Blu-ray: 3 Reasons the Winner is an Also-Ran

Will Apple release Blu-Ray-equipped iMacs for the holidays? Maybe-and it probably makes sense, since it's been a while since iMacs got meaningful new features other than ongoing refinement of their industrial design. But to abuse a famous Steve Jobs quote, Blu-Ray still feels like a bag of boring to me. It's one of the few high-profile examples of gadgetry I have no impulse to invest in.

Here's why:

It's Not Truly Part of the Digital World. These days, I'm less interested in getting better image quality, and more interested in doing stuff with content-sending it via wireless networking to multiple screens in my house, sticking it on my iPhone, storing it in the cloud. Blu-Ray doesn't help with any of that. In fact, it's designed specifically to prevent me from doing it.

The Content isn't There. At least not for me. I admit that I'm not representative of the Average American Consumer here, but I'll never buy any blockbuster movie on Blu-Ray. I like obscure animation and box sets that aren't going to sell by the million. For now, they come out on DVD, not Blu-Ray. That'll change. Eventually. Probably. But if I bought a Blu-Ray player today, I'd mostly use it to watch DVDs.

It's a Stopgap. Like the 2.88MB floppy disk, Blu-Ray is ultimately an impressive (and pricey) improvement on a technology that's going to go away. By 2012, it's going to look almost as retro as VHS. Okay, it might take a year or two more than that. But no more.

I'm not saying that Blu-Ray will never show up in my living room or inside a computer I own. (Hey, I was a late adopter of DVD, too.) But I'd say the odds are less than fifty percent that I'll ever get it-at least as a conscious decision which I'm excited about. (The day will presumably come when all computers that sport optical drives have DVD.)