thomas fitzgerald.net

I really believe that there is a growing interest for blu-ray on the Mac. One of the things that leads me to suspect this is that the number one search term and link that is bringing people to this site at the moment is blu-ray. In particular Final Cut’s Blu Ray support. More and more people keep asking me: “when do you think the Mac will get blu-ray?” which is usually followed by “should I wait?” To be honest I doubt it will come this year. I suspect that when Apple does their widely rumoured Autumn Mac refresh, blu-ray won’t be on the cards (and John Gruber says so, so it must be true). I suspect that Apple’s primary focus will be keeping costs down for the holiday season, and although blu-ray burners are much cheaper than they used to be, they’re still more expensive than a normal superdrive. Unless they add it as a build to order option, I can’t see it coming before January.

Incidentally, for those claiming that iTunes downloads offer everything you need for your high-def movie satisfaction, here’s a few points to consider. Firstly, there are still very few sell through high-def movies on the iTunes store. I guess the movie studios aren’t that interested, or the initial take up by consumers has been low and the studios haven’t bothered pushing the format any more. I’m sure if they were selling well they would be falling over themselves to get more content available, but on the US iTunes store there’s only a small few titles available for purchase, and most of them are back catalogue or b-rated movies.