Psystar ships Blu-ray while Apple dithers

Davey Winder
Thursday, 30 October 2008 06:16

IT Industry - Strategy

Psystar and Apple might be entering into some kind of private dispute resolution in order to sort out the ongoing battle involving the sale of OS X-compatible PCs, but that hasn't stopped the arguing. Nor has it stopped Psystar from beating Apple when it comes to shipping Blu-ray equipped kit.

The Psystar Wars started in July when Apple accused Psystar of both copyright and licensing violations. Psystar hit back in August counter-suing Apple on charges of restraint of trade and assorted antitrust stuff.

If you thought that the court documents revealing that the two parties were to go into mediation was an end to the war and a beginning of peaceful hand-holding you might want to sit down.

I somehow doubt that Apple will be jumping for joy at the news that Psystar has now beaten them off the mark and announced it is shipping OS X compatible machines complete with both the nVidia 9800GT graphics card and perhaps more importantly a Blu-ray optical drive.
 
Apple itself of course, has yet to release either of these peripheral products on their own computers. Steve Jobs apparently considering Blu-ray to be a bag of hurt and so not including it with the recent new MacBook release.

Psystar president Rudy Pedraza says that "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. Blu-ray has become pervasive technology that is being widely adopted by consumers everywhere."

Of course, Blu-ray also has the ability to burn 25-gigabyte discs, which is of far more importance to Psystar customers I would have thought.

Not least because, as far as I am aware, there is no Mac OS X software to playback Blu-ray video right now...