Why no BluRay?

Just a few hours to go till we see the first glimpse of the new Final Cut Pro, and people have been asking me my thoughts regarding DVD Studio Pro and if it will finally include BluRay authoring.

Sorry Charlie. It isn't going to happen.

Allow me to elaborate...

Many years ago, before there was such a thing as BluRay, or even High Def for that matter, I worked for a company called Astarté.

Our Trade Show Booth.

We made an awesome program to author DVD's called DVDirector. It cost up to $10,000 and was a combination of software and one or more hardware cards (PCI.)

The $10K version.

My boss at Astarté was the mighty Mike Evangelist who would eventually become the Director of Product Marketing at Apple.

My Old Boss.

That was because in 1999, at NAB, Apple purchased our little company. 

We quickly set about re-working DVDirector into DVD Studio 1.0 and we were ready to go in just a few months after the acquisition. It was a good thing too, because Astarté had a few hundred DVD creating professionals who had invested $10K in our products and they were stuck waiting. 

They were waiting for the "Apple Version" of DVDirector to be released so that they could get some  critical bugs in the program fixed. Bugs that were causing them to lose money. It was my job to support these users during the transition, and believe me it was no picnic listening to these people on the phone, pissed-off, day after day.

The Apple Version of DVDirector.

And we had a new, much improved version (DVD Studio Pro 1.0) ready to go. I would have it running on my G4 laptop (something impossible with ANY other DVD authoring program at the time)  and I would be talking to some frustrated Astarté user about how the new version would fix all the bugs, as soon as it was released, but, there was a problem...

You see,  Steve Jobs wanted a free program that he could bundle with iMovie, that would allow anyone to make a DVD.  And it just didn't exist.

It took our programmers almost a year to create iDVD, and Apple would not release DVD Studio Pro until iDVD was ready. So all those Professionals who had invested $10,000 were just ignored for almost a year, so that Steve could create the consumer DVD revolution.

The Little Program that caused all the trouble.

Most of them didn't/couldn't wait a year to get paid (there were professionals remember, not just enthusiastic Apple supporters) so they jumped ship and brought competing programs (mostly from Sonic Solutions.)

Thank you Steve!

This sad little tale has been repeated several times since, as Apple has bought great Pro Video products and little by little strangled them to death by releasing "dumbed down" versions while the people who invested in the expensive versions, eventually got the shaft.

Have you seen this missing child?

So, given my history, I think I am as good a source as any to comment on the BluRay situation, and since Steve has already said several times that he does not personally believe in BluRay:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/14/steve-jobs-calls-blu-ray-a-bag-of-hurt/

That means there will never be BluRay drives offered in Macs, and DVD Studio Pro (if it even continues to exist) will not support BluRay authoring.

Steve Jobs does not ask people what they need, and then create it for them, he tries to predict the future and then convince the world to follow.

When it works (The Mac, firewire, ipod, iphone, ipad) he changes the world.
When it doesn't work (Apple TV, Mac TV, Apple Lisa) he changes course.
But he "never" changes his mind. And iSteve has dismissed BluRay.

Remember these?

Apple as a company is far less concerned with supporting Pro video users, than they are trying to lead a new video revolution. Let's face it, they could have bought AVID years ago, or at the very least, they could have crushed them 3 years ago when AVID was so close to bankrupcy that they had to pull out of NAB.

But they didn't, and the reason is simple: AVID's run on Macs.

Big media companies buy expensive MacPros to run AVID's, so why would Apple kill a company that helps sell high end Macs? They won't, and they won't buy AVID either. The pro video market is relatively small, and filled with whiny hollywood types that are notoriously needy and cheap. Not a high-growth market.

Do I look like I'll compromise?

Nope, Steve Jobs will stick to what he does best -- Create new worlds, that he can control.

And he will never control BluRay, so it's dead to him, Fredo.

What say you?