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Apple Backs Blu-ray
zaxios writes "The New York Times is reporting that Apple has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association, and will use Blu-ray in upcoming versions of iMovie and Final Cut. The move puts Apple among Sony, Matsushita, Dell, HP and Walt Disney in supporting Blu-ray; companies including Toshiba, NEC, Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, Universal and Paramount are pledged to adopt the competing HD-DVD format. Apple's support confirms Blu-ray's future dominance on the desktop, but the division in Hollywood and notebook manufacturers between the two HD videodiscs will ensure the bona fide format war we were all secretly pining for."
...its not Microsoft backing Blu Ray or we'd have to turn against HD DVD.
Apple's support confirms Blu-ray's future dominance on the desktop
Against the MS behemoth supporting HDDVD? Why exactly?
And mow for something completely different, who pays this site's bills?
-mkb
I really think the HD-DVD will win simply becuase of the name.
Consumer: You mean this is a H D DVD. Wow I have been hearing so much about how good HD is so I want one.
Dont laugh VHS rolled of tounge better than Beta Max. One has to wonder what marketing genus wanted to call their product beta anyway
Now if IBM could jump on the Blu-Ray bandwagon we'd be set!! We (the OSS croud, linux personally) would see a lot more support with HP, Apple plus IBM's support...
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Forget about Sony, HP, Matsushita, Apple, Dell, and Disney...
The porn industry, which releases 11,000 titles a year, will likely silently decide which format "wins" (previous slashdot coverage).
And some of the bigger porn houses are coming down on the side of Blu-ray because of its capacity advantage over HD-DVD. That the porn industry would have such an influence comes as no surprise to those who know just how big the industry really is.
Well, now that Sony's on board we know it's a real standard. This is good news, as I can finally archive my collection of Betamax tapes.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
I remember reading specs and what it seemed to me was Blu-ray was simply better from the users point of view. I think it took more work on the manufacturers side and forced them to do a lot of extra work for it to be able to read traditional DVDs, but that shouldn't be as important.
Am I on the ball here or is there really not a complete performance domination by Blu-ray?
Just look at the history!
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
Apple among Sony, Matsushita, Dell, HP and Walt Disney
For those of you that don't recognize the name "Matsushita", they're probably known to you as Panasonic.
Dell already backs Blu-Ray. As does Sony.
It'll be interesting to see what the Apple design team comes up for the external blue ray drives. Wonder what color they'll be...
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
http://search.microsoft.com/search/results.aspx?st =b&na=88&View=en-us&qu=bluray
results = 0
Um...I'll admit I didn't read the article, but doesn't the post say that Dell already has?
That said, I'd say that Apple's support of Blu-ray doesn't do all the much to confirm it's dominance on the desktop...I'd say Dell's support is much more important there. And Disney's support is probably worth more that the rest of them combined. Maybe not in the computer arena, but then again with people now expecting their computers to use the same media as their other AV equipment, maybe it does.
Correlation does not indicate causation. It could merely be the fact that Apple made the technically sound decisions, being the savvy players in the media market they are, or that they were simply lucky.
When you consider that DL DVD drives have been out for some time (reasonably priced), yet the media still costs about 10 bucks a pop, can you imagine what the Blu-Ray (or HD) discs will go for? At the risk of dating myself (not like anyone else would, HA), I was an early adopter for the *new* high-density 3.5" floppies at about $80 for a box of 10.
Realistically, once the next-generation drives and discs are out, it will lower the price of DL media into something more affordable.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
Dell is backing Blu-ray... RTA
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Its not so much that their two diffrent formats (As there will be at some point a combo drive, it always happens)...
its the fact that there are going to be two _competing_ formats which means...
lower prices!
-ND
in whatever direction the wind happens to be blowing. BluRay is the better format without doubt and the longer this drags on the more obvious the difference between the formats will become.
We can expect and MS back BluRay with their new WMV codec any day soon.
Firewire never gained more of the market share over USB, and that is why all DVDs use MPEG4.
History fails you.
When do we get Blu-Ray Burners in G5 Powermacs? 50GB Superdrive Baby!
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Shall we review some of the technology apple backed before it got big on the desktop?
Apple's decision to ship USB on the iMac marked the start of USB as a consumer interface.
Ditto for firewire, floppy-less machines.
And what's MS gonna do with HD-DVD? Ship computers with it? Disable Blu-Ray drives? E-THIS-FORMAT-SUCKS: ?
I think they planned to annouce this at the MacWorld Keynote, but sometihng kept them from doing it. Why else would they have gotten the CEO of Sony to be there? They could have gotten anybody from Sony to demo their HDV camera, CEO appearances are saved for special occasions. As far as the HDV camera goes, Sony isn't the only manufacturer with an HDV prosumer camera.
Ever been to Hollywood? They don't even know what Windows is, everyone "in the biz" so to say is far more likely to be carrying around an iBook and working on a G5 than anything else. Apple supporting Blu-ray is HUGE news in that respect.
look how well Sony got that to take off in the USA
i type this as someone who has a few pieces of MD hardware and actually likes it.... though i think most people that use(d) minidiscs liked them. i never bought pre-recorded music but used it to replace cassettes.
Whichever one I buy will be the one that loses. *kicks beta max*
So why, exactly, should I be pining for a format war?
All that means to me is several years of incompatible hardware, price fluctuation, and annoying-ass FUD campaigns ("Our discs last longer! HD-DVDs melt after three months!" "That's a lie, plus OUR discs have better color density on playback!" "Oh YEAH?? Well, OUR discs...")
A format war might drive prices down more quickly in the short term, but what good is that to me if I need to buy new hardware and don't want to get stuck with a lemon during those few years before either one format wins hands-down or dual-capability drives get introduced?
one format is a lot cheaper to make the discs, the other has much larger capacity. that is pretty much what it boils down to. both are good formats, and better than what we have now.
Yes, apple backed +R. But +R lagged behind early on because the discs were 2X the price (even thought they burned at 2.4x vs 2x...nobody was impressed).
The reason +R survived was that manufacturers created +/- drives. Now +R discs are comparable in price to -R. +R also has a better following now because its supported by about the same number of consumer players, usually as a brief edge in speed and is the only DL format. But those last three are just icing. The real reason it's alive is the dual format burners. The real reason it's popular is because its price competitive.
Hint: if you want BluRay to succeed, make sure that all the pressed content is out there in BR. If you want it to crush HD-DVD, make Blu-ray cheaper to buy blank media, cheaper to manufacture pressed discs, and make the hardware the same cost as HD-DVD. As icing, make sure every BluRay player can play HD-DVD as well.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
For those who are interested in the rumored Apple-Sony connection, this could be seen as a way for Apple to please Sony...
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Two reasons beta lost out to vhs, despite higher quality: Sony was restrictive in its patent licensing, and the tape couldn't record more than 2 hours.
Best Slashdot Co
Now there will be TWO other ways for them to release about a billion old movies and tv shows...I own about 5 copies of the Star Wars Trilogy as it is.
You're right...And they have almost zero presence in the video editing field too...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Jesus, how stupid can you mods be!! Or how fucking pro-apple. The parent statement is WRONG!
Read the other responses to the post, the parent is clearly mac propaganda.
One more time...geesh, slashdot has such fucking mac fanboys. You idiots would probably be pro Mac toilet paper too...
Ah the memories of buying 3.5 floppies 1 at a time for $8. You had to ask the cashier to give it to you from under the counter at the VA Tech Bookstore circa 1987.
They don't like Blu-Ray because it can hold HDTV quality video.
You do get that MPAA's plan is to sell you HD-DVD at sort of EDTV solution, then tell you its obsolete and sell you something else with slightly higher resolution.
They claim their content is licensed, but they keep selling us a license over and over again for the same content. Just different format.
And we're so stupid we buy into it.
> Apple has joined the Blu-ray Disc Association
Blue-ray will fail because the disks won't play in the current installed base of DVD players. People
now have DVD players in their living rooms, SUVs, cars, laptops, desktops, bedrooms, kitchens, vacation homes-- do you
really want to explain to your kid that the new Spiderman3 Blue-ray disk they bought won't play in the minivan?
HD-DVD multilayer disks can be made completely backwards compatible- HD on new layers for the home theater in the basement, conventional resolution on other layers for the car. Stores will only have to stock one disk. This will decide it.
how many people out there have HDTVs right now? then think that most home users are not using HD cameras. even if everyone had these drives in their hardware tomorrow, it will take some time for HD cameras to trickle down to home users. odds are it will be higher end projects that set the pace for this. that kind of work is more likely to be done on an Apple then a Dell valu-boxen.
at some point what the masses buy will be important for burning discs, but i guess for now it is an issue what formats laptops will be able to play? if Apple, Dell etc etc sell laptops that can only play BlueRay discs and not HDDVD it might matter? if i could pick up both formats in the store, i would obviously buy the one i will be able to watch on a laptop.
Apple has only ever supported DVD-R for recording.
Now that DVD+/-R recorders have been out for 2 year, Apple is still pushing just the -R.
I know, I just bought an iMac G5 last month, and annoyingly, you have to buy blank -R's, not the more common and popular +R's.
just be the only thing Steve Jobs and Disney agree on....
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
Mpeg4 had trouble catching on? the entire standard sure, but even Mpeg2 still has problems with some of that as there are some more obscure items in Mpeg2 that no one uses and aren't implemented in a lot of encoders and decoders. however, there are plenty of of things supporting Mpeg4 already which is pretty amazing considering it didn't get finalized as a standard until October of 1998 and become an ISO standard in 1999. Microsoft picked up MPEG4 very early and incorporated a half-assed version in ASF/WMV. in 1999 a French and a German hacked the microsoft codec to allow people to use only the MPEG4 portion of the codecs to encode into AVI files thus starting the DivX revolution, which everyone is well aware of. Of course, as stated DIVXs only use a subset of the standard as who needs things like text to speech and music synthesis?
VCDs on the other hand have been around since the early 90s and didn't pick up in the west until around 1998, when DVD players and easily accessible PC software came about to play them. years after the days of CD-i and such.
IDIOT!!! you are wrong
apple did not back DVD+R it was DVD-R!!!
get your facts straight
you also know nothing about patent burden on +R and -R it seems
That was funny. One of the more interesting things I've seen in my life was a German version of Penthouse with the same layout as an American one someone had lying around. I thought something looked odd about the model. When I compared the two, I saw that the German layout hadn't airbrushed the panty marks and other minor skin blemishes from the model.
Heck, she was still good looking, but somehow wasn't quite as "perfect" as the airbrushed version and I found myself definately prefering that "perfection".
Call me a pig if you want, and I do love looking at "real" women with all of their imperfections, but the parent is absolutely right. Do we really want to see High Def tit-job scars? How about stretch marks?
High def can have the tendency to look real. Unfortuneatly, the reason we buy porn isn't reality, it's fantasy.
TW
I have a 2 month old iMac that only supports -R. Where can I get the firmware hack?
Yay! One more company to support the technically superior (see http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/186 for technical details) BD format! :) Apple's market share might not make that much of a dent in the HD-DVD vs. BD war, but Apple does carry a name recognition and "cool factor" that might help. And Pixar, too.
Gobbleshoe.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Oh boy...just like the years when Beta, then VHS came out wahoo...I can but one player, buy all the videos I enjoy on it, then a few years later when the format dies, I can buy yet another player and all the videos I enjoy on it!!! Just what i've always wanted! :)
You have two competing formats... All other things being equal, one supports significantly more storage space than the other. Just based on that Blu-Ray wins hands down. Unfortunately, what I think could happen is that movies will be released on the two formats with identical quality, only the Blu-Ray version will be stuffed with more advertisements. And for PC archival purposes, I can't imagine anyone supporting hddvd. Blu-Ray will finally give us an optical media format with nearly as much capacity as a DLT tape. -BT
Ah, that probably explains why IDE hard drives are much more ubiquitous on the desktop nowadays than the SCSI drives used by Apple. Or why RS232 became the standard serial port, as opposed to RS485. Or why every movie in the world is encoded in QuickTime now.
Quicktime (like AVI) is a container file, not a media encoding so that statement would not make much sense.
Secondly, the industry contributions by Apple that were adopted (if one were to look closely at history, which most of you are not) seemed to occur after Steve Jobs return.
So the prevalence of USB, firewire capable devices can be attributed to Apple's adoption of the technology (or in Apple's case of Firewire, its creation).
Nobody claims the days without Steve at the helm were very good at all, and certainly Apple wasn't setting any benchmarks.
Ironic how? I don't see how my handle could be taken as ironic.
And with something like this, it could become causation - Apple builds up a good track record of picking winners, other companies notice this, and when Apple makes their pick other companies start to mirror them based on their past performance, thus making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
You mean Microsoft's tiny market share...in the professional editing industry.
What good is it to have a format, Mr. Anderson, if you have no software to edit it with?
If I had a dollar for every windows box at Pixar and Lucasfilm, plus 50 cents for every windows box at professional editing houses in NY and LA, I'd have about $4.50.
Film and TV professionals like Apple, trust Apple, and they use Apple.
Oh, and Sony has this little thing called a Playstation, which means (shazam) 50 million blu-ray boxes in homes overnight. Once you have it, might as well buy some movies for it, right?
The only people I see so far supporting HD-DVD are content providers who don't sell hardware or do their own manufacturing. The hardware guys all seem to want Blu-ray.
Places like Paramount want the cheapest option because they have to subcontract manufacturing DVDs. What they sell is intellectual property, they don't really care what format it is on. They do care if the needed price point is more then what their customers want to pay (most casual DVD buyers would balk at a $60 Blu-ray disc, but would probably pay $5 to $10 more for HD-DVD).
Hardware manufacturers like Sony want Blu-ray because they need a killer hook to get you to upgrade (like more storage space). Sony is weird, because they are BOTH kinds of company at once, but they still think of themselves as hardware-oriented. They care a lot about format because they want control over sales, they want licensing fees (if applicable), and, most importantly, they manufacture the players. People JUST bought DVD players 3 or 4 years ago. The only people clamoring for a new format are Movie Professionals and Home Theatre Geeks, who tend to favor Blu-ray for technical advantages. They are willing to drop the $$$$$ on a new player, which means boffo profits for Sony. Paramount sees jack shit from player sales. They want to move as many DVDs as possible, they don't care if you use them as coasters. Sony would rather sell you a new player and 7.1 sound system so you can watch (Paramount movie) Top Gun on it.
Apple is a hardware manufacturer. They want to sell more editing suites and copies of FinalCut Pro. More lines on the screen is not going to be an easy sell with the people who buy their stuff. A big storage jump is.
Almost every media standard Apple had backed early has succeeded overall in the market. Ones that Apple snubbed (or where it has been snubbed e.g. MPEG4) have had real problems getting established, and have mostly failed.
Since when is Apple snubbing, or being snubbed by, MPEG4?
and just like the CD and DVD it will be overcome. There's too much money in backups for CE companies.
Blu-ray has several things going for it. . .
Playstation 3 inclusion of Blu-ray would prove to be a massive boost for the standard as it automatically gives an instant installed base in the tens of millions. As initial players will likely be relatively pricey, it's usually difficult to start the momentum to get enough installed base on the market so that studios would want to produce content for it, and more content usually then convinces more people to buy into the standard. However, by PS3 being Blu-ray compatible automatically creates a massive installed that studios can produce content for to start the ball rolling.
Secondly, Blu-ray seems to be more scalable then HD-DVD with comapanies planning 4-layer 100GB and 8-layer 200GB multilayered disks. Also, Blu-ray seems to be getting more hardware on the market then HD-DVD, especially since Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic, Technic, Fisher, etc) are backing it. Sony has just annouced Blu-ray drive for the PC that can write to write-once 50GB disks or rewritable-50GB disks.
BLu-ray drive for PC
.I'd say Dell's support is much more important there.
Apple's support is perceived as more important because Apple is perceived as being more influential in leading the computer industry with leading edge technology. I mean, their OS is based on Unix. Can't get more new-fangled than that.
Disney's support is probably worth more that the rest of them combined.
True, but remember that Sony is also a major player in Hollywood. In fact, their entertainment division is supporting the consumer electronics division, despite the success of play station.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
As HDDVD, so says John C. Dvorack. Of course this means it WILL become the standard.
Damn, hard drive costs are just coming down to a point where it is feasible to rip all your movies to disk without down-coding. Now with new HD video media that option will be right out the window! How am I supposed happily watch a movie when my anal-retentive freakish videophile nature keeps telling me I could be watching it in higher quality! ARGH!
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
MPEG2 has trouble catching on?!? Just because you don't use it in your computer "piracy" world does not mean that it is not used. MPEG2 is used across the country for any real video work because it is basically uncompressed. This means News stations, Cable Stations etc...
I know for a fact that Local and National commercials across the nation are encoded in MPEG2. Also, that most of the News clips that you see on TV are sitting on a video content server as an MPEG2 stream. MPEG2 has a whole plethora of hardware vendors that make nothing but MPEG2 Encoders and Decoders so how exactly is it having trouble catching on?
Yep, overall they have a tiny market share, but iMovie is delivered on every single one, so 100% of that small market share will have the capability.
I have a G4 PowerBook and it works great, even in HD mode.
I think we're standing on the format wars battlefield and the point has tipped towards Blu-Ray. Ten years from now, when the format has been settled upon, we will be able to look upon this day and say, this is where the end of the wars began.
I don't think Apple by itself could have done it, but Apple + PS3 are like the proverbial 800 pound gorilla.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
and incredibly so, this tiny percentage is the people that produce the majority of the video the rest of us watch in their salons/bedrooms/basements!!! problem solved
The original iMac didn't have Firewire. My friend got one September 1998 (they came out in august). We've been trying to figure out how to add a CD burner ever since.
Latewire
Error correction/scratch protection. There may be some (or even many) of you out there who loathed CD-Caddy drives in the early days, but I MISS THEM. One thing the caddy did was protect the disc and prevent scratches. You could stick a caddied disk in your pocket and walk arround with it all day, pull it out, pop it in, and away you go. If you do that with a bare CD, by the end of the day you'll be lucky if it'll still read. Insertion and removal from a case is a pain, and I never met a jewel case as strong as even flimsy caddies. Sure, the prevelence and price reduction of media means if you ruin a disk you just burn another and don't care...
The problem is (and was/still is with DVD) that high data density makes the media far more succeptable to surface imperfections, be they scratches or dirt. Who hasn't sighed in irritation at rental DVD's that skip or blurt? And if you think DVD's are bad, just think for a minute about an optical media with 10 times the data density! Until synthetic diamond becomes cheap enough to coat consumer level optical discs with, I look forward to the return of our Caddy-Carrying Overloards.
Either that or there needs to be some SERIOUS error correction implemented. The average consumer just isn't going to want to handle a movie like it was a precious peice of china. Without some solution to this problem neither media will catch on with me. Maybe "they" are just planing on selling you a new copy of the disc every six months, but archivers and folks who use the media for data storage are not gonna like that.
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
The other person didn't imply that MPEG2 had a problem catching on. That person simply said that parts of it weren't so widely supported in the beginning, and even now. None of your comment says anything to the contrary. The standards are massive and you can encode and decode an MPEG2 or MPEG4 movie without touching even half of the complete standard.
Most modern DVD players (even the cheapo $50 ones) can play back an array of formats - DVD video and audio, CD audio, MP3 CDs, VCDs, Picture CDs, etc. Why not players that support both HD formats?
It may be cost-prohibitive for the first couple generations of players (especially the differing physical specs of the formats), but I'm sure manufacturers are going to include backwards-compatibility with DVDs and CDs in their units to make upgrading more attractive to consumers anyway. What's another decoding circuit cost?
I truthfully see Blu Ray becoming the Next Zip Drive/Tape Backup and not the next home entertainment media. I think the movie industry is going to wind up backing HD-DVD in the long run first off the Name alone is going to sell HD-DVD to the consumer, everyone knows what a DVD is, but not eveyone knows what the hell a Blu-Ray is. Price also is going to play a major factor and HD-DVD is cheaper. And also the look, HD-DVD looks like a DVD while Blu Ray is in a cart. People are going to buy what they feel safe with and HD-DVD is alot safer then Blu Ray. But as I said I think Blu Ray is going to become the next Zip Drive or Tape Back up. The amount of storage one of thouse disc has is great and would work great for backing up your PC/Mac. So I see Blu Ray replaceing the Zip Drive or any other storage media. As for the entertainment industry, Blu Ray may get adapted like how Beta Max was. But its not going to take off in the Home area. Also incase anyone didn't know, Apple is suporting BOTH HD-DVD and Blu Ray.
-------- -Cap
~Bommers, Why did it have to be Bommers!?!
Firewire never gained more of the market share over USB, and that is why all DVDs use MPEG4.
History fails you.
Show me how all DVD's use Mpeg4. They don't. They use Mpeg2.
Aren't mac's itunes files just mpeg4 audio wrapped in aac?
That's certainly not true. The PowerMac G3 was faster that any pentium when it came out, and it was designed before Steve returned. QuickTime had nothing to do with Steve. FireWire was designed while Steve was gone.
Apple has always been innovative, Macs have had built-in networking capability since 1984, and supported built-in peer-to-peer file sharing since 1990 with System 7.
Windows didn't even really have a useable UI until 1995, and it wasn't great even then. It's still not as useable as a Mac, even with XP, and at ANY point in Apple's history, the security situation was always better on a Mac.
I suppose you could say the same thing about Zip...we all have Zip drives now thanks to Apple, right?
WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR.
Some of the more obscure (and powerful) features of MPEG-2 are not used AFAIK. Things like hierarchical encoding, for example, (provide an SD lower stream, which an SD decoder uses, and an enhancement layer to go from SD to ED or HD).
I appear to have a blog. Odd.
Apple's support confirms Blu-ray's future dominance on the desktop..
WTF? Just because Apple backs something its the "new hotness"? Says who?
Replace "Apple" with "Microsoft" and its "t3h 3v1l".
Like the iPod was really that fucking innovative. Wow, an MP3 player in a tampon-white packaging. Neat-O!
I'm really sick of the editor inserting their own fucking opinions into the article lead-ins. If you want to suck at the teat of Steve Jobs, go apply for a position at Apple.
The stats that matter are market share of the video editing market--Apple controled 26% of the broadcast/cable market in 2003...imagine where they are now, 2 years later. And that doesn't count the home video market or the Film industry or porn industry (as someone else noted earlier) or video production companies or ad agencies, etc. etc. With actual Hollywood releases being made on Final Cut Pro, 4% doesn't tell the whole picture. Statistics are as straight-forward as the Bible.
I talked about an entire industry supporting the format as opposed to some hacked MPEG4 piracy format like DiVX. Honestly, MPEG2 streams have to interoperate and the vendor backed industry with big players such as Vela, Sony, the entire DVD industry, Apple(h.262), Seachange, etc.. all of which are ISO/IEC 13818(MPEG2 standard) Compliant. To say anything to the contrary is just naive. Nearly all of these vendors advertise that they are compliant and the little guys have to be compliant to compete.
So, again... how is the MPEG2 format not implemented in the industry? And please know/read at least some of the standard before a rebuttal.
"...but the division in Hollywood and notebook manufacturers between the two HD videodiscs will ensure the bona fide format war we were all secretly pining for."
I know I'm not looking forward to the possibility of having to either invest in two seperate technologies to be entertained...I got boned on that last time around when I decided that I was going to go the MD route and pass on MP3. I ended up buying an iPod only after I got really sick of having to find new places to order my discs and accessories from...I still use my MD player for recording meetings and concerts and such, but not much else.
So, no, not all of us are looking forward to playing an expensive game of pick and choose. Personally, I'll be a laaaaaate-adopter for this next round, as my budget precludes me from dipping into both.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
Guess what industry all those people happen to be in?
PARENT is insightful. Slashdot is dieing; apple bought 44% (majority ownership).
Gee....yeah. You are right. Almost every media standard Apple had backed early has succeeded overall in the market.
Except for SCSI. Apple backed that from the beginning, but it widely failed for consumer applications. Including SCSI for things like scanners. Apple threw in the towel and switched to IDE and USB/Firewire some time ago.
And their proprietary floppy drives (gee, 800 k on a floppy instead of 720 k). They eventually switched to the standard 1.4 mb floppy drives.
And Appletalk hardware and protocol. Replaced by 10 base T and TCP. The hardware was problematic. Especially when the connectors would work their way loose. And the software was proprietary and had efficiency problems (due to broadcasting and multicasting).
And don't even talk to me about the NeXT (which provided the foundation for OSX) magnito-optical drive. That thing was a total dog. Ours constantly broke down.
Apple has backed a bunch of dogs.
Apple has ALWAYS done things differently. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they loose.
For those with no NYT Login:
Apple Computer is backing the Sony Corporation's Blu-ray format for the next generation of digital videodiscs, bolstering Sony's effort to dominate the $26 billion United States market for DVD's and players.
Apple, whose computers run software to create DVD's, joined the Blu-ray Disc Association's board, a statement by Blu-ray said yesterday. Sony is fighting to win support for its standard over one called HD-DVD that is backed by Toshiba and NEC.
Blu-ray said Apple would support the new high-definition DVD format in its iMovie and Final Cut video-editing software programs.
"Apple is pleased to join the Blu-ray Disc Association board as part of our efforts to drive consumer adoption of HD," Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, said in a statement on the Blu-ray Web site.
The competing formats promise high-definition pictures, better sound quality, more storage capacity and better copyright protection than standard DVD's. The backing of film studios and computer makers like Apple will help determine the dominant standard. Blu-ray has five times the capacity of current discs and more than the HD-DVD standard.
Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said, "Capacity is everything" for personal computer makers, adding, "In capacity, Blu-ray is much better."
Blu-Ray's backers include the two big PC makers, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, in addition to Sony, Walt Disney and Thomson, the largest supplier of recorded DVD's. Film studios including Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, Universal and Paramount have said they will adopt HD-DVD. The studios may agree later to release movies on Blu-ray discs.
The Blu-ray Disc Association, with more than 100 members, develops specifications, including compatibility, for the format as well as promoting it. Blu-ray refers to a blue laser that reads and records the format, according to the Blu-ray Web site.
Everyone is saying that its going to use disk caddys. If they, its a no brainer who is going to win.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
You're correct that the iMac wasn't the first to ship with USB but I don't think you can argue against that it was the iMac that caused USB to become so popular today.
Apple has less than 2% of the PC market. In the broad scheme of things, they are a very small-time player in the industry. They definitely did not cause USB to become so popular today.
Intel is the reason. Intel, with it's 90%+ marketshare in the CPU market, created the USB standard and pushed for it. Since Intel had such dominance in the CPU and chipset market, any motherboards that were designed for their CPU's and/or used their chipsets supported USB. If you were a motherboard manufacturer and designed a new MB at that time, you most likely used an Intel chipset and supported USB. Almost all the new motherboards being made for the PC industry had USB capability, thanks to Intel being the de facto standard.
I was working in the motherboard industry when Intel first started the push for USB. They made it easy for any motherboard manufacturer to include USB on their motherboards. They created the standard, and created the USB Implementers Forum in 1995 to push the industry to adopt its standard.
http://www.intel.com/standards/case/case_usb.htm
Strange that Sony backs Blue Ray when my new Sony DVD plauyer says HD-DVD right on the front. Hmmm.
Gee, tell that to my DVD-RAM drive.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
Apple was not the first to incorporate USB ports on their computers, that much is correct. However, until Apple introduced the iMac and essentially forced USB on their users, there were very very very few actual USB devices available. It was only after the iMac came out that you could begin finding USB devices in your typical computer store.
Just using a little common sense here, do you think the USB peripheral market exploded because Apple, with its 2% of marketshare adopted it, or do you think it's because the other 98% of the market adopted it?
Even if Apple went belly up, it's hardly going to dent the overall PC industry. I know Apple has some very enthusiastic fans, but you need to keep things in perspective and look at the overall picture. Apple's Mac is a novelty act, they are not a major player.
In more modern times, the Ipod is a product that's a very major player in the Mp3 player market. They carry a lot of weight in that market and since they're such a major player, they have much influence in the direction that the market takes. But as far as the PC industry, the Macintosh is just a drop of water in the pond.
Shouldn't this have been "Apple Backs Away from HD-DVD"?
Agreed, you can always find some small feature that gets left behind because someone was thinking too far out of the box and not enough about the application of the spec. It just annoys me to hear that the format is anything beyond stable at this point(MPEG2 isn't going to have any huge changes in the future).
The importance of Apple isn't in Blu-Ray players. It's Blu-Ray burners. DVD Studio Pro will have great support for Blu-Ray, and all the presets in Final cut Pro will assume that you will be making a 50 GB project instead of 30 GB. Sure, there wll be a few other important DVD burning setups used by the very high end and the very low end, but for full featured, reasonably priced setups, Apple will have a significant install base.
A few million independent producers, or a few major studios making a few movies... (Hint, adult entertainers count as "independent," and we all know how significant they are to the uptake of new technology...)
SWEEEEEEEEETTTTT!!!!!!
Holy Shit, this is going to be beautiful. They're going to get their shit all focused and setup, and completely lose their ass.
It's going to be glorious. I'm buying ring-side seats for this one.
Exactly. I read the grandparent comment and the first thing I thought of was "SCSI on the desktop".
Apple pushed SCSI but, apart from in servers, it never really was more than a niche in the Wintel world. IDE (and its successors) had the lion's share of the storage market, and parallel (and then later USB) and other interfaces had the lion's share of the market for peripherals such as scanners.
SCSI in the average desktop was an Apple-only thing. (Atari and Commodore don't really count in this debate, because the number of ST and Amiga users that had SCSI storage devices was statistically insignificant compared to the market as a whole.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Buy a dual-format player and let others "argue" about which format is better.
This "format war" is no different from SACD v. DVD-Audio, and surprise: there are plenty of dual-format players to choose from. Home entertainment competition is intense: more than one manufacturer will certainly support both high def video formats as well.
I am sure it has already been said before but with Apples insignificant market share who really cares who Apple backs in the DVD wars?
/. anyway??? ).... :)
I took a pool in our office and we are gonna back HD-DVD.... that is about as meaningful a statement.
Interesting (or worrisom) for Apple users, but who gives a F@&k for everyone else (how may apple users read
my 0.02$
Why would anyone pine for this? All this means is there will be more inconvienence for us the customers.
Im reminded of the memory stick invention. Who here loves the new odd shapped slots on their computer that reads 6 different formats?
Look for DVD-R's versus DVD+R's.
I'm not making a comment about which is "better" (neither, IMHO), I'm just pointing out the DVD+R blank media is easily 5-10 times as easy to find. Its cheaper.
No use arguing. Just look on froogle.
Now that we know it's going to be HD-DVD, we can all go buy our hardware.. :)
You're talking about the right things, but I think you're talking about it backwards. AAC is an audio encoding format that is often used to encode the audio in mpeg4 video files. (I'm no expert, but I believe mp3 can also be used to encode audio in mpeg4 files). Apple uses AAC as the default iTunes encoder, and iTMS-purchased files are AAC encoded music wrapped in a proprietary DRM.
Did IDE even exist when Apple started using SCSI? I seem to remember that MFM drives were all the rage . . . as well as wearing an onion in your belt. Correct me if I'm wrong.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You may be overstating your case, but I definitely think Apple has a strong influence over media standards. Although Apple's market share is small, Macintoshes are still the preferred machines within some specialized fields, specifically those fields that are related to media creation and distribution. More specifically, graphic design professionals and video editors work almost exclusively on Macintoshes, and if Apple makes it difficult to read/write a digital medium on their hardware/software, then the professionals won't use that medium, which is likely to have a bit of a trickle-down effect.
But in this case, I don't think you need causation. If Apple is just really good at picking winners, then that has the same effect on blu-ray predictions as Apple being really good at causing winners. Either way, if Apple backs a technology there is a very high chance that it will be successful, whether or not it's Apple's fault.
Bravo. A great example of this is McDonalds.
No two coutries with a McDonald's in them have ever gone to war.
Yet, does anyone seriously claim that McDonald's has that much control over world events?
It's pretty obvious that McDonald's is just careful where they put their restaurants.
Life is too short to proofread.
A standard which became popular when its creator--Intel--pushed support for it with its chipsets on its market, which is about 40 times larger than Apple's.
In other news Mac users claim AGP popular because of Apple adoption.
A couple of things:
For a period, AVID, which is still the leading editor, dropped Apple because Apple wasn't providing enough slots in the pro tower models. They were using windows based PCs. And as much headway as FCP has made (I prefer FCP), AVID is still dominant in the biz.
Second, Sony is weird, because they are BOTH kinds of company at once, but they still think of themselves as hardware-oriented. Maybe, but then why did they make Stringer the new head honcho? And why is the media division supporting the hardware division? I think things might be changing at Sony. We'll see.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Well Toshiba backs HD-DVD, but they will not be enough.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Yet, does anyone seriously claim that McDonald's has that much control over world events?
Yes and no. Thomas Friedman, I believe, put forth that idea years ago... but later admitted that it isn't true (after all, 19 McDonalds-laden NATO members bombed the crap out of Serbia, which has McDonalds). Interesting idea, Tom, but doesn't really pan out.
You are right that he wasn't saying that the presence of McDonalds prevented war between countries. It was, however, Friedman's thesis that the factors that led these countries to get a McDonalds did have an effect on whether they became embroiled in international conflict. Which is much more sound reasoning. He was just wrong, is all.
stripShow - Where WordPress meets webcomics
Yeah like all those other good technology mac picks that did so well in the marketplace.
Like the Newton... the Lisa... OS 7...
Isn't about time we all embraced the Beta Max format?
I worked at one of the major patent-holding companies behind Mpeg1, Mpeg2, and Mpeg4, and I know that despite they claim compliance and the ability to play Mpeg2, few of their products truly support the whole standard as it is. I worked on major CE products used for video sharing across the internet and they didn't support the whole MPEG2 standard. There are many parts of the MPEG2 standard and most companies implement only what's necessary for the intended target. Simple tests will show this.
When we tested competing products for their support of the MPEG2 standard, many also failed on several of the compliance tests. There are several different variations on the standard for different incarnations and any simple amount of research would have shown this.
So, once you've completed the actual tests instead of reading about the compliance.
Current enocders work fine. Right now you can get Terminator 2 Extreme Edition which has one DVD that is a normal video DVD and one that is 1080p HD content in Windows Media 9 format. It looks awesome and is comming off a normal DVD.
Any MPEG-4 or VC-1 compressor (or other comparable technologies) should be able to adequately compress HD content at DVD rates (7mbps). It wouldn't be quite as sharp as the orignal, but neither is the current DVD->CD translation.
The Blu-ray spec only includes two layers; therefore that is what Blu-ray players will support. If more layers are added to some future version of the spec, those discs still won't be playable on all Blu-ray players.
7.1 channel audio, anyone? it should never have been a problem because of the matrix but, hey some players still fuck up.
MPEG2 is used across the country for any real video work because it is basically uncompressed
What are you talking about? MPEG-2 video is usually compressed somewhere between 8:1 and 30:1. And nobody uses it for (serious) editing. Video is often distributed in MPEG-2 just because there is a very good quality to compression ratio. It's portable, and fits on DVDs because it's compressed.
will be called Hyperdrive!
Forget Sony, it's Disney that's the kiss of death.
Anyone else remember what company was the biggest backer of DIVX?
How about the self-oxidizing, disposeable EZ-D format?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
They have a cooler name, easier to say and remember for consumers. The consumer market is weird that way.
that's my SWAG on it
Ummmmm. you're now admitting to what you seemed to disagree on? the anonymous coward to which you originally replied, only said that some of the more obscure parts of mpeg aren't supported by everyone. said poster never suggested it wasn't stable, just that every single part of it wasn't supported.
How like them to support a format with the smaller chance of success. Just got to be different, no matter the cost!
So next year everyone that buys a mac will be buying an incompatible DVD drive. Then 2 years after that Apple will finally wise up and start using the industry standard, leaving another giant chunk of their customers out to pasture...
MPEG2 is far from uncompressed. no idea what the hell you're smoking there. there are also a whole plethora of MPEG4 encoders and decoders on the market as well. i worked at a company where we had our content in MPEG4 for several years now. besides, the author wasn't saying MPEG2 hasn't caught on, but only that there were extreme parts not in use by many people. yeah sure it's used in satellites (and has been for most video systems in europe for a while) and in many other applications just outside of DVD, but that doesn't mean they all need to implement every part of the spec. DVD will never need any of the corrections used in network streaming for example.
As others have noted, the PS3 supporting Blu-Ray is probably all it will take to make movie makers produce Blu-Ray compatible content.
The other thing Blu-Ray has going for it is that Sony has a big stake in both sides of the equation.
If Sony DVD players only support Blu-Ray, it will be difficult for other content-publishers to ignore that market share, particularly since the movie-studios really don't have a dog in this fight.
Then, Sony is also a major studio, soon to own MGM as well. If Sony only produces it's content in Blu-Ray format, the other electronic manufacturers will have to support it and create hardware that will support either format. Unlike Universal Studios and Paramount, etc, Sony can get away with this because they do have a dog in this fight, that being their electronics division.
So, Sony Pictures will be willing to give up some market share to support the format, whereas the other studios supporting HD-DVD ultimately will not be willing, since they don't have any stake in the other side of the equation.
The only reason the other studios are even chiming in on this discussion is because they are trying to limit the power of Sony. They have no significant vested interest as Sony does.
If Sony manages to get the hardware makers producers players that support both formats, it will only be a matter of time before nobody produces anything but Blu-Ray content.
Blu-ray is higher capacity and higher cost. That's why componies that sell better products for higher prices (and when they do it right, get higher profit margins) are supporting it. Sun supported Blu-ray on their systems first, apple is just following their lead in the workstation/high end desktop market.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
And also the look, HD-DVD looks like a DVD while Blu Ray is in a cart.
You're saying that Blu-Ray is a caddy-based format? I read that they had more troubles with scratches than HD-DVD, but they had fixed it with a new coating. Can you verify that Blu-Ray is caddy? I've been personally hoping that HD-DVD would catch on, but I've always been a big fan of caddies.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Well, it certainly existed by the time they were selling Quadras. And definitely a long time before they started selling Power Macs, if I remember correctly.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Apple's endorsement of something doesn't inspire any confidence in its 'future dominance' from me. Isn't apple the poster child of the one-brand standard?
Consider this: the competition between +R and -R DVD formats probably helped push new features (not least +-R dual burners) as well as drive down prices. Even compatibility issues, while a hassle at first, in the long run seems to have lead to DVD players that will cope with anything, even round bits of bread being stuck in the drive (as long as they are buttered).
By the time DVD burners reached a price point I could afford, all the format issues had been worked out. Sure, my first drive (Pioneer 104) was -R only, but by that point which format you had didn't really make difference.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sidenote is neither HD-DVD nor Blu-Ray support the DV format as an official video format, which means joe public still has to go through the hassle of transcoding DV to MPEG2/WMV/H.264 to play home movies. Isn't the world tired of making ugly compressions of compressions yet?
Such a shame given a Blu-Ray disc should be able to hold a couple hours of DV video.
Same is true on the other end of the spectrum. If you have low quality MPEG4 files or H.263 files you have to transcode them to MPEG2/WMV/H.264 as well. Again a compression of a compression.
Why can't these video formats specify the cumulative sum of all major codecs invented at the time of the format? Is it really that hard to mandate ffmpeg in the Blu-Ray spec instead of a proprietary Microsoft WMV codec?
What's a Cheezal?
Seriously, I'm curious.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Right. Correlation can be meaningful, and can be used to predict things, even when the relationship is known to not be causative.
It's not always, obviously, as shown by the McDonald's example. You can't automatically say it's meaningful for no reason. But you also can't just say "because there is no causation, nothing can be implied from this correlation" without looking into it further.
I actually don't know much about whether or not Apple really has such a great track record, but the implication that just because it's not causative it must be meaningless irked me.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Microsoft holds off on itself suppot either format, letting others (like Apple) make a solid investment in Blu-Ray, then comes out with strong, integrated support for HD-DVD but finds a way to cripple use of Blu-Ray devices with Windows. A bug forced onto machines by way of a "Critical Security Update" would work nicely.
iMovie and Final Cut Pro would not have Blu-Ray support.
iDVD and DVD Studio Pro would.
(The original is like saying my car's engine will support 8-Tracks. The stereo is what determines support of media types, not the engine.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Yet, does anyone seriously claim that McDonald's has that much control over world events?
No, and notice that I didn't say that Apple has control over what technology does well. I did say that it's possible that if they're really good at making predictions, those predictions could become self-fulfilling prophecies - but that's not necessary for the relationship to be meaningful. My entire point was that Apple doesn't have to be the one causing the relationship.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Sony also pioneered Memory Stick media, which has found a range of uses - all the way from digital cameras manufactured by Sony, to digital camcorders manufactured by Sony! They hold a wide range of advantages over other, cheaper media - such as their stick shape!
Well, video professionals are still using the analog Betacam SP and Digital Betcam. They're based on the Betamax tape shell, but run at higher speeds and have much better image quality than Betamax did.
Sony Professional has certainly made enough profit on those formats to make up for the Betamax losses by now.
My video compression blog
I love dvds for many reason, but I hate their unreliability. They degrade far less gracefully than cds, grinding to a halt instead of skipping. I've had even the newest dvd players, and current computers, crash when encountering minor dvd scratches.
So is it a good idea to increase the dvd's capacity? Are the Blu-ray or HD-DVD consortia doing anything to improve digital degrading?
Or is digital storage the wrong form for physical distribution of entertainment? Should we be pushing for refinements in analog instead? After all, my lps may be scratchy, but they all still play, as opposed to kill bill 1 which just crashed last month on my dvd player...
Hmmm. Blu-Ray is supported by Sony, JVC, Panasonic/Matsushita, Phillips, Thomson...
Sony + Phillips = CDs
JVC+Panasonic/Matsushita = VHS
Thomson (owns RCA and Telefunken) = SECAM, PAL, and NTSC television formats
Yup, that standard's doomed to failure.
Well, Lisa and OS7 don't really count since they did fairly well given the size of the market. The market for $10k home PCs in 1980 was a little small, and cooperative multitasking was a godsend compared to the task-switching in 6.08. As for the Newton, wasn't it doing fairly well when it got canned.
But thinking a little further, ADB wasn't adopted by x86 (though USB is remarkably similar), nor NuBus, and SCSI is slowly dying as SATA relagates it to only the really high-end. OS in the firmware never got anywhere, etc, etc.
Still, their hit rate is better than most. I mean, apple didn't invent the MP3 player, but they came up with the ipod before the average guy had heard of MP3 players -- they may not be first, but they do get to new markets fast.
Apple is the new Microsoft.
Can't get more new-fangled than Unix? Ha ha!
Apple's support is perceived as more important by Apple people. The computer world cares very little about boutique manufacturers. When they sell more than a few computers then maybe the world will care more.
What makes you say that? Any facts to back that up?
why this is such an issue. What does this bring to the table of joe sixpack? Other than videophiles, who will benefit from this? When I first learned about Blu-Ray I though, GREAT! now I will be able to store 3 or 4 movies on one disc, guess not huh? Will we see entire Clint Eastwood collections on one DVD? Will this somehow reduce the number of DVD's in my collection? 93% of the people who watch movies watch them once then never look at them again, how does this help that crowd? Can I pop in a disc and have a whole movie collection at my fingertips? NO!!! This is just another format to only store 1 movie on a disc? I have to buy another player? All my old movies will become obsolete? This will always remain as a niche for the *philes sect. I mean I dont really care that much about HD, so what if I could have seen the bumps on Janet Jacksons nipples if I had High Def, OH BOY, my life is complete now. I just dont see what Hi Def really adds to any movie I have seen using this tech (and I have seen a lot of them). Other than adding more useless glitz and shine, I have not seen 1 presentation of High Def that has benifited by being High Def. High Definition has never added anything to any story. This is just more glitz to hide the fact that hollywood is tapped out, finished, dried out and otherwise bereft of producing anything resembling art. Its a technology only designed to make you go ohh and ahh at the pretty explosions or the wonderful scenery, it does not improve on any current technology and has no value add. Most of the people I know who have switched from VHS to DVD did it because DVD's are smaller and more convenient to store than VHS tapes.
At first NEC tried to get away with charging extra for DL functionality until everyone found out their single-o layer drives were a rom flash away from DL, and then suddenly everyone had DL +/- drives on the market for $50.
But the DL media is STILL a zillion a pop, when you can find it. The only stuff I've seen retail has been bunlded with a bunch of overpriced -R media, *AND*, real expensive to boot.
Is it just not really viable from an engineering perspective or is there some conspiracy to keep me from DVDShrinking by less than 5%?
Wow. I... would not have thought of that. So they come from Middle-ear^WNew Zealand, then...
As for the analogous American snack, I think you may be talking about "3D Doritos".
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If I had a dollar for every windows box at Pixar and Lucasfilm, plus 50 cents for every windows box at professional editing houses in NY and LA, I'd have about $4.50.
Film and TV professionals like Apple, trust Apple, and they use Apple.
From the Mac Observer's August 2004 article "Apple Making Inroads Into Film Editing; Avid Remains King":
The vast majority of Avid boxes run Windows XP. Is UES talking out of his ass?Sexy.
Since when is NATO a country?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Whatever got highest share, I will go for Bluray.
:) I speak about scratches etc.
I am really tired of handling DVDs like 1mm thin glass or they need cleaning. Thats also a reason why dvd audio will never succeed in handheld/car . The physical shape is damn fragile. If you ever forget to put in their cover, something always happen. Not speaking about spilling coffee of course
I've owned and serviced a lot of Power Macs, and from memory the only ones that were exclusively SCSI were the earliest PPC601 models. Everything PPC603 and later had both SCSI and IDE busses, Powerbooks excluded.
However, at the time (and we're talking 1996, remember) SCSI was faster than IDE. Given that the Mac market was high end professionals, SCSI was probably a well considered choice an Apple's part.
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"The vast majority of Avid boxes run Windows XP."
Not quite. The all Avid boxes installed in the last 2 years run Windows XP, however not everyone replaces their hardware every two years (especially if it involves re-fitting a $100,000 editing suite that's still perfectly functional). The true majority is still Apple based, many of which have been running for anywhere up to 10 years.
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I would have thought the irony was apparent to anyone with modest intelligence and a vague grip on reality. I'm beginning to see my error...
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Where does "snubbed" appear in the Apple-MPEG4 relationship? The MPEG4 container format is based on Apple's Quicktime, which has supported MPEG4 for ages.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong.
I'm sorry, but you're an idiot. No one has ever said that Apple invented USB. What they did do was get the ball rolling by selling millions of computers that only had USB. Prior to that, the vast majority of PC peripherals used the parallel port interface, because manufacturers could count on consumers having one, but not necessarily USB. After the release of the iMac they could make a device that used USB, and work on both Macs and PC's released within the last couple of years. Score!
Firewire has (sadly) failed to attain critical mass - the market for it is driven by DV cameras though, not apple.
The hell are talking about here; most peripherals (mice, keyboards, pritners) don't need Firewire's speed, and there are plenty of Firewire DVD burners and hard drives at your local Best Buy.