Steve Jobs: “Blu-ray will be beaten by Internet formats”

If you’re disappointed because the latest Mac mini update didn’t include Blu-ray support, well - Steve Jobs has just confirmed Blu-ray support isn’t coming to Macs at all.

Macrumors reader Siva sent Steve an email about the lack of a Blu-ray drive in the Mac mini update. Steve replied:

“Bluray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD - like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.”

He may be right or not, we’ll only know in the long run. It was just yesterday when Hulu announced its official plans for Plus, a new platform which allows you to watch full seasons in HD even on the go with a universal application for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Anyway, Sive replied back telling Steve that Blu-ray has its benefits such as high density backups and high quality video. He also pointed out that the lack of DRM was what made MP3 take off back in the early days.

Steve’s final reply was:

“No, free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue.

I think you may be wrong - we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.”

Don’t forget that Apple has still to announce its plans for the much rumored iTunes online platform and what they want to do with the Apple TV. September might be the right month, maybe.