Jobs says no to Blu-ray on Macs… again

16. Jobs seems to be living in a fantasy world where everyone has a very fast internet connection! He should try downloading content with a 350kb connection, which is quite common in rural areas of the western states.

15. Yep, the rip of my Avatar Blu-ray is 40 Gigs. The downloadable, supposedly "HD" version is 7 Gigs.

That's 7 times the bit rate. The visual quality difference is like night and day.

That's why I personally do not download movies I care about, but buy them on blu ray.

14. it's a good business decision to deny blue-ray, especially since it seems to corner Apple customers into accepting the iTunes store offerings.

love it or hate it, it's a good move for the company.

13. Jobs doesn't want blu-ray because it would add even more cost to his already overpriced hardware.

And yes, because of iTunes.

12. Optical Disc mechs are notoriously unreliable and short lived as we discovered from making CD players. I suspect servicing and guarantee claims are a factor in all this.

11. Translated:

I want to sell movies via iTunes rather pay disc based royalties to BD group.

Anyone that's seen a "HD" download knows it's a whole world of hurt, hours to download, and poor quality (by Blu-Ray standards).

10. So a guy that makes money from downloadable purchases says that downloadable purchases are the future? Good to see some unbiased opinion there.

The infrastructure just isn't there for the internet to do with movie's what it does for music.

But once again, what the internet and Jobs, et al, are doing is saying an "ok" product that you can download is better than a top quality product you buy on a disc.

That's progress in his mind is it? Forget the quality, as long as you buy it through his store.

He's a self deluded fool surrounded by sycophants.

9. Jobs is really creazy. 1080P movie is surely better than 720P. Anyway, i got a way to play blu-ray movies on my Mac. Using Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper for Mac(http://www.pavtube.com/blu-ray-ripper-mac/) to rip Blu-ray disc and convert to Quciktime or MKV played with VLC. It is really a nice experience to watch 1080P movies on Mac. Seriously

8. Downloads will not supersede physical media for many years. Download and store isn't viable as to equal Blu-ray quality would require at least 30GB per film. It doesn't take a genius to work out that even a 2TB HDD isn't going to last long with those sort of file sizes.

The only other option is streaming. Blu-ray data transfer rates peak at around 40Mb/s and that's using a decent compression format like AVC or VC1. There aren't many people with an internet connection that fast.

The only other option is to do it half-baked as is currently the case. iTunes charge near-Blu-ray prices for pseudo-HD downloads. I know which format I prefer...

7. As one of those bad people who has built his own mac clone. I think dear old mr. Jobs need to get back to the real world. Not supporting Blue ray on the Mac is really sad. Luckily there are third-parties work around that allow me to watch blue ray on my clone (Thank YOU ASUS O!air play R-3 USA version) so I'm not going to buy hardware from Mac because its over price and can't seem to keep up with the changing world. As for the Iphone its to easy to break and no one want to give replacement Insurance on them. I get along just fine without one.

6. Sounding increasingly shrill

This guy, with his "I know what's best for you all" attitude is starting to sound like the other famously wrong prognosticators: "the world only has a market for 5 computers" or "never need more than 640KB" or "why would anyone want a computer in their home".

Jobs is appearing to make more and more dubious and ill-judged decisions (bluray, flash) and have more and more mistakes (iphone aerials) happen around him. He certainly seems to be becoming accident prone.

Maybe Apple's sun is setting after 30-something years. Time to move over.

5. The biggest problem with Steve Jobs is that he would rather let his users suffer until the solution he wants comes along. Would it kill him to include a $100 blu-ray player? Of course not, but he doesn't want to admit that there is anything that can work apart from his own solution. I'm bored of listening to him. I have a macbook pro that cost £3000 (of my companies money!) in late 2009 and doesn't have an SD card or a Blu-ray player? It's pathetic. I love the design and the OS, but would I buy one with my own money? Not in a million years.

4. "a backup hard drive is not as good as BR for backing up important data."

How so? Optical formats are infamous for degrading over time. Sure hard disks can fail but the chance is much less. I'd never trust any optical media to backup data.

3. Jobs is a fool. Blu-ray discs will excel download formats for many years to come. To get identical quality on a downloadable format would take such a high download speed, far higher than 50Mb.

Long term downloads will likely replace blu-ray though but by then people will have large blu-ray collections and there will always be a market for those who wanted the highest quality.

To be fair though, the majority of PCs/laptops don't come with blu-ray either. It's still reserved for high-end hardware.

2. He backs up what G Lucas said a few years ago, when he said the future for films is not another physical medium but downloaded, he even stated he thought the movie industry needed to move cinemas down the download route of digital medium.

BR is a good format for backing up data though. Broadband speeds and use is not good enough yet and a backup hard drive is not as good as BR for backing up important data.

1. I agree with Steve on this - there's a first time for everything I suppose!