BluRay is useless on a computer. No one wants to watch BluRay on their computer, they want to watch them on their big screen HDTV. Blank media is still very expensive, $50/disc for 50 GB. External hard drives are far cheaper and easier for backup.
If you really want BluRay, you can add it now to your Mac, so Apple doesn't need to include them across the line.
Blu-ray support (both movie payback and rewritable disks) is an absolute must across all Macs.
Blu Ray support already exists. Go buy a Blu Ray drive and Roxio's Toast and enjoy wasting your money on blank media and slow backups. It is not an absolute must.
Blu-ray would be a very welcome addition in my opinion. I already have an external Blu-ray drive hooked up to my iMac. It's pretty much the only reason why I have a BootCamp partition installed on it, so I can view BDs on Windows. Just hope someone'll make some sort of decryption tool available for Mac sooner or later - not a big fan of region coding and user restrictions on my own discs.
Unless you have an iMac with a 24" screen, it can't display the 1080p picture from a Blu Ray disc. Wouldn't you rather watch your Blu Ray disc on your big HDTV? Not exactly a compelling experience on such a small screen for a movie.
I disagree. You may have a different experience but everyone I know considers it slow. I don't even bother going into the applications section because it takes forever to load and scroll through. I consistently get beach balls while scrolling through my music. I have to also turn off the Genius sidebar. The idea that they would add more stuff to it and for it to continue the way it is now is mind boggling.
iTunes is very fast on an Intel Mac. Add more memory to your Mac if you keep getting beach balls.
I'm really hoping Apple isn't thinking that Blu-Ray is compelling because it isn't. Frankly it strikes me as being about as modern as magnetic core memory. Plus the premium you pay for the media is a joke.
On the other hand iTunes is showing some significant aging and a completely Cocoa based iTunes would be fantastic. My biggest fear thought is that it will be Snow Leopard only. Well not so much a fear as I will update to SL the minute it is out, but rather there will be weeks of whining from people that think Apple owes them.
My thinking is that to power some of the more interactive parts of an enhanced iTunes they would need to go parallel with GPU processing. In other words to get all the goodies on screen you will need a fairly modern machine. Of course iTunes 9 could be designed to degrade gracefully when running on older OS'es and hardware. I'd rather see Apple push forward though.
Dave
I had Blu-Ray I supported it then I sold it and supported the SD & HD Movies and TV Shows in iTunes. Its nice to go on my Movie section to my current 172 Movies including HD just scroll my mouse to click and start playing rather than get up to put a disc in. If Apple support it I support Apple but I rather see if Apple get the 720p HD Movies. I'm pretty sure that a deal is made. I know Apple is going to get a ALL HD Catalog of ALL Movies. Think about Apple would be saving Blu-Ray if they put it on ALL their Macs!
Yeah, like the people who bought PPC Macs back in 2006 who can't upgrade to SL?
The PowerPC G5 is a 6 year old processor, and the new features in Snow Leopard won't support it, nor would the graphic GPUs in those old Macs. Stop complaining. During the 68040 to PowerPC transition, Apple dropped 68040 support after three years as well.
I had Blu-Ray I supported it then I sold it and supported the SD & HD Movies and TV Shows in iTunes. Its nice to go on my Movie section to my current 172 Movies including HD just scroll my mouse to click and start playing rather than get up to put a disc in. If Apple support it I support Apple but I rather see if Apple get the 720p HD Movies. I'm pretty sure that a deal is made. I know Apple is going to get a ALL HD Catalog of ALL Movies. Think about Apple would be saving Blu-Ray if they put it on ALL their Macs!
But Apple's 720p HD content is no match for Blu Ray at 1080p on an HDTV combined with the uncompressed audio of Dolby TrueHD or DTS-MA.
I disagree. You may have a different experience but everyone I know considers it slow. I don't even bother going into the applications section because it takes forever to load and scroll through. ....
This has more to do with the speed of your hard drive and specifically the size of it's cache than anything iTunes is doing. Especially the slowness with the apps screen.
Apps are generally quite small, the only way it could be as slow as you say is if you either have some super sh*t-load of apps (i.e. - "you're doing it wrong"), or you have a seriously old and slow HD. (or you could be just exaggerating)
The PowerPC G5 is a 6 year old processor, and the new features in Snow Leopard won't support it, nor would the graphic GPUs in those old Macs. Stop complaining. During the 68040 to PowerPC transition, Apple dropped 68040 support after three years as well.
I have nothing to complain about, I have an early 2008 MBP, this doesn't affect me. I wasn't saying SL needed to support PPC Macs, but there should be an iTunes 9 for normal Leopard users, I think. Hell, Apple supported iTunes on Windows 2000 until about two years ago (I know this because I upgraded to WinXP on my old desktop finally when the iPod Classic needed iTunes 8 which dropped Win2000 support). I don't see why they couldn't do the same for Leopard users.
Of course iTunes 9 will support leopard. It'll likely come out in September when the new iPods are announced, which will probably be before snow leopard is released. Even if snow leopard was released, it'd make no sense to drop leopard support for at least a year or two. It's possible they'd limit some features though, but you've got to remember windows is there too, and it'd look bad if xp had better features than leopard...
i really don't imagine much usefulness in being able to organize apps in iTunes. App organizing on the iPhone would be infinitely more useful. The only time i ever click on the Applications section of the iTunes Library is to update my apps. unless the organization within iTunes would sync to the iPhone... now that would be great.
It would be nice if you could turn on an option to automatically update apps. the current setup takes way too much user interaction and confirmation when you pretty much always want to just update all your apps.
Yeah, like the people who bought PPC Macs back in 2006 who can't upgrade to SL?
don't hold your breathe. seriously. Apple never hid that they were phasing out support for the PPC when Intel became the standard. SL is just the next step in that new game.
which is in line with Apple not continuing support on models once AppleCare would be dead. the last of the PPCs sold about this time in 2006. so by the time SL comes out, they will all be past warranty. if your machine crashed you could likely by 3 times as much computer for half what you paid originally.
i really don't imagine much usefulness in being able to organize apps in iTunes. App organizing on the iPhone would be infinitely more useful. The only time i ever click on the Applications section of the iTunes Library is to update my apps. unless the organization within iTunes would sync to the iPhone... now that would be great.
It would be nice if you could turn on an option to automatically update apps. the current setup takes way too much user interaction and confirmation when you pretty much always want to just update all your apps.
Are you kidding me? If you have more than 2 or 3 pages full of apps (and especially if you have the full nine pages of apps), app management via iTunes will be a major productivity enhancer.
BluRay is useless on a computer. No one wants to watch BluRay on their computer, they want to watch them on their big screen HDTV.
Blu-ray is obviously ideal on a big screen. Should I also buy the same movie in another format so the kids can watch it in the car? Or might it be convenient to be able to use the same disk on a portable device?
"Sorry kids, hillstones says you don't want to watch that movie on a laptop."
Yes, very much agreed. iTunes is a great concept and I like it, BUT, it us WAY too slow and basically suffers from feature bloat. They need to completely rethink their implementation of everything from the groundup. Give us a completely new iTunes.
Agreed.
iTunes needs a rethink.
First off, iTunes is far too slow these days, and suffers from quirks in the user interface that are inherint in Carbon applications.
A full Cocoa rewrite, with 64-bit support, is what should be the primary focus of iTunes for the Mac now.
And if they can rethink how music, movies, rentals, iPhone applications, ringtones, etc., are all stored, then all the better. What annoys me a bit is that iTunes does all these things, yet it is still called iTunes. It's more like iMediaHub.
BluRay is useless on a computer. No one wants to watch BluRay on their computer, they want to watch them on their big screen HDTV. Blank media is still very expensive, $50/disc for 50 GB. External hard drives are far cheaper and easier for backup.
If you really want BluRay, you can add it now to your Mac, so Apple doesn't need to include them across the line.
Apple should allow the option. It's a flimsy excuse to look at the price. When Apple included CD, it was very expensive. Same thing with DVD. Blu-Ray is no different. In fact, in inflated dollars, B-R is cheaper than either CD or DVD was when Apple included them.
The only difference is that back then, Apple had no download business to push. Now it does.
I had Blu-Ray I supported it then I sold it and supported the SD & HD Movies and TV Shows in iTunes. Its nice to go on my Movie section to my current 172 Movies including HD just scroll my mouse to click and start playing rather than get up to put a disc in. If Apple support it I support Apple but I rather see if Apple get the 720p HD Movies. I'm pretty sure that a deal is made. I know Apple is going to get a ALL HD Catalog of ALL Movies. Think about Apple would be saving Blu-Ray if they put it on ALL their Macs!
I bought an aTv a while ago. I also have B-R.
If I have a B-R disk, and get the same movie in 720 from Apple, the B-R version just kills it. It isn't very close either.
Of course, you have to have a big enough set, and you have to be sitting at the correct distance.
If you have a small 42" set, and you're sitting ten feet away, then you probably won't see much of a difference at all.
Comments
As far as I know, there aren't any slot-loading Blu-ray drives. Apple can't put a product in their computers that doesn't exist yet.
If anything though, it should be an option for Mac Pros.
The slotload drives do exist, if you want to drop $999 for one.
http://store.fastmac.com/product_inf...roducts_id=338
BluRay is useless on a computer. No one wants to watch BluRay on their computer, they want to watch them on their big screen HDTV. Blank media is still very expensive, $50/disc for 50 GB. External hard drives are far cheaper and easier for backup.
If you really want BluRay, you can add it now to your Mac, so Apple doesn't need to include them across the line.
Blu-ray support (both movie payback and rewritable disks) is an absolute must across all Macs.
Blu Ray support already exists. Go buy a Blu Ray drive and Roxio's Toast and enjoy wasting your money on blank media and slow backups. It is not an absolute must.
Blu-ray would be a very welcome addition in my opinion. I already have an external Blu-ray drive hooked up to my iMac. It's pretty much the only reason why I have a BootCamp partition installed on it, so I can view BDs on Windows. Just hope someone'll make some sort of decryption tool available for Mac sooner or later - not a big fan of region coding and user restrictions on my own discs.
Unless you have an iMac with a 24" screen, it can't display the 1080p picture from a Blu Ray disc. Wouldn't you rather watch your Blu Ray disc on your big HDTV? Not exactly a compelling experience on such a small screen for a movie.
I disagree. You may have a different experience but everyone I know considers it slow. I don't even bother going into the applications section because it takes forever to load and scroll through. I consistently get beach balls while scrolling through my music. I have to also turn off the Genius sidebar. The idea that they would add more stuff to it and for it to continue the way it is now is mind boggling.
iTunes is very fast on an Intel Mac. Add more memory to your Mac if you keep getting beach balls.
Blu-ray Disc supports something called "Managed Copy" which does allow you to legally rip the disc as full resolution.
Good luck with that. Although that is in the specs, none of the Blu Ray titles offer that feature.
I'm really hoping Apple isn't thinking that Blu-Ray is compelling because it isn't. Frankly it strikes me as being about as modern as magnetic core memory. Plus the premium you pay for the media is a joke.
On the other hand iTunes is showing some significant aging and a completely Cocoa based iTunes would be fantastic. My biggest fear thought is that it will be Snow Leopard only. Well not so much a fear as I will update to SL the minute it is out, but rather there will be weeks of whining from people that think Apple owes them.
My thinking is that to power some of the more interactive parts of an enhanced iTunes they would need to go parallel with GPU processing. In other words to get all the goodies on screen you will need a fairly modern machine. Of course iTunes 9 could be designed to degrade gracefully when running on older OS'es and hardware. I'd rather see Apple push forward though.
Dave
I had Blu-Ray I supported it then I sold it and supported the SD & HD Movies and TV Shows in iTunes. Its nice to go on my Movie section to my current 172 Movies including HD just scroll my mouse to click and start playing rather than get up to put a disc in. If Apple support it I support Apple but I rather see if Apple get the 720p HD Movies. I'm pretty sure that a deal is made. I know Apple is going to get a ALL HD Catalog of ALL Movies. Think about Apple would be saving Blu-Ray if they put it on ALL their Macs!
Yeah, like the people who bought PPC Macs back in 2006 who can't upgrade to SL?
The PowerPC G5 is a 6 year old processor, and the new features in Snow Leopard won't support it, nor would the graphic GPUs in those old Macs. Stop complaining. During the 68040 to PowerPC transition, Apple dropped 68040 support after three years as well.
I had Blu-Ray I supported it then I sold it and supported the SD & HD Movies and TV Shows in iTunes. Its nice to go on my Movie section to my current 172 Movies including HD just scroll my mouse to click and start playing rather than get up to put a disc in. If Apple support it I support Apple but I rather see if Apple get the 720p HD Movies. I'm pretty sure that a deal is made. I know Apple is going to get a ALL HD Catalog of ALL Movies. Think about Apple would be saving Blu-Ray if they put it on ALL their Macs!
But Apple's 720p HD content is no match for Blu Ray at 1080p on an HDTV combined with the uncompressed audio of Dolby TrueHD or DTS-MA.
There are slot loading Blu-Ray drives, just not in the 9.5mm superslim for the portables. The iMac and mini have options using 12.7mm regular slim.
There is a slot load Blu Ray drive that works in a variety of Mac portables.
http://store.fastmac.com/product_inf...roducts_id=338
I disagree. You may have a different experience but everyone I know considers it slow. I don't even bother going into the applications section because it takes forever to load and scroll through. ....
This has more to do with the speed of your hard drive and specifically the size of it's cache than anything iTunes is doing. Especially the slowness with the apps screen.
Apps are generally quite small, the only way it could be as slow as you say is if you either have some super sh*t-load of apps (i.e. - "you're doing it wrong"), or you have a seriously old and slow HD. (or you could be just exaggerating)
The PowerPC G5 is a 6 year old processor, and the new features in Snow Leopard won't support it, nor would the graphic GPUs in those old Macs. Stop complaining. During the 68040 to PowerPC transition, Apple dropped 68040 support after three years as well.
I have nothing to complain about, I have an early 2008 MBP, this doesn't affect me. I wasn't saying SL needed to support PPC Macs, but there should be an iTunes 9 for normal Leopard users, I think. Hell, Apple supported iTunes on Windows 2000 until about two years ago (I know this because I upgraded to WinXP on my old desktop finally when the iPod Classic needed iTunes 8 which dropped Win2000 support). I don't see why they couldn't do the same for Leopard users.
It would be nice if you could turn on an option to automatically update apps. the current setup takes way too much user interaction and confirmation when you pretty much always want to just update all your apps.
Yeah, like the people who bought PPC Macs back in 2006 who can't upgrade to SL?
don't hold your breathe. seriously. Apple never hid that they were phasing out support for the PPC when Intel became the standard. SL is just the next step in that new game.
which is in line with Apple not continuing support on models once AppleCare would be dead. the last of the PPCs sold about this time in 2006. so by the time SL comes out, they will all be past warranty. if your machine crashed you could likely by 3 times as much computer for half what you paid originally.
i really don't imagine much usefulness in being able to organize apps in iTunes. App organizing on the iPhone would be infinitely more useful. The only time i ever click on the Applications section of the iTunes Library is to update my apps. unless the organization within iTunes would sync to the iPhone... now that would be great.
It would be nice if you could turn on an option to automatically update apps. the current setup takes way too much user interaction and confirmation when you pretty much always want to just update all your apps.
Are you kidding me? If you have more than 2 or 3 pages full of apps (and especially if you have the full nine pages of apps), app management via iTunes will be a major productivity enhancer.
BluRay is useless on a computer. No one wants to watch BluRay on their computer, they want to watch them on their big screen HDTV.
Blu-ray is obviously ideal on a big screen. Should I also buy the same movie in another format so the kids can watch it in the car? Or might it be convenient to be able to use the same disk on a portable device?
"Sorry kids, hillstones says you don't want to watch that movie on a laptop."
Yes, very much agreed. iTunes is a great concept and I like it, BUT, it us WAY too slow and basically suffers from feature bloat. They need to completely rethink their implementation of everything from the groundup. Give us a completely new iTunes.
Agreed.
iTunes needs a rethink.
First off, iTunes is far too slow these days, and suffers from quirks in the user interface that are inherint in Carbon applications.
A full Cocoa rewrite, with 64-bit support, is what should be the primary focus of iTunes for the Mac now.
And if they can rethink how music, movies, rentals, iPhone applications, ringtones, etc., are all stored, then all the better. What annoys me a bit is that iTunes does all these things, yet it is still called iTunes. It's more like iMediaHub.
Yeah, like the people who bought PPC Macs back in 2006 who can't upgrade to SL?
You mean like the people who bought a new XP machine 3 months before Vista came out, and couldn't upgrade?
The slotload drives do exist, if you want to drop $999 for one.
http://store.fastmac.com/product_inf...roducts_id=338
BluRay is useless on a computer. No one wants to watch BluRay on their computer, they want to watch them on their big screen HDTV. Blank media is still very expensive, $50/disc for 50 GB. External hard drives are far cheaper and easier for backup.
If you really want BluRay, you can add it now to your Mac, so Apple doesn't need to include them across the line.
Apple should allow the option. It's a flimsy excuse to look at the price. When Apple included CD, it was very expensive. Same thing with DVD. Blu-Ray is no different. In fact, in inflated dollars, B-R is cheaper than either CD or DVD was when Apple included them.
The only difference is that back then, Apple had no download business to push. Now it does.
I had Blu-Ray I supported it then I sold it and supported the SD & HD Movies and TV Shows in iTunes. Its nice to go on my Movie section to my current 172 Movies including HD just scroll my mouse to click and start playing rather than get up to put a disc in. If Apple support it I support Apple but I rather see if Apple get the 720p HD Movies. I'm pretty sure that a deal is made. I know Apple is going to get a ALL HD Catalog of ALL Movies. Think about Apple would be saving Blu-Ray if they put it on ALL their Macs!
I bought an aTv a while ago. I also have B-R.
If I have a B-R disk, and get the same movie in 720 from Apple, the B-R version just kills it. It isn't very close either.
Of course, you have to have a big enough set, and you have to be sitting at the correct distance.
If you have a small 42" set, and you're sitting ten feet away, then you probably won't see much of a difference at all.