There may be an ongoing lawsuit between the two companies, but that's not stopping Mac clone maker Psystar from moving forward with new product plans without Apple's approval. The company proudly announced today that it is now shipping "Mac OS X-compatible PCs" with Blu-ray drives as well as NVIDIA 9800GT graphics cards. Why does anyone care? Psystar makes a point to say that it is introducing both of these technologies into Mac-compatible computers long before Apple has done so in its own machines.
You may remember earlier this month, when Steve Jobs said on stage that Blu-ray was a "bag of hurt" thanks to millions of licensing hoops. Apple wasn't ready to burden its users with a technology that may or may not be sticking around. Psystar president Rudy Pedraza completely disagrees, however. "Blu-ray has already won the format war. Not only is there fully functional and mature support for Blu-ray in other operating systems but you can now rent Blu-ray discs from almost any rental chain," Pedraza said in a statement. "Blu-ray has become pervasive technology that is being widely adopted by consumers everywhere."
Psystar points out that Apple has "chosen to delay support for Blu-ray," but customers looking for an OS X system with Blu-ray compatibility can now buy Psystar machines. Technically speaking, though, there are a handful of third-party Blu-ray drives made for the Mac that users can install into their Mac Pros, so it's not like a Psystar PC is the only way to get Blu-ray on a "Mac." You can really only use Toast 9 to burn to Blu-ray under the Mac, but what else can you do? It's not like Psystar is going to introduce magical OS support for Blu-ray under Leopard. Therefore, we say "BFD" to this announcement.
