Apple's newly released iMacs don't come with optical drives standard. Here's why you shouldn't be surprised.
Back in October 2008, Steve Jobs famously declared that Blu-ray was a big bag of hurt when it came to licensing issues. Consequently, Jobs said that while Blu-ray provided a great way for consumers to watch movies, Apple wasn’t going to jump in until Blu-ray became more mainstream.
And so, the masses waited.
Then, in February of 2009, Blu-ray licensing got a whole lot easier when Sony, Phillips, and Panasonic announced a new licensing scheme whereby companies looking to manufacture Blu-ray drives would only need to attain a single all-encompassing license, a marked improvement given the number of companies who hold Blu-ray related patents.
And so, the masses got excited.
Naturally, speculation soon began building that Apple would, at last, begin incorporating Blu-ray drives into the Mac.
But despite an abundance of speculation and the occasional rumor, Blu-ray on the Mac remained nothing more than a pipe-dream.
And licensing issues aside, there were a number of other factors which perhaps prevented Apple from taking the Blu-ray plunge.
For starters, the difference in picture quality when watching a movie on Blu-ray versus DVD is rather negligible when you’re talking about a 13- or 15-inch screen – and remember that the vast majority of Macs Apple sells are notebooks.
But what’s that you say, the new iMacs and MacBook Pros with Retina Displays don’t even have optical drives?
Indeed they do not, which leads us to yet another factor that perhaps swayed Apple away from Blu-ray – iTunes. Remember that Apple is all about the ecosystem and they’d much rather prefer consumers get their media content from iTunes – and play them on iOS devices or Macs – than to get optical discs somewhere else and be left out of the equation entirely.
And with that as a backdrop, let’s go back, once again, to July 2010 when Steve Jobs addressed the issue of Blu-ray once more, this time in response to a user email inquiring why Apple’s then-new Mac Minis didn’t sport Blu-ray drives.
Jobs responded:
Blu-ray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD – like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.
… Free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue.
I think you may be wrong – we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.
So as of July 2010, Steve Jobs and Apple were of the mind that Blu-ray was fast becoming a losing proposition, an uninspiring competitor to Internet downloads.
And now, with newly announced iMacs on the horizon, we have yet another iMac upgrade without Blu-ray. What’s more, Apple is marching forward on its quest to phase out the optical drive completely. And if you talk to Phil Schiller, it sure likes like the Mac will never sport Blu-ray drives.
In an interview with Schiller for Time Magazine, Harry McCracken noted:
Schiller pointed out that one major application for optical drives, software distribution, has gone largely digital. As for video, he said that “Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology…So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks.”
His preferred Blu-ray alternative? iTunes, of course, which lets you buy a movie and then watch it on all your Apple devices.
Once upon a time, people assumed that Macs’ lack of Blu-ray was a delay, not a permanent decision to fast-forward past it. I told Schiller that I imagined folks don’t ask about it much these days. “Correct,” he said.
And so there you have it. It’s easy to forget about Blu-ray drives when 1) Apple is increasingly abandoning optical drives and 2) consumers don’t seem to be clamoring for it like they used to.
If anything, Jobs’ email from 2010 should have been an overt tip off to Apple’s ultimate plans with optical drives.
And lastly, it’s worth pointing out that during Apple’s iPad Mini special event last week, Schiller said that Apple would still make available iMacs with optical drives for users who “can’t let go of the past.”
