A Bag of Hurt: In Defense of Steve

BLU-RAY! I have been doing a lot of complaining lately about the lack of Blu-Ray playback on Mac OS X. If I want to watch a BD on a computer, I would have to install Microsoft Windows, and that isn’t something I’m willing to do. That said, I do have a friend who has a Windows computer with a Blu-Ray player. I was over at his house, and we decided to watch a movie. No luck.

Turns out, the software that came with his drive has had its AACS keys revoked. In essence, that means that the software will no longer play back commercial BDs. When we went to try to update the software, we found that we can only accomplish that by buying the latest version in the $90 range. Very unfortunate.

When Steve Jobs called Blu-Ray a “Bag of hurt,” he wasn’t joking. The draconian DRM scheme that they have implemented is absolutely ridiculous. Maybe it would be better for us Mac users to skip over this technology completely, and just stick to downloading video.

Photo Credit: Tom (hmm a rosa tint)

Grant is a writer from Delaware. In his spare time, Grant maintains a personal blog, hosts The Weekly Roar, hosts Quadcast, and writes for video games.