14 DAY TRIAL // Following Toshiba's raising the white flag on Tuesday, people aware of Apple's joining the Blu-ray Disc Association in 2005 are probably expecting the Cupertino giant to make a move, such as adding the winning format to its lineup of notebooks. That's not going to happen just yet, researchers believe. According to them, Apple is going to hold on at least until some decent Blu-ray software support arrives on the scene.
Back in 2005, Apple promised to help promote Sony's high-definition format, just as it was joining the Blu-ray Disc Association. Is this all they could come up with? The Blu-ray Disc Association...? It's almost like saying "The Flash Memory Association". Anyway, Apple has taken no steps in that direction since (not commercially anyway), and still isn't wearing a Blu-ray pin. That's why Yankee Group folks reckon that the electronics giant is waiting for a real reason to employ the format.
"Apple wants to use [Blu-ray] as a creative tool," says Yankee Group's Carl Howe, "not simply add it to a MacBook Pro's feature list," as blog.wired.com notes. "Put another way, Apple is waiting for some decent Blu-ray software," the same source claims.
Howe also notes that Apple doesn't add new stuff to its products just like that, claiming a negative attitude on behalf of the company towards non existing software-support. "If anything, the company tends to omit features for the sake of simplicity and uniformity," Wired points out, and the MacBook Air is the perfect example. Steve Jobs himself said no one would miss the optical drive, thus launched the world's thinnest notebook without one. Need any more pointers?
The final clue to Apple's not hurrying to embark on the HD ship is of course the available downloadable HD content via iTunes. Do you see Apple giving that up and forcing people to spend more cash on non-Apple hardware?
Still, Apple knows it can't just leave itself out in the cold, so they'll have to say yes to Blu-ray some day. They're probably just playing hard to get, that's all.