Phil Schiller Claims Customers Aren't Asking for Built-In Blu-Ray Anymore
Apple customers are no longer asking for Blu-ray drives in their Macs these days, according to Apple marketing head Phil Schiller. This is perhaps unsurprising given Apple's trend toward removing optical drives from its notebook and now desktop lines, but may regardless cause some consternation among Blu-ray fans.
A MacRumors post from June 2010 in which Steve Jobs told a reader that it appeared Blu-ray would be beaten by downloadable formats garnered more comments for a news post than any other in our history, and we still hear from tipsters asking when Apple will finally include a Blu-ray player in its Macs.

According to an interview Phil Schiller did with Time's Harry McCracken, native Blu-ray support will likely never come to the Mac.
Schiller pointed out that one major application for optical drives, software distribution, has gone largely digital. As for video, he said that "Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology…So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks."
His preferred Blu-ray alternative? iTunes, of course, which lets you buy a movie and then watch it on all your Apple devices.
Once upon a time, people assumed that Macs’ lack of Blu-ray was a delay, not a permanent decision to fast-forward past it. I told Schiller that I imagined folks don’t ask about it much these days. "Correct," he said.
External Blu-ray drives are available currently via USB 2/3 and eventually via Thunderbolt but, given the overwhelming trend towards downloaded media, these are certainly niche products.
Popular Stories
The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max will use a new ultra-low energy microprocessor allowing certain features like the new capacitive solid-state buttons to remain functional even when the handset is powered off or the battery has run out, according to a source that shared details on the MacRumors forums.
CAD-based render of new solid-state buttons on iPhone 15 Pro models The source of this rumor is ...
Apple today announced that its 34th annual Worldwide Developers Conference will take place from Monday, June 5 to Friday, June 9. Like WWDC 2020, 2021, and 2022, WWDC 2023 will be an online event for the most part, and it will be open to all developers at no cost. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Apple will provide online sessions and labs, which will allow...
iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max models are rumored to feature a customizable Action button like the Apple Watch Ultra, according to a MacRumors forum member who leaked accurate details about the Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro models last year.
The source claimed the Action button will replace the Ring/Silent switch that has been included on every iPhone model since 2007. They did not...
Apple today released iOS 16.4, the fourth major update to the iOS 16 operating system that initially came out last September. iOS 16.4 comes two months after the launch of iOS 16.3, an update that added Security Keys for Apple ID.
iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update. It can take a few minutes...
Apple today published a support document explaining why it decided to release a standalone Apple Music Classical app for classical music.
In short, Apple says the app was designed to support classical music's complex metadata:Classical music is different. It has longer and more detailed titles, multiple artists for each work, and hundreds of recordings of well-known pieces. The Apple Music...
Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 16.5 and iPadOS 16.5 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a day after the launch of iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4.
Registered developers can opt in to the betas by opening up the Settings app, going to Software Update, tapping on the "Beta Updates" option and toggling on the iOS 16 Developer Beta. Note that an...
Apple has made the option to upgrade to new Home architecture available again with the release of iOS 16.4, iPadOS 16.4, and macOS Ventura 13.3, after it temporarily pulled the update in December.
After updating Apple devices to the latest software, users can once again opt to upgrade any homes set up in the Home app to the new Home architecture, which Apple says brings faster, more reliable ...
Top Rated Comments
As for me, I'll stop being interested in Blu-ray as soon as there's something better. There isn't yet- certainly not iTunes.
I have heard people asking for cooler and quieter iMacs and for iMacs with desktop CPUs & GPUs. ;)
And I guess all of you don't have a decent AVR, let alone a decent speaker system. If you ever heard a Blu-Ray DTS HD Master over a decent home theater (which btw is specced up to 10MBit/s stream for audio) you wouldn't talk this stuff out of your backs.
Do I need a Mac as HTPC? Sure as hell not, because I actually own a lot of Blu-Rays and some of them (those Live Concert Blus) are a real joy to watch over and over again.
Nothing can replace the quality of an optical disc other then the original uncompressed asset.
It's night and day right now for optical vs streaming quality.