A while back, Steve Jobs said that Blu-ray discs were “a bag of hurt,” and that Macs would likely not include them for a long time due to licensing fees and limitations that he believed the technology had. Eventually, it was determined that Macs would likely never ship with them because Apple was removing the optical drives from a variety of its products – and iTunes had become such a raging success.
Now, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller says that Apple’s customers simply aren’t asking for the drives to be installed in their new machines anymore. This could be due to streaming services and Apple’s continued success with iTunes, but it really doesn’t matter: Apple sees no point in pursuing optical media anymore, so Blu-ray discs – and by extension, DVDs and CDs – are a moot point to the company.
And although Apple likes to make a lot of decisions on its own, it seems that it’s at least partially listening to what its customers have to say – or aren’t saying, according to the new report. Schiller told Time‘s Harry McCracken the following:
Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology…So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks.
In all honesty, most people are okay with dropping the optical drive in favor of thinness, lightness, and increased portability. Still, since Macs are thought of as multimedia powerhouses, it may be disappointing to some that the best format for HD video – Blu-ray – is not going to be available.
Which side are you on?
[Times via Mac Rumors]
Somethings wrong with driver for my dvd drive on my laptop which means discs arent recognised in it. But I haven’t gotten round to finding a solution to it because I simply haven’t needed to.
Streaming and downloading is the future. As 4g and fibre optic internet come in physical media is gonna become more and more redundant I reckon
I bought an external BD-R burner for my uses a long time ago. (I’ve also since given up on Mac.) Pushing people to optical externals is probably why people stopped asking. Apple would just do what they wanted anyway.
Besides, it’s not like Apple has a vested interest in people buying movies in a format other than Blu-Ray…oh, wait…iTunes store….yeah…I’m sure implementing Blu-Ray was the problem…
I agree with the vested interest thing. Also not having an optical disc drive makes people less likely to buy physical cd’s. They would also have to either purchase an external drive or they would also buy digital copy to have the music on their computer legally. Some people in this situation would ditch buying physical cd’s all together and just buy from itunes.
Hopefully lossy digital music doesn’t over take physical or lossless forms of media. I for one likes keeping the lossless version around so I can still use it to re-encode to other formats if need be without loosing any quality.
Give them credit where credit is due. The average customer doesn’t use the optical drive anymore, let alone for blu ray discs. I bought a MBP in 2010 and have yet to insert a disc into it.
With most DVDs coming with the a digital copy now, optical drives are almost useless. They’re the new 3.5 floppy disc drives.
This is how technology is suppose to work sooner or later something will take its place, apple will probably speed it up with there influence though
I have 2 cars. My Mini Cooper has Bluetooth audio streaming so I just use google play music to stream my library through my evo 3d. My grand am unfortunately is old school straight up audio cd. Not even an mp3 cd so i have to burn CDs to listen to in that car and thus is why I decided to not get a new MacBook since apple thinks people don’t need to own CDs anymore… But it was bound to happen eventually I guess. At least my grand am isn’t a tape player radio then the only thing I’d have to listen to in it is my moms old Macarena tape and my old nsync tape from forever ago those are the only 2 cassettes that made it through my vigorous moment of redoing my music collection digitally
If the computer, no matter whether Windows Mac or Linux, is primarily for content consumption then you probably won’t need a DVD or bluray drive.
Me, I use my DVD drive a moderate amount, making bootable ISOs, making video DVDs, ripping DVDs*, making archival material, making data disks I can post (*2).
I even keep an external DVD drive specifically set to region1 for being able to rip and play DVDS I buy in the USA, as none of my video dvd players are region free.
I think that Apple taking the dvd drive out is a more complex issue than saying people don’t need them. It makes the computers more reliable, cheaper, and drives itunes sales. It denies apple buyers a creative avenue and essentially removes part of the purpose of a computer to.be a generic computing device. However, when you consider which products Apple make their
money on, they don’t need to be interested in flexible generic computers.
* for fair use legal extracts etc
*2 USB sticks far more expensive than DVD blanks, and there are still many people on slow internet connections.
Think of all the money wasted developing blu-ray so it could be locked down and restricted – and now few want it. I’m sure the quality is nice, but probably not much nicer than DVD. I already have a sizable DVD collection (which I’ve been working to rip for use in my media player) – and I’m not going to shell out to buy all new equipment (because of the various restrictions) and new discs on top of that.
Yeah.. I do video production and deliver on DVD.. Now what? Now I have to spend more money on external drives that don’t always work.. Screw you Mr Schiller!!! Eat a bag of D•cks!