News: Apple stays staunch with Blu-ray not coming to Macs anytime soon

In a response to an email sent by a MacRumours reader, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made it clear that users shouldn’t expect Blu-ray drives in their Macs just yet, if at all.

Following up his 2008 description of Blu-ray licensing as a “bag of hurt”, according to The Guardian Jobs replied to the reader, “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.”

The reader counter-argued that although this might be so in the long run, there would be many medium-term benefits to incorporating the device, such as the ability to create high-density backups, and higher quality video than what’s available online. He also argued that MP3 took off because of its lack of DRM, as opposed to Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-Audio.

Jobs was having none of it, however. “No, free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off,” he responded. “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.”

The stalwart stance from Apple has puzzled many consumers, especially given the number of manufacturers readily incorporating Blu-ray into their products. Apple owners don’t even have the ability to buy add-on drives to read Blu-ray, because the OS is unresponsive to them.