I was really curious about this as I was setting up my new computer yesterday :-)!!! Why hasn't Apple shown any support for Blu-Ray so far? They are one of the companies that are hard core BD only which could be the thing that actually gets me to rebuy one some day. I am a Apple Nut-ball and would never even consider buying a different brand of computer. I follow the Apple gossip pretty much on a day to day basis as I have some cash invested in the company and I have seen zero plans for Apple to implement anything to even remotely support BD. How can they be so for BD yet seem to be so against BD by their actions? Anyone out there have any insight into this bizarre situation?

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Apple is really good at concealing future plans, but I would expect a Blu-Ray drive in the next version of Mac Pro. As soon as they put a Blu-Ray drive in a MacBook Pro, I'll pick one up.

This isn't entirely true. There are quite a few leaks at Apple and a bunch of info finds its way into the publics hands before its supposed to. Either way the thing thats confusing is why would Apple keep something like this secret? It makes no sense. They are on the BD side of the war, that is a fact. What could they possibly be doing that would require secrecy? The whole thing makes no sense at all. Wy come out and openly support a format as strongly as Apple has and then show no sign of support whatsoever. I cant figure it out for the life of me and I have been thinking of reasons of why they might hold back an announcement and for the life of me I cant think of one.

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Take the latest round of announcements for example. We knew they were going to update the iPod, because they do that every year at this time. But no one knew - at least not until a day before the event when a memo was leaked - that they would have something like the iTV. That was completely a surprise. Every show people proclaim Apple will finally release the iPod with the touch screen wheel, but it still hasn't shown up.

So yes, some guesses are easy, but others are surprises. Blu-Ray could very well be one of those surprises.

Here is what I dug up regarding Apple's plans.

I also remember reading somewhere that Apple was planning on doing something like asking Sony to put free Ipod HD videos(promotion) on the hard drives that come with the PS3.

right now they are trying to penetrate market and still innovate. If you add in a BD player at this point even to their macpro lineup, it would add quite a bit to the price tag. For the first time that I can remember, the macpro is actually very well priced and actually beats out equally configured machines. I'm a really big Apple fan as well, and I won't be using any other machines if I don't have to, but I honestly don't want to see BD in anything Apple. At least at this point I don't. When the costs and prices come down out of the sky, then maybe, but until then, it'd price themselves way out there imho.

Even though Apple is currently BD, don't be surprised if they eventually decide to do HD-DVD as well. Heck any company is like that. Whatever makes the most money is what they want.

Considering they JUST released their new line of Intel Macs, using the Intel-designed chips instead of the chips Intel used to have, I doubt we'll see any announcement of this until both or either side is more firmly cemented.

This is just not true. First of all your first sentence, "right now they are trying to penetrate market and still innovate.", could be used to describe Apple for the last 10 years. 2nd If you go to Apples website you can configure thier computers literally in millions of different combinations with the top of the line computer costing $18,000 and the bottom of the line being $2400 (for the MacPro that is). You can configue the Mac so many different ways that you can literally get a price ranging anywhere between these 2 price points. I just purchased my Mac Pro and wound up in the middle with an $8000 price tag. So looking at the way they have thier store set up and how easy it is to configure the computers any way you want them its obvious that BD drives will be an option and never be standard hardware. Given the fact that thier computers can run close to 20k, the additional price of a BD drive would not be a negative thing to the people ordering thier higher priced machines, especially considering it would be optional. The fact that it would be optional just makes everything regarding price a non issue for regular buyers.

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We can dream cant we!! I am more fond of Apple than any other company on the planet earth and less fond of BD than any other video format on the planet earth. It pains me deeply that Apple has decided to go the BD route and is not leaving the HD choice up to us. I will however continue to support Apple 100% and if they really end up only supporting BD some day the I will without a doubt own another BD player someday. That is unless someone figures out how to run a HD-DVD drive in an Apple!!

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With the current rumors of big things happening soon with studio defections and what have you concerning BD, it would not surprised me if Steve Jobs announced full HD-DVD support at MacWorld 2007.

I don't think Apple would want to put their support behind a format that has not offered what has been promised.

Well if it were an option then it wouldn't really boost the price up at all. Someone in the thread said replace the superdrive and that is where my mindset came from for that post I made. Sure penetrating market share could describe them for their whole existence if you wanted to argue that, but never before have they had a better chance at it then lately, especially since the iPod stuff took over the world by storm. They are riding that wave till the end, and I honestly think they thought BD would be the next wave, and thus far, it's not. So they are still sitting on the beach waiting for that next wave to come and ride! If it's BD then i'm sure they will eventually slap an option in there for it, of if it's HD then i'm sure we'll have that option. I really don't ever think in the next 2-3 years though that it'll replace superdrive, unless the prices skyrocket downwards on BD.

You know, if it weren't for the iPod, I probably would have never got into Apple either, and I know quite a few people that would still be in windowz land as well, had it not been for the iPod craze.

I'm with you on the stance though, I love Apples! iBooks next Tuesday!

Well I canunderstand what your saying if you thought they would replace the superdrive but I guarantee you Apple would never force BD down your throat. They are all about you configuring your computer exactly how you want it. Plus the added cost that would slap on every computer would do way more dmage than good. Like you had said Apple has just now got thier price point down to where it is comparable, even cheaper than some other equally stocked models. They would never do anything as stupid as putting a 500-1000 drive in the machines thus negating the price equality.

Steve Jobs is a brilliant man, more so than alot of people give him credit for. He has always stressed quality and uniqness and those are 2 things that people will always want. This is one of the main things that I find so troubling with his early hard core suport of Blu Ray. Its not like him to back something so ardently when it hasnt even proven itself yet. Maybe that in itself has something to do with why Apple has yet to announe anything in stone regarding supproting Blu Ray in the Macs. Who knows. The only thing I know for sure is Apple is one of the better corporations in the world today. They really listen to thier customer base and are always thinking of the future.

Congrats on switching over to Apple and on the new iBook. the new Macs really are the best machines I have ever worked on. Its actually hard to believe how far Apple has come in the last 3 years. They have made me a happy man in both my computing needs and in my stock portfolio :-)

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Who doesn't give Steve Jobs credit for being brilliant? I think he's one of the most respected (and feared) businessmen in the computing industry.

No, there are almost no leaks at Apple. They sue, fire, harass, kill anyone who leaks. (maybe not kill) They canceled a product 1.5 years ago because of a leak. Just dropped R&D on it. Steve is spiteful, I guess.

Most of their models take slot-loaders only. They are probably waiting for one that will fit. Also, they do not do many adjustments to their lineup. Dell changes stuff daily, Apple 1-2 times per year. Besides, nobody is really buying these yet, anyway. Apple probably wants a larger production run than is possible right now considering recent diode shortages and whatnot. I think there was a guy who put a BD drive into a Mac Pro. Had to run it with XP, though, IIRC.

And the fact that it makes no sense to you doesn't mean they don't do exactly what you described. Many companies keep things very close until they choose to release some info. Apple is most decidedly one of them. And it's because they see themselves as innovators. I think that Leopard may have something compatible with BD.

"PC weenies". And whatshisname at TDB. (probably a redundancy, there)

DVD Studio Pro 4 already has HD DVD burning support, so I don't see Apple supporting BD exclusively. They are in it to make money, after all. If blank HD DVD media becomes cheap and filmmakers use Final Cut Pro to output movies in HD, you bet Apple will offer HD DVD reader/writers.

And I think this is the reason right here...I think Jobs is too smart to fall for Sony's bullshit at this point and is on their own time table, which is a wait and see how the market shakes out and if they can deliver on all they promise.

Lots of people dont give Steve Jobs as much credit as he deserves. If you have ever been invovled in a PC Vs. Apple thread on the net, which I have literally a thousand times, tons of people just refer to the fact that they didnt actually design the orignal Mac interface or the mouse (You know everthing involved with the Pirates of Silicon Valley movie) and bash Jobs left and right. I am not just refering to PC die hard geeks either as I have read many articles by prominent and respected reviewers on the net that do the same thing. As a matter of fact, I would estimate that over 50% of PC users I have had discussions with dont give Jobs enough credit. Just go onto any computer site with these kind of discussions and you will easily see what I am talking about

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Well just agree to disagree. The Apple sites I frequent pretty much every day have pretty frequent articles regarding the future plans of Apple coming from insiders, which of course Apple always denies.

As for the rest of your thread, the point to my post isn't why Apple doesn't have anything in their computers yet but why they haven't announced anything yet. 2 totally different things. I would never in a hundred years expected Apple to have actually incorporated a Blu Ray device in their computers already. The new Mac-Pro just became available not too long ago. My point was that Apple has been very vocal regarding their support for BD yet they have not announced even the slightest detail regarding what, when or if they will actually have BD in any of their products. This is what I dont understand and cant think of anything to why they wouldn't have yet.

Bottom line is BD is a new technology and is currently in a format war with HD-DVD for both home movie content and re-recordable computer storage devices. Keeping things secret at this point makes no sense for either side as you want as much press and as many press releases as you can possibly get to help boost the actual products image. Keeping things secret at this point, especially for one of the most important BD supporters doesn't make any sense. I am sure Sony of all people are not happy that Apple has not said a single word about actually supporting the format as its one of their key players and almost everyone else involved on the computer side of things have made announcements regarding either product available right now or future plans on future models. Again it makes no sense whatsoever to delay telling people what your plans are regarding the format.

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Maybe we just have another semantical problem. I visit probably the same sites every day. They are always rumors and guesses. Most of it is just about new models, which are certainly going to come out someday. If you prophesy long enough, those always come partially true. That doesn't prove them to have leaks. People were talking about the Mac Pro before it was announced, but it was completely obvious there would be a tower with Intel chips someday, that isn't any sort of insider info. Nobody had any clue how they would make the case even better, no commentary on plug in HDD slots, giant RAM heatsinks, 2 optical bays, etc.

And lots of times those sites are simply wrong. Seen a PB G5? Widescreen video iPod?

Meanwhile, Aperture and Intel shocked people when the news of those broke. We had no idea. So did the ending of Claris, the later ending of Appleworks only to be slowly replaced by iWork, PowerPCs back in the day, a color laptop, the iPod, clones (at least the end of them), etc.

They won't announce anything til it is ready to be in a product. That was my other point.

It does make sense, because Apple always has something else up its sleeve, witness the iTV (a large departure from their typical silence, as is the Leopard detail we know), which will no doubt have full compatibility with BD. (you can call that a rumor I just started) They've announced they will have BD, just not when or how. Maybe they don't know, yet.

The other reason it makes sense is all the whining bullshit about BD and delays. Sony has been ripped up and down the net for being late with both standalones and the PS3. Apple wants no part of that, they won't announce til they are ready to go. You can't have it both ways, the same people complain about both vaporware announcements and time-of-shipping announcements.

I have had this exact same conversation before on photography websites, substituting "Canon" for Apple in each sentence. That's just how they do it.

Again ill just say that we should agree to disagree as what I was refering to was not people speculation what Apple was planning to do but actual inside information that said product was coming, changing etc.. The reason I say just call it a draw is there is no way I am going to search ack through 5000 google pages and 5000 blog pages to find the info I am refering to. I will say that 2 recent things that were leaked well before they came out were the Mac mini and the Mac Phone. Again I dont mean people on blogs saying, Apple should and most likly will come out with a phone that supports Itunes etc... but an actual insider in the company that spoke out and without giving too much detail confirmed that they were in fact coming and before 2008. That is just one example of many that I can recall over the past few years.

Why do you think Apple went haywire over Asteroid and tried bringing legal action against people posting on Blogs? Not because of that particular product, tho they were pissed that found its way out into the net, but that fact that they were having increasing problems with people leaking stuff on Blogs. That had written letters to many different Blogs including Apple Insider, iPod Lounge, Power Page and Think Secret all regarding different leaks. The Think Secret complain actually went to court and that one hasnt been settled yet. Again I just cant do a huge Google and Blog search right now, otherwise I could easily find a bunch of examples of actual leaked information that Apple was not happy about.

"It does make sense, because Apple always has something else up its sleeve, witness the iTV (a large departure from their typical silence, as is the Leopard detail we know), which will no doubt have full compatibility with BD. (you can call that a rumor I just started) They've announced they will have BD, just not when or how. Maybe they don't know, yet. "

As for it making sense I guess well just agree to disagree on this one as well. as for thier typical silence your referring to I am not sure I get what you mean. They are doing the same thing with iTV that they did with iTunes and as for the stuff we know about leopard that isnt unusual either. They always demonstrated upcoming features of the new OS during the developer conference. Whats typical with Apple is they give you some info on upcoming products and also keep some stuff secret. Your amking them out to be this super secretive company and that just isnt the case. They offer out quite a bit of info on a regular basis regarding upcoming stuff.

Again ill just say lets just agree to disagree as this argument could go on forever with us digging up stuff from the last 10 years.

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I think businessmen give Jobs the credit he deserves. That's what he's best at, business. The fact he chose to be in computing is incidental.

This is only a guess....right now there is not much (any?) real demand for BD drives in computers. Add that to the fact that they can't make enough diodes to fill the current market for PS3, HD-DVDs, etc. and that is probably the main reason.

But you also need to get to a certain level of demand before it makes sense. I don't see the need to get either drive in a computer for years. Rarely to I ever load up a dvd with info, let alone 15-50 gb. For something like that, I would use an external drive.

Until they come out with a burner that can connect to a HD source (like Tivo), I just don't see enough demand to matter. Sure, once they become pretty cheap, people will get them just because they don't cost much, but that will be awhile.

Absolutly busniess men give Jobs credit as he is one of the richest and most succesful people in the country. I was referring to the overall mindset of computer users and when you take that segment of the population the opinion changes drastically. Again I would estimate that 50% of hard core PC users, which is alot of users, think Jobs is a hack and give him no credit for anything the guy does especially with his crowning achievment, The Macintosh.

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