If you’re waiting for a Mac that will come with a Blu-ray Disc drive, you may want to give up. Steve Jobs says the high-capacity format will quickly become useless.
In an e-mail exchange with an Apple user, posted on MacRumors.com, Steve Jobs said that Blu-ray “will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.”
The comments came as the user asked Jobs why there wasn’t a Blu-ray drive in the new line of Mac Mini computers.
“The downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue,” said Jobs.
He finished by telling the individual, “I think you may be wrong,” and said that HD streaming would “win almost everyone over.”
Jobs’s comments appear to be at odds with other analyst reports, some of which suggest that Blu-ray will be strong for at least the majority of the 2010s, and it will dominate home media sales over the next 7 years.
Blu-ray drives in computers does appear to be an afterthought for the entire market, though. Last year, only 3.6% of all computers shipped had a BD drive.
