Since when was the customer's budget a concern for you??

omg the apple is emitting blue rays of light! that makes all the other apples jealous. anyways does this mean apple products that support blue ray will cost 500 dollars premium once they are out?

Wow. /sarcasm

Apple is just trying to compete with Psystar.

It is about time. Even Toshiba is putting bluray in their computers.

Wait, you mean overpriced Apple tech might actually be next gen for once!?!?

HOLY MOLEY BATMOBILES BATMAN!

Hopefully they also add 5.1 surround support. I'm really sick of that being excluded from affordable player software.

But they still won't have quad cores or high end GPUs.

Apple Tech has been next gen for a while now. For example they had the "nehalem" xeon processors in their mac pros before any other computer manufacturer.

they've done alot to reduce licensing fees for bluray lately.
at least for movie makers, not sure about hardware.

If they add BluRay to their line then they will throw in cheap/free 5.1 surround support and treat it like the rest of their multi-media. If you don't have the hardware to run it, then why produce the software for the general consumer? They do have 5.1, but you need Logic Pro which is high-end software.

Apple took their time getting BR to the consumer, but then how many consumers really want/need BR? Especially on their PCs? The media is still pricey, and I am unwilling to pay the extra cash for BR movies. I will pay the money for a killer movie like Hellboy II, but not for a Woody Allen flick. I am probably not alone here.

Quad cores and high-end GPUs? As suggested above check out the Mac Pro. Apple has been offering quad cores for some time now, and you have always been able to upgrade your graphics in Mac Pros...if you want to buy a $1200 OpenCL graphics card you can. Or spend more if you want...ATI and nVidia do sell the cards. With Snow Leopard coming out there will be even more options available...especially for high-end workstation graphics.

Fair play, come on guys, we have to admit that Quad Core and high end GPU's have been available on Mac's for quiet some time.

The fact that a like-for-like CPU in a PC would cost less, maybe leaving enough change to buy a season ticket for the Nicks, a new car and a pair of earrings for the wife from Tiffanys...

I can see the new marketing campaign now :-

"Macs. High end computers for people with more money than sense."

I do not care about blu-ray and will never pay the inflated BS prices for a player or a disc.
I buy DVD and own a decent OPP 1080p upsampling player with a panasonic 42" plasma.My movies look good enough.
no thanks sony

The consumer price for a blu-ray drive is about $50 now. Let's just see how much Apple rips their customers on this one ...

I think you will see this (Blue Ray) announced at the news conference with the Snow Leapard release. There also could be the tablet/netbook Mac too. September, October is a couple big months for software. OS X and Windows out with new OSs and there are a couple big game titles too. Dragon Age is in my cross-hairs, my gaming rig is itching for it.
As for Blue Ray on computers right now it is not a big deat, I see no need and have no desire for it. External Hard Drives are cheap and real cheap if you buy a external case and put your own together. Much more space for backing up. I think the only people wanting Blue Ray are movie enthusiasts.
Too expensive, my PS3 upscales any DVD movie to 1080P and looks about as good as Blue Ray for less. Bring the prices down you greedy bastards.

@ back_by_demand
I love how Apple haters always try and point out Macs are expensive. If you ever took the time to match components of a Mac system (any) to another retailer like Dell or Sony you will quickly find out Macs are not way overpriced. I will admit they are a little more (sometimes less depending on what one you are comparing) but not like you types try to say. The little extra cost is worth it for such nice design and then there is OS X that is the bomb. I was hooked after my first Mac back when Panther was out. Converted to Unix base, OS X and Linux and have not looked back. One home built computer has XP on it to play games and that is it.

"But they still won't have quad cores or high end GPUs. "

The Mac Pro has a Quad or two Quad, plus decent graphics options.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/h [...] o=MjI5MDE1

Apple does sell quads but not in the iMac that this article is referring to. The Apple site shows only dual cores for the iMac on their site. And NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 and ATI Radeon HD 4850 are the 2 best cards you can get from each maker. While the 4850 is a new chip and has decent performence I wouldnt call it "high-end".. I sure as shit wouldnt buy on though, even with blu-ray support.

This is the iMac we are talking about in the article, not the Mac Pro.

People here wont compare an Apple to a Dell or Sony. They will compare it to a homebuilt pc. Probably a lot like the ones they are running at home.. Which probably has similiar components to an Apple, but cost them about half as much..

HP Pavilion e9150t is the same specs as your Mac Pro but it has double the memory *it is missing the bluetooth* and it is $849...

Pandarus, By that argument they should complain that all PC manufacturer are over priced. Anyone can find cheap component to beat Dell, Sony, Acer....etc. Everyone hates Apple because of the price but never mention the Alienware, Maingear,Falcon northwest,Voodoo. They are just as expensive and you can buy every single component right down to the exact same case for cheap. At least with Apple you get a true custom case, cable management that was apart of the design, not an after thought.

Apple is waiting for the Linux comuninty to come up with a solution first. They will use the opensource version and claim it as their own proprietary version in the new macs. I don't buy apple junk becuase it's no different than micro$oft rip-off software.

However Blu-Ray is the superior file format and I'm glad to see that apple users will be able to watch movies in FULLHD res.

And yet, I find myself just not caring.

Steve Jobs said: "We’re waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off before we burden our customers with the cost of licensing."

Dude... the cost of everything from Apple is so flippin' high. Just pass it along and the customers will pay... and complain. Business as usual: Apple gets richer.

Licensing costs an issue? I call BS.

The real reason for the delay is that for Blu-ray to work on Macs, Apple has to update QuickTime to be compatible will all the video formats that Blu-ray supports. That includes high profile H.264 and VC-1.

You are wrong buddy.

That Pavilion of yours is equipped with Core i7 while the Mac Pro uses Nehalem Xeon processors plus ECC ram not your regular DDR3 SDRAM, hence the price.

In other words you are comparing oranges to apples lol.

I would like to say that all optical discs whether its cd, dvd, or blue-ray will be obsolete, since we'll be doing more cloud computing in the future. Everything will be available on the net, its just hard work trying to figure out licensing agreements and ways to stop pirating (which will never die out). Just look forward to larger new hard-drives technology and online storage for keep movies and music. When was the last time you bought a real cd, instead of downloading in from itunes or elsewhere.