Blu-Ray Drive For Apple Notebooks

Sean Jackson writes "Fastmac has beaten Apple to the Blu-Ray punch and has a new slimline Blu-Ray drive that works in PowerBooks, iBooks, Mac Minis, the MacBook Pro 17", and a few other systems. It's pricey ($800), but you have to admit that burning 45 GB is pretty sweet. Here are technical specs. Fastmac says that playing Blu-Ray movies isn't currently supported since there is no software player. However, several solutions are in the works and there is always a chance OS X 10.5 will support playing movies. Perhaps this means that Apple isn't far behind and will be offering Blu-Ray with the next MacBook and MacBook Pro revisions."

Comments

perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

However, several solutions are in the works and there is always a chance OS X 10.5 will support playing movies. Perhaps this means that Apple isn't far behind and will be offering Blu-Ray with the next MacBook and MacBook Pro revisions.

Perhaps, but it's purely speculation. There's a chance that OS X 10.5 will also come with a full installation of Windows Vista included in the box. Perhaps this means that Apple is planning on buying Microsoft.

See the problem with drawing conclusions from items that are pure speculation to begin with?

per dollar

[cinnamon colbert]

you can buy external hardrives at about 30 cents a gig, on special, so 800 bucks is ~~ 2400 gig of hardrive, or about 53 bluray disks, assuming you can efficiently fill the disks at 45 gig each, neglecting the cost of the disk..

as usual, for early adopters YMWV (your mileage Will vary)

Re:Meh

[jimstapleton]

To put facts with your point:

Cheapest Blu-Ray burner: $529 + 1 25GB DVD (requires a decently powerful video card???)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16827106037

Cheapest per-GB BD Disks: $32.99 (150GB total ~$0.22/GB)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16817131063

Blue ray in it's /best/ light financially...

HDs in better light
HDDs:
750GB: $254.99 ($0.33/GB, 15 BD's worth of data)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16822148134
500GB: $129.99 (26/GB, 10 BD's worth of data)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16822136073

OK, ignoring the cost of the BD drive, which we'll assume you only need to buy once, per-GB the BD is cheaper. However, assuming you don't use unlimited BDs, then you you are cost effective with BDs, only if you have to have simultaneous backup of up to X GB:
529 + .22x = .26x -> 529 = .04x -> 13,225 = x

So, you must need at least 13TB of backup at any given time for BD to be more effective in terms of cost. (NOTE: if you do a rolling backup, you'll never reach this, and unless the BDs are -RW, they'll probably not be cost-effective)

And I'm petty sure 10 optical disks are about the same size standard HD or larger. With a good/small enclosure, you'll still have less space than 15BDs, and you only need one enclusre, just swap the drives. Heck you can get a dongle type setup that doesn't even require the enclosure.

So, HDs have space /and/ cost advantages in several (but not all) situations).