I suggest Mr. Cringely hasn't thought this through. He thinks that Apple has a bandwidth problem. That is not where the problem is, the problem is distribution from an ISP to the end user.

In the UK, distributing one GB from ISP to end user costs the ISP around Ј0.55 to Ј0.60; the cost of getting data from a large data source, like Apple, to the ISP is negligible. Not translate this to 1080p with 20 GB file sizes: You get download costs (to the ISP, who will in turn charge the end user) of about Ј10 per movie. At that cost, rental is out of question and selling movies is not really doable.

Yeah, the only reason I think _most_ Mac users who even care (I'd guess less than a third of those who have bought Macs in the last 16 months, just a guess) want BD drives is not to watch movies but to store files on them. When we have 1TB HDDs but only 8.5GB of space per dual-layer DVD it can become a problem to create an effective backup on discs. The 48GB of Data or whatever Blu-Ray can do at maximum is far more interesting to me than how many episodes of Lost it can fit.

As to why Apple hasn't added it yet, I imagine it has more to do with Cost than anything else, unlike Sony with the PS3 I suspect Apple doesn't see any reason to loss-lead Blu Ray-equipped Macs at the same price as current models, nor do they want to raise the price.

A quick check of NewEgg shows Blu-Ray drives (ones that can burn, not just read) are still in the $450 range, which is at least 5-6x the cost of the fastest SuperDrive apple ships currently. Why wouldn't Apple just wait until next year when the drives are much cheaper and the format is finalized?

You'd think by now Robbie would know better than to apply the same analysis to Apple as he does to Dell/HP/etc, but obviously not.

This is Mr. Cringley's attempt at lateral, out-of-the-box thinking. We all laugh (with derision) at those with the lack of vision (B. Gates: "640K of memory should be enough for anybody"; Ken Olsen - DEC: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home"; John Dvorak about a mouse: "There is no evidence that people want to use these things."). Mr. Cringely is clearly trying very hard not to leave behind one such quotable statement.

Unfortunately, his opinion doesn't make much sense. It is doubtful that Google would become Apple's new Akamai. They have their own agenda and they're (currently) bigger than Apple anyway. Apple will be providing blu-ray drives sometime this year. They aren't going to do an unscheduled product refresh, just so that a few people who are on the bleeding edge could get themselves a blu-ray Mac. By the scheduled refresh time, Apple will have the proper infrastructure in place. Probably sometime this summer, they'll update FCP studio (DVD-SP), as well as iLife (iDVD -> iBD) to support full 1080p BD authoring, and will probably announce this together with the hardware refresh, offering BD option.

"The gist was that if Apple can stall long enough, get this distribution system working for 1080p, and sell an Apple TV for less than a Blu-ray player, their mainstream customers will never have to even think about Blu-ray and only the die hard techies will complain."

Seeing that the Apple TV hardware can only play 720p, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GUY TALKING ABOUT??????

"The gist was that if Apple can stall long enough, get this distribution system working for 1080p, and sell an Apple TV for less than a Blu-ray player, their mainstream customers will never have to even think about Blu-ray and only the die hard techies will complain."

Seeing that the Apple TV hardware can only play 720p, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GUY TALKING ABOUT??????

Quote

Guest wrote:
"The gist was that if Apple can stall long enough, get this distribution system working for 1080p, and sell an Apple TV for less than a Blu-ray player, their mainstream customers will never have to even think about Blu-ray and only the die hard techies will complain."

Seeing that the Apple TV hardware can only play 720p, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GUY TALKING ABOUT??????

Is what the AppleTV is capable of, same as your digital cable box and your DirecTV receiver, because that is really what the aTV was aimed at originally. I wouldn't be surprised if a hardware rev does add a more capable video card and 1080p output, but I would be surprised if we see it anytime before October.

The aTV has roughly the same video hardware as this iBook ( a bit more vRAM too), and the iBook barely plays 1080p video itself because that does entail a significant amount of power. So I doubt it will happen with anything less than a hardware rev.

The only reason to have a Blu-Ray burner in a Mac is to master Blu-Ray video content. The cost of blank media plus the number of discs needed for Blu-Ray backups outstrips their 48GB capacity. A backup hard disk is the answer for backups. That's why Apple created "Time Machine".

The only reason to have a Blu-Ray burner in a Mac is to master Blu-Ray video content. The cost of blank media plus the number of discs needed for Blu-Ray backups outstrips their 48GB capacity. A backup hard disk is the answer for backups. That's why Apple created "Time Machine".

I'm not sure where you got the notion that AppleTV has roughly the same video hardware as the iBook. If I remember well, when iBook came around (5 years ago), it had G4 PPC processor and a Radeon video card with 32MB of video RAM. Even the most recent model, from about three years ago didn't have any better video specs. The closest hardware to AppleTV could probably be the Mini, except AppleTV has a dedicated video card, probably a newer version of the Radeon chipset.

IBook cannot play any HD video at all; it's too underpowered (when it came out, there WAS no HD). On the other hand, today's MacBooks (and pros) have no trouble handling 1080p. If MacBook can play it, with a shared video RAM and on-board video chip, AppleTV, with a dedicated video card and RAM, should have no problem, as long as that card supports native 1080 resolution (which I'm sure it does). Which means, it's all in the software.

It could happen, but would be of little value; currently a "high quality" (1440x720p) HD movie takes 8 hours to start watching on an average broadband connection (768kbps). I cannot imagine how much one would have to wait before 1080p movie downloads.

You can have all the Google data centers in the world, but if only 1/10th of 1% of users have sufficient internet connections to their home it's irrelevant. You could put the data center across the street from me, and it wouldn't do me any good. It would still take far, far, FAR too long to download a 1080p video file.

Bandwidth schmandwidth! Get back to the future bubs. Downloading is one thing, but the issues of a BRD Burner in a Mac seem inevitable - and a bit late already IMO. To not be able to play a BRD disk in a new Mac today is embarrassingly weak. A BR disc will be as cheap as a CD sooner than you think, eventually replacing DVDs and CD's...it's only logical. Do not confuse the hardware in a Mac with future might-be's and maybe's in terms of Delivery of high def stuff. It's 2 different subjects.
Re: Delivery of 1080p, today it might be crazy slow at broad band connection for a download, but with streaming and creative cache-ing and compression - in the future you may just "play" a movie in real time (after a healthy bowl-'o-cache) while your HD is recording it.

Didn't BD just win the HD format war like 2 weeks ago? You'd all be screaming at the top of your lungs right now about how stupid Apple was to put BD burners in Macs if HD-DVD had eeked out the victory instead. The cost of supporting this stuff isn't just the drives. There are software stacks and patent suites to license too (for example), and until you have a critical mass over which to amortize those kinds of costs, the whole proposition is too expensive to take to market.

Also, I could be totally wrong on this, but isn't it true that Apple's HD content only goes out to Apple TV and not to iTunes running on Macs? It's just fine at 720p, because that is where the bulk of installed base of HDTV is right now and will be for at least a couple more years. Furthermore, a majority of big screen owners aren't sophisticated enough to appreciate the difference between SD and HD, let alone 1080p. Just stroll through your neighborhood and notice how many people have Fox News Channels stretch out across their widescreens.

I could use an upgrade (from a Dual 2.7 GHz G5), but I can also save my money and wait till they set everything up so that I can simply backup and distribute my own HD video content. I'm not even buying an HDTV or an HD player until then.

http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Parts

Yeah you're right, I was thinking of the old iMacs with nVidia GPUs, not this iBook. Still, it ain't happening with a 64MB 7300 GO, was my point. Nor, as you pointed out, is it important or feasible at this time.

As to the guest who was talking about the cost of Blu Ray discs, it wasn't long ago that Dual Layer DVDs were close to $15 a pop, give it a bit for volume to increase. Also, Hard Drives FAIL, just had a month-old Maxtor external, bought just for backup, die on me a few weeks ago...while I was burning DVDs from it. So yeah, I could use a better solution than that, thanks.

Also, I have to agree with Bosco, did anybody really expect them to have the drives ready when the War just ended? Not that I think Apple ever had any intention of supporting HD-DVD, but they probably have to keep up at least the appearance of neutrality.

Apple might be holding on the realese of a blue ray drive because they don't want those small plastic disks to compete with the 299-499$ time capsule they just realesed.

Becourse Mac is loosing it! The centralistic "Khaliffa system"-Apple is loosing to the more democratic Windows platform, that has much more contributors.

Apple is writing drivers for their Apple system and has only few graphic card options. Everybody is writing drivers to Windows graphic cards with a multiple variety of graphic cards.
Everybody is contributing to Blu-Ray on Windows. The player is Power DVD from Cyberlink for an instance.

Steve "the khaliffa" Jobs is considering Blu-Ray drive capability his domain.
Children of the "khaliffa" must wait to the Imam discides.

It is centralism against democracy. Centralism always looses. Apple is loosing it.
They used to be innovative. Lately finger print readers an e-sata, Blu-Ray playing,-does no longer spring from Apple innovation.

Too much "incest too must inbreed." Their monopolized store politic is appaling too. The dollar has lowered its value, but not in Apple stores abroad.
It is usually valued equal to Euro, which gives us europeans a bad deal. Compare prices on us Apple store with UK stores and Your eyes will open.

Greets Jens Denmark with 3 Mac's and 2 new HP laptops running Windows Vista Ultimate. One with Blu-Ray player.

unnecessary Islamic references aside, it could just be that Apple wanted to wait and see how the format war turned out.