Apple joins Blu-Ray

"Computer giant Apple has thrown its weight behind the new high-definition DVD format Blu-ray, according to backers of the format.
"Apple has joined us," said Victor Matsuda, vice president of Blu-ray disc group Sony Corporation of America, at a presentation at Cebit.
Blu-ray, backed by 100 firms including Sony, is competing against Toshiba and NEC-backed HD-DVD to be the format of choice for future films and games."

This information came from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4335809.stm

This is intresting as Microsoft have put their efforts behing HD DVD, and Apple and Microsoft are fierce rivals. Do apple really belive in Blu-ray or do they want to get one over Microsoft.

29th April 2007: i found how apple is merging blu-ray into its own software.


Fastmac on Friday announced a Blu-ray optical disk upgrade for Apple PowerBooks, iBooks and MacBook Pros. The upgrade costs $799.95. The low-profile drive also works in Mac minis. Fastmac estimates delivery within 10 days.The drive replaces the existing optical drives on these machines with a Blu-ray model that can store up to 50GB of data on a single disk, compared to 8.5GB for a double-layer DVD.The drive supports reading, writing and re-writing to single (25GB) and dual layer (50GB) Blu-ray media at 1x speeds. It also works with DVD and CD media, able to write to DVD-R and DVD+R discs at 8x in single layer and 2x in dual/double layer mode; it can rewrite to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 4x speeds. The Fastmac drive also supports DVD-RAW reading and writing and up to 5x speeds and CD-R and CD-RW discs at 8x speed.System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.2.8 or later. The drive is compatible with the following Mac models, according to Fastmac:
- iBook G4
- iMac G5
- iMac Intel
- MacBook Pro (17-inch)
- Mac mini
- PowerBook G3 Pismo
- PowerBook G4 Titanium (667 Mhz or higher)
- PowerBook G4 AluminumFastmac notes that the disc requires Roxio’s Toast 8 Titanium or other third-party software compatible with Blu-ray disc drives in order to add support in the Mac OS X Finder.“Native support for Blu-ray burning within iLife & iTunes is expected in the future via Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but cannot be guaranteed at this time,” said the company in a statement.