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Apple has never been big on alliances, coalitions or other formal industry-wide groupings. Case in point: The company joined the Blu-ray Disc Association in 2005 promising to help promote the high-definition format and then did pretty much nothing (at least in a commercial sense) for close to three years.
This despite Jobs acknowledging that "consumers are…anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high-def DVDs." Apparently, they weren't anxious enough to warrant sticking Blu-ray drives in Macs.
Given the ongoing format war, Apple's hesitation is more than understandable. But with Toshiba finally waving the white HD flag on Tuesday -- and other BDA members like HP and Dell starting to offer more Blu-ray equipped systems -- that reluctance could finally be morphing into actual concrete plans. But don't expect Apple to hop on the Blu-train just yet. Apple's approach will be probably be different than other industry players.
"Apple wants to use [Blu-ray] as a creative tool," notes Yankee Group's Carl Howe, not simply add it to a MacBook Pro's feature list. Put another way, Apple is waiting for some decent Blu-ray software.
As Howe notes, Apple usually doesn't throw new technologies into its computers unless it also has decent software support. This was true when Apple started shipping SuperDrives in its systems in 2001, and it will also be true when Apple finally begins to include Blu-ray drives, according to Howe.
Beyond eschewing industry alliances, Apple's also never been a company to indulge in feature glut -- jamming the latest and greatest technologies into new computer just to say it has them. If anything, the company tends to omit features for the sake of simplicity and uniformity. This is, after all, the same company that released an ultra-slim laptop without an optical drive (which Steve Jobs said no one would miss).
Some Apple watchers seem to think we'll start to see Blu-ray drives in Mac Pros by late spring...which is what some were also saying back in 2006. I would only posit that at this point Apple is in no hurry. In fact, with downloadable HD content via iTunes, it's in even less of hurry. Apple would much rather sell (or rent) you a HD movie than help you watch it with a Blu-ray drive. But there's only so long the company can hold out now.
