The first thing newbie Mac buyers find out about their usually
$1,000-plus devices is that they don't support Blu-ray - if they didn't
check their specs first, that is.
Right after that, they discover they can't run their Windows
programs (without WINE or a copy of Windows), but after a quick
analysis of some Google search results, that's minor compared to the
torture of not being able to watch Blu-ray movies.
Given the still-changing state of the Blu-ray standard,
Macs should not support Blu-ray just yet. Once Blu-ray settles down a
bit, maybe, but at present, Blu-ray on a Mac is just not a good
idea.
Here's why.
BDXL
Everybody loves the idea of watching a 3D movie at home. Can you
blame them? The Nintendo 3DS
looks awesome enough as it is - I can't imagine what a 30" or 40" 3D TV
would be like.
However, our newfound love of straining our eyes to see virtual
stereoscopic 3D video comes with a cost (besides that potential visit
to the optometrist). Since stereoscopic 3D requires two images to be
merged into one, 3D movies occupy twice the disk space of a traditional
disk. Hence, BDXL.
BDXL is Blu-ray doubled. Blu-ray discs have two layers; BDXL discs
have four. Blu-ray discs have a capacity of 50 GB, BDXL discs have a
capacity of 100 GB to 128 GB. Seems straightforward enough, and yes, it
is: the extra layers allow 3D movies to fit on a single disc. However,
the hardware required to read a BDXL is different, due to the two
additional disc layers. Traditional Blu-ray players cannot read the
extra two layers - which is very convenient for manufacturers wanting
to sell new hardware, but more than a little irritating for
consumers.
Blame
Consumers never seem to blame themselves for rakishly buying
something as soon as it hits the market, nor do they blame the
companies who develop new technologies that render their brand new
Blu-ray players obsolete. They also don't blame the component
manufacturer, the ones who builds optical drives.
No, they blame the OEMs, the companies that develop nice little
enclosures for the drives and sell them to consumers.
Wouldn't an iMac, MacBook, or Mac mini qualify as an enclosure for a
Blu-ray drive? You've got it! Since Apple is an OEM, they would get the
blame for selling consumers a computer with a crucial component that's
outdated before its time.
Balancing Risk and Gain
Apple is smart (most of the time, at least ). It usually knows when
to embrace a new innovation and when to wait to see how it develops.
Apple jumped on USB shortly after it was created, because it was a
hardware standard that could easily be made backwards compatible, and
it promised to relieve a large number of problems in connectivity.
There was a little risk and a lot to gain.
Blu-ray, however, offers little gain and a lot of risk. Blu-ray has
not hit the mainstream computer market as software media yet, so its
only major use would be for movies and games - both of which can be had
through other, less mutable means (iTunes, anyone?). Storage media
moved from optical discs to external hard drives, flash drives, and the
budding Cloud a long time ago, leaving Blu-ray without a market in that
area.
Without any logical reason to adopt Blu-ray, Apple wisely chose to
watch and wait.
That decision probably saved Apple from a market fiasco as big as
"antennagate". Can you imagine what would happen if Macs shipped with
Blu-ray drives, which were then rendered obsolete by BDXL? If a sizable
number of consumers bought Macs just for Blu-ray movie-playing
capabilities (think Mac mini here), the BDXL standard would outmoded
them in a frighteningly short amount of time. And Steve Jobs would be
prodded and poked to announce a free, or at least cheap, upgrade to
BDXL drives for all Mac mini and iMac users, and Apple would have to
build a software update to handle the new drives, possibly screwing
something else up in the process.
The headache would be enormous.
Better Judgment
How fortunate for everyone that Apple has not adopted the Blu-ray
standard. Even though this pits the ever-popular optical disc against
the iTunes Store and its web-based brethren, Apple has avoided a major
fiasco and can continue to focus on making dependable, user-friendly
computers and mobile devices, rather than issuing expensive upgrades
and updates as bandage solutions to bad market decisions.
Austin Leeds is a Mac and iPad user - and a college student in Iowa.
