.. i RARELY use them.

BetterMakeWay

Exactly my point.

People have been bitching a lot about Apple products, myself included sometimes. I so much wanted copy paste on iPhone since 2.0 and MMS but since 3.0 i hardly used them like 3-4 times. Hey but it feels good right?!

Anyway, if Apple would begin to sell BR as an option, and knowing Apple probably they would charge a more than decent amount of money, i would probably not get it.

UUronL

I don't see how those constraints and considerations are any different for someone like HP, Sony, or any other computer manufacturer. The markets they cover are the same, and have the same perceptions about emerging and/or "premium" technology components. So how exactly should we characterize the dynamic that permits those companies to offer BR + other features and components? How should we characterize the dynamic that consistently prevents Apple from doing the same?

This is part of what I mean when I say Apple puts training wheels on technology. They strive to make their offerings simple and easy, to the detriment of features. Apple decides what -commodity technology- it introduces to its users - in effect spoon-feeding them.

BetterMakeWay

Good point, but seeing what happens in Europe, with little evidence or data, i doubt i would call Sony or HP's decision a success. My friends scattered through Europe have BR writers on their PCs or Laptops but don't or rarely even use them.

So in a way i would assume Apple would only have to look at their "competitors" to see how well they did with it. I consider Apple's movement smart and restrained. If others are pushing ahead on something that doesn't mean that one should do the same.

I bet you though that if you submit a poll on the net and ask people if they would rather choose a Laptop or PC without BR but at a considerable lower cost, most of them would choose to live without it, for now!

In my country, as i said before, the biggest electronic retailers even withdrew their BR blanks from the stores. In a way i found it very odd since i stopped seing BR blanks over a year ago, and that was roughly the same time BR won the HD war and expected to see more of them on store shelves at lower prices. But that didn't happen.

I don't know about the US but in a global world i very much doubt that BR has become the standard or it's ready for mass delivery. Heck in some Institutions they still use 1,44MB FDDs