New rumors this weekend suggest that Blu-Ray may finally be coming to the Mac. But while Blu-Ray is high on many people’s wish list, the rumors just don’t make sense.
Citing a “pretty reliable source,” Boy Genius Report says Blu-Ray is coming to iTunes 9, maybe as soon as September. The rumor jibes with a particularly vague story on AppleInsider suggesting that new iMacs will get new features (yeah, it’s almost sounds like self-parody), possibly Blu-Ray.
But although Blu-Ray format is gaining popularity, it’s unlikely to come to the Mac, ever. Here’s why:
It’s a Bag of Hurt: Even though Apple is a long-standing member of the Blu-Ray association, Blu-Ray licensing is still expensive. Last year Steve Jobs called Blu-Ray licensing a “bag of hurt” and explained: “The licensing is so complex. We’re waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace before we burden our customers with the cost of the licensing and the cost of the drives.”
Blu-Ray Still Pricey: Blu-Ray hardware is still expensive. Despite falling prices, Blu-Ray players still cost about $200. Many analysts think Blu-Ray won’t really take off until players are $100 or less.
Solid State Is The Future: Optical media is dying. Apple’s already dropped CD/DVD from the MacBook Air, just like it dropped the floppy drive from the iMac in 1998. It’s a sign of things to come. Witness the addition of an SD Card slot to the new MacBook Pro 13-inch. Solid state media like SD Cards will replace spinning optical disks; and probably quicker than we expect, given the fast-falling prices of flash memory chips.
Some movie studios are already starting to ship movies on solid state memory cards. In Japan, Walt Disney is offering National Treasure and Pirates of the Caribbean on microSD drives (It’s probably unrelated, but Jobs sits on Disney’s board). In the U.S., a pair of companies is preparing to release movies on USB memory sticks.
The H.264 codec developed by Apple that underlies MPEG-4 is becoming standard for compressing online video. It’s also a good format for compressing HD movies for SD cards. If Apple is going to support physical media, it’s more likely to be memory cards than spinning disks.
UPDATE: Toshiba said on Monday it will be making Blu-Ray players and adding Blu-Ray drives to its PCs. Toshiba’s HD-DVD, of course, lost the HD format battle against Sony’s and Panasonic’s Blu-Ray. The Blu-Ray market is too lucrative to pass up and PC makers are steadily replacing standard DVD drives with Blu-Ray drives, according to the New York Times. Whatever, I still don’t think Apple will add Blu-Ray.
