What would a Tuesday be without some announcement from Apple? How about one drive to read them all?

Today’s announcement should come as a shock to those complaining that iDVD 08 doesn’t support HD DVD or Blu-ray – and to those who expected Apple to fall one on side or other of the format divide.

But just as Apple breached the DVD-ROM/CD-RW divide with its Combo drive and SuperDrive, it’s doing the same for high-def DVDs.

Introducing the new Macintosh SuperDrive Extreme™ (alas, HyperDrive, a name that goes back to the Fat Mac era, is already in use, as is Apple’s second choice, OmniDrive), Steve Jobs said, “We’re very innovative at Apple, but we’re tired of backing the wrong standard. When we zig, Microsoft zags.

“We embraced DVD-ROM when the PC world went CD-RW. We picked DVD-R, and they chose DVD+R. We invented the iPod and iTunes; they came up with Zune and a protected media format remarkably incompatible with the Mac.

“Enough of that. We’re doing an end run around the next generation DVD format wars by supporting both Blu-ray and HD DVD on our SuperDrive Extreme, which is the standard drive on all Mac Pro configurations beginning today.”

The SuperDrive Extreme will also be available in an external FireWire 400/800 configuration and as an internal option on each MacBook Pro, MacBook, iMac, and Mac mini (except for the $599 Combo drive model). Pricing will be announced by the end of the week.

As for iDVD 08, an update released today provides full support for Blu-ray and HD DVD drives.

Fake Steve Jobs was not available for comment.

– Anne Onymus

Keywords: #superdriveextreme #therumormill #anneonymus

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