Those who were holding out hope for a Mac with built in Blu-ray support can probably stop holding their breath.
When asked why they chose to remove disc drives from the newest Macbook Pro and iMac models and whether Blu-ray will ever show up on Mac, Phil Schiller of Apple said that “discs are holding us back.” Schiller refers to Blu-ray as “a complex and not-great technology.” He states that disc drives are large, take up a lot of power and can often break and that these are things Apple wants to leave out of its computers.
Selling movies on iTunes is a large part of Apple’s business and is likely another big factor in why they are being so quick to ditch discs. A computer without disc drives makes it a lot more likely that people will buy and rent movies off Apple’s digital service.
For those who are waiting for Blu-ray to show up on their Macs, it looks like an external Blu-ray player is going to be your only option moving forward.
Honestly though, anyone paying attention would have seen the death of the disc drive a long time ago. First Apple axed the optical drive in its Macbook Air lineup. Then they killed it off in the Mac mini. Then the MacBook Pro and iMac. Blu-ray was doomed on the Mac long before these recent announcements.
Back in 2008, during a keynote Q and A, Steve Jobs himself called Blu-ray a “bag of hurt” stating, “Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace.” It’s pretty obvious now that Apple doesn’t think Blu-ray is taking off in the personal computer market place. Sure, they look excellent in home theatre systems, but with Netflix, iTunes, and Hulu streaming to more and more connected devices, Blu-ray really hasn’t taken off like the DVD.
