Are there more than say 10 people in the world connecting their MacBooks to their living room TVs to watch programming? Really? They're disconnecting their Wiis or XBox's to do this?

Hmm. More power to them I guess.

I guess that's devotion to digital content.

Using Blu-Ray to archive 50 GB of data may look attractive to you, but it sure doesn't look good to me. 50 GB blank discs cost around $40 each. For about twice that money I get a 250 GB external hard drive, which is a lot faster, a lot more capacity, a lot more compatible with everything, and it is proven technology where I am sure I will be able to read the data when I need it.

For the MPAA, this is all about DRM. They got Microsoft to spend millions and millions of dollars embedding DRM throughout the Windows kernel. All drivers need to be signed by Microsoft. All content needs to be encrypted until the last possible moment. Hell, they even are required to check that you haven't physically hacked the hardware 60 TIMES A SECOND! This stupidity adds real costs to all Windows machines that can play BluRay movies (and even machines that could never play them). Tens of dollars for every machine, in extra hardware costs, software development costs, tech support costs. This is besides the cost of the Blu-Ray drive.

Microsoft makes an issue of the 'Apple tax'. This crap is the "Movie Industry tax". And it's there ONLY because Microsoft agreed to put it in there.

The BluRay consortium has all sorts of wide-ranging requirements to which a certain hardware has to conform to be licensed as a BluRay platform.

The disasterous Vista DRM/MultiMedia experience is the result, making Vista a nightmare for any professional media creation. (Thins like tilt bits, automatic degradation of quality if there's a suspicion that some copying might be going on or if there's a chance that unencrypted streams might leave the computer, the requirement that all data be encrypted at any time it's not inside a chip, etc.)

With specifications like these, it's very hard (say: close to impossible) to create a platform that's useful for professional media production, unless you have two completely independent media layers working in parallel.

All of this is counter to Apple's markets and Apple's goal of software integration and leveraging of technologies.

Just Google a bit about BluRay, Vista and DRM and you will find enough reason why Jobs is utterly correct when he calls BluRay a bag of hurt.

I don't see why you have to disconnect your gaming console to hook up your laptop to your tv. I do it all the time. Slideshows of photos, rocking a GIANT visualizer with music, or watching media I don't want to burn to DVD or VCD in a larger format.

Secondary inputs. Or tertiary. YMMV.

iLife 09 will have to include Blu-ray authoring. Considering that SJ declared 2006 "The Year of HD", it would be appropriate to follow the final emergence of a single optical-disc standard for HD with a new version of Apple's iLife bundle with HD content authoring. It would be their coup de grace while waiting for this whole Blu-ray playback mess to clear up. Rather than sell Blu-ray burners with no playback feature, just let people hook up their HDV or AVCHD camcorders to their Macs, then edit their stuff in iMovie 09 and transfer it to iBlu-Ray (or whatever name sounds less weird) to burn Blu-ray formatted, HD content directly onto ordinary DVD-R DL. You could squeeze up to an hour of decently looking 1080p HD on 8.5GB disc, which would play without problems on any Blu-ray set-top player.

Think about it: this Christmas, all those people who bought HDTV last year will buy Blu-ray players this year (most likely, for under $200). The next purchase may be a HD camcorder. With these three, they need a way to get those HD home movies over to those BD players, and iLife 09 could be there for them.

OK...before I'm accused of being a technology curmudgeon, I was in line 4 hours before the original iPhones went on sale. With that being said, I am NOT excited by Blu-Ray. I would prefer NOT to have the MPAA as embedded in my computer and OS as they seem to be in Vista. I also agree with earlier posters; hard-drives are currently still more cost-effective, and I'm not crazy about replacing my current movie library with over-priced Blu-ray disks.

And I'm still drooling over the new MacBook Pro...

Why has Apple discontinued firewire (400) on the new MacBook? It has worked so well on early models of the MacBook.

Marc
Tallahassee, Fl

I for one would LOVE to be able to archive files onto DL BluRay discs. Remember folks, we are talking about ARCHIVING, not day-to-day access. While hard drive is cheaper per-gigabyte, Archiving onto hard-drives isn't necessarily the best way to go. Steve Jobs is absolutely right about this whole BRD issue. If it means cumbersome DRM and expensive licensing and hardware, then thanks but no thanks.

You left off Apple's stated reason for not including Blue Ray, which makes the most sense. Namely, including the drives right now is too expense because of licensing issues. Apple is trying to maintain price points and doesn't want to commit to a format until the kinks are worked out. Makes sense to me. It also seems like smart business. If you want Blue Ray, buy a Playstation 3.

Moreover, Blue Ray offers some benefits for consumers, but the main benefit is to content providers pushing much more restrictive DRM. The required DRM imposes a performance hit on machines.

...didn't come true, as 9to5, rumored, after reading your musings.

To support Blu-Ray movie playback would require installing Vista style DRM in the OS and moving to HDCP/HDMI for digital video output and HDCP compatible displays. Even if a Mac had a Blu-Ray drive, and even if the licensing was worked out, the copy protection would require that video could only be viewed on HDCP compliant monitors.

In the PC world, many (most?) computers don't/didn't have DVI, typically offering analog video like VGA, so any digital video like HDMI on the PC is seen as an upgrade.

I don't want Blu-Ray in a laptop bad enough to want Blu-Ray DRM in my OS, or forcing HDMI or needlessly adding to the choice of video connections.

On top of that, HDMI connectors are flimsy and not designed for repeated connections or stress and the cables are often stiff, as they require 12 pair cable instead of 4 pair. In general, HDMI a poor choice for portable equipment.

Why archive on Blu-Ray? Why not just use regular ol' DVDs, that are MUCH cheaper? At Staples (not necessarily the cheapest source), I can get 100 DVD-R disks for $49.99--$0.50 each. A 25 GB Blu-Ray disk costs $19.99. Six DVDs will hold as much, for a total of $3.00. Blu-Ray would be 6+ times as expensive.

If you need to archive SINGLE files that are more than a single DVD can hold (or even a dual-layer DVD), you can use Roxio's Toast, which will span the file across however many disks are needed. However, very few people are going to be using single files over 4GB.

Also, using higher-capacity disks for archiving might mean that you'd archive less frequently, which is not a good idea.

OTOH, if you really, really want to archive on Blu-Ray disks, get an external Blu-Ray drive.

@JOHN MARTELLARO: "4. Apple just wants to stay focused on what they do best, and if anyone really wants Blu-ray, that's a 'Third Party Opportunity.'"
The problem is the current os does not support displaying blu-ray video content and question is will Snow Leopard break that lock, so third parties take up the opportunity Apple thinks is a 'bag of hurt'?

He made a comment about licensing... trust me. I work for a company that wants to build some BluRay products but the licensing fees are VERY high... and there is not a clear IP pool that will keep people from suing you later for bits of the tech... Sony and others are artificially keeping key components like the OPU expensive to make money... etc.

We are waiting too. Hopefully next year as BluRay still flounders the powers that own a piece of BlueRay will wake up and price it competitively and reduce the crazy $25+ licensing fees required...

Well I suspect for anyone who doesn't see what's missing on the new MacBooks:

1. Firewire target disk mode.
2. Firewire over IP.
3. Firewire uncompressed videocapture.
4. Firewire maintains its speed no matter how many devices are hooked up. Stuck with USB 2? Watch it dwindle to USB when you attach one USB 1 device.
5. Still shared memory on the videocard. 9 times out of 10, the person wanting to use the videocard on dedicated memory also can't afford a MacBook Pro, but can a MacBook.
6. No Express/34 slot to resolve these issues.
7. Now no matte screens on Pro model either meaning no color accurate portable rendering notebook made by Apple.