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Ok, I admit it, I do like Apple products. I have owned many and am the proud owner of an iPad. One aspect of being an Apple owner however that has given me much dismay is the total lack of support for BluRay.
It appears that the Apple CEO Steve Jobs is still having none of it and if you Google ‘Apple' and ‘BluRay' you will assuredly come across some thread or posting in relation to the lack of support. Personally I can see no logical reason why Apple wouldn't support the Bluray platform, so I would assume it is for political reasons rather than anything tangible and cohesive.
One of the more interesting emails I saw was on MacRumors between a Mac Mini customer and Steve Jobs. When the Mac owner asked Jobs why Apple weren't embracing the technology he said this.
“Bluray [sic] is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD–like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats. Free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue. I think you may be wrong–we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.”
So it seems there is no relief in sight for Apple fans who want to enjoy their BluRay discs on the brilliant OSX platform. This to me is still a sad state of affairs and Apple really need to redress their policy on this. It is one of the biggest selling points for Microsoft's Windows 7 with great support from PowerDVD and Arcsofts Total Media Theater packages.
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I never understood why Apple, being the market for media and graphics would never support the industry standard platform for HD content. bizarre
Such a dumb idea, still not supporting bluray. Flash I can understand as there are reasons on mobile platform, but Bluray?
I am quite sure this loses them some sales when a lot of PC laptops come with bluray drives.
While I won’t dispute that Steve Jobs is probably right regarding the long run, this means that Apple is selling to the masses, and doesn’t care much about the enthusiasts. I remember reading recently that Mac sales are down, and Apple is making most of its money from the gadgets (iPhone, iPad, …).
The Mac Mini was once on my list of potential buys as an HTPC, I just kept waiting for it to be improved a bit. While it’s certainly better now than it was, it’s also more expensive and it still doesn’t have Blu-ray.
Still, I don’t see this changing. If the Mac is becoming more marginal in Apple’s business, there’s no reason to make enthusiasts like it.