Did Apple make a Blu-ray blunder?
Two days after Apple’s much-hyped launch event for its new MacBook range, there’s one issue that seems to be raising eyebrows across the blogosphere. That’s the lack of Blu-ray support – and Steve Jobs’ description of the technology as a “bag of hurt”.
The company hasn’t ruled out Blu-ray altogether. Instead Jobs said the licensing system is too confusing at the moment and the company is “waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace”.
There are a couple of obvious objections to that theory. First, it’s not as if DVD licensing is particularly simple: courts are still deciding on whether manufacturers can legitimately insist a disc is physically present in a drive when the content is played.
Secondly, with the next-gen DVD format wars over, there’s little doubt Blu-ray is going to be here to stay (though whether it eventually supplants traditional DVD is another question). Even if it’s not a standard feature, it’s used widely enough that some customers would opt for it as an upgrade.
The other main argument in favor of Blu-ray MacBooks is that it’s the type of high-end feature that would help boost the status of the laptops as premium machines. That’s an important goal for a firm that continues to steer clear of price wars.
Several bloggers have floated the theory that Apple’s decision is a deliberate attempt to avoid undermining iTunes’ video services; the argument goes that Blu-ray capabilities would encourage users to buy discs rather than download movies. That sounds too much like a conspiracy theory to me, particularly as you could say much the same thing about standard DVD drives.
I suspect the decision comes down to a much simpler fact: laptop screens are simply too small to get any of the benefits of the high-definition picture of Blu-ray. So there’s little real consumer need for a Blu-ray drive on a laptop unless a significant proportion of your disc collection is in that format or most new releases are Blu-ray only. And it seems unlikely that will be the case before the next MacBook relaunch.
Related Posts:
October 16th, 2008
The “Bag of Hurt” is real. The signal requires encryption on the computer bus, requiring board level overhead. OS X would require rebuilding with a security czar layer added (exactly what is slowing down Vista). This goes against Apples design philosophy’s.
I think your other points are valid as well, Apple has little incentive to add an iTunes competitor, unless it starts significantly hurting sales. They also believe the future is in digital downloads, not physical media.
Personally I refuse to use Blu Ray, until it is possible to burn purchased movies easily on our home media center. DVD’s have a lot of life in them.
October 16th, 2008
Bravo, Jobs. The fighting over new standards by competing factions is wasteful, slows technical advances making whoever “wins” the holder of standards in late middle age in the development cycle.
October 16th, 2008
What possible advantage would Blu Ray have on a 13″ or 15″ laptop screen? C’mon people…find a real story. This is one of those things that some people might want but with dvd and other options it doesn’t seem too worthwhile right now. I don’t see the quality on such a tiny screen being all that different.
August 3rd, 2009
For general consumer playback, Blu-Ray does not find any advantage on a 17″ or even a 22″ screen. Blu-Ray is made for big-screen HDTVs. However, the PRODUCTION companies who use Macs MUST have this technology, including the ability to view their finished movies, to stay competitive.