At the live Diggnation that was just held in London as part of the “Future of Web Apps” Expo, Kevin Rose enlightened us with yet another juicy rumor. He claimed that the new and yet to be announced MacBooks will support Blu-Ray drives. Rose was spot on in his iPod/iTunes predictions for the recent “Let’s Rock!” Apple event, and we’ll find out on Tuesday if Rose can go 2 for 2. Rose, however, did qualify his prediction by saying that his source for the Blue-Ray rumor was not nearly as good as his source for the iPod nano and iTunes updates.
Rumors of Blu-Ray coming to the Mac stretch back to 2006, but especially picked up steam after HD-DVD was put to rest. With the MacBook line in desperate need of a refresh, this could very well be an interesting point of interest at next Tuesday’s media event.
Related: Blu-Ray licensing gets easier, will Apple get tempted?
October 11th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
If I recall correctly, Kevin did make the point that this was from a ‘bad’ source. His good/reliable sources are in the iPod/iPhone business. Just saying.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Maybe but it WILL NOT be on the least expensive models. Expect this on the higher end ones only. Look at the price of Blu-Ray players there is no way they would add a really expensive component like this.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
…more interesting was the fact that alex albrecht broke the news of his engagement live on stage
October 11th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
I really don’t think going to a medium that isn’t really relevant is in Apples business model. I would never argue that Blu-Ray lacks the superior quality that is advertised, but most people still don’t care about a new format. DVD is fine for most people and Apple seems to see the future of data as something that’s left on a server somewhere and not on a physical medium (as evidenced by the Air).
October 11th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Why would apple have Blue ray support if they want more and more people to download stuff from their itunes store?
October 11th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
“…more interesting was the fact that alex albrecht broke the news of his engagement live on stage”
Not such a surprise when he already discussed not wanting children on a previous episode… I bet he got heat for that one lol
October 11th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
blu-ray … ???
that’d be nice …
another lust phase approaching …
hehe …
October 11th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Kevin Rose is intrested in preventing freedom of speech because you cannot use proxies on digg.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
The future is digital media obviously. Blu-Ray is already extinct in my opinion. I say do away with the optical drive altogether - like the Macbook Air. There is no need. Movies like music will be stored on a hard drive in high def. Why have some physical that can be scratched and lost around?
October 12th, 2008 at 2:34 am
Dude, Blu-Ray has been in notebooks for months (and not just in top-end laptops), what’s so hard to believe??
October 12th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Wow, This is cool, but would make me kind-of mad if it happens. I just bought a macbook, I should have waited
October 13th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
MacBook with Blu-Ray wouldn’t be that big of a suprise. However, it seems more likely that they would only include them on the higher-end MacBook Pro’s. They may introduce them as an upgrade even. I defenitly wouldn’t mind a blu-ray player/burner in a MacBook Pro.
In response to Who Cares’ comment
“The future is digital media obviously. Blu-Ray is already extinct in my opinion. I say do away with the optical drive altogether - like the Macbook Air. There is no need. Movies like music will be stored on a hard drive in high def. Why have some physical that can be scratched and lost around?”
Many companies still use physical data devices for server data backup and I’m hoping to get away from Magnetic media in favor or discs myself so I hope they push this medium forward anyway.
October 13th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
In fact, there is a model of an Acer laptop with a Blu-ray drive on the market that sells under $1K (just search for it on pcmag.com). Now, I don’t know whether that drive is limited to just reading discs. Still, it’s not a big factor in my purchase of the MB. It would be nice, but I can get by without one as long as I still have a Firewire port (or some other way to have higher sustained speeds in Time Machine backups).
October 17th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
I don’t see the laptops getting Blu-Ray drives before the Mac Pro, especially since they are supposed to be thinner.