If you want a Mac with Blu-Ray you’ll have to buy it from Psystar

While the legal battle between Apple and Psystar continues in private the public skirmishing is being fought through press releases. The latest vent from Psystar claims that Apple is taking a passive attitude towards optical technology and emphasize the point Psystar’s latest machines can be ordered with a blu-ray burner.

The Apple-Psystar conflict is now in arbitration but the public spat is no less venomous. Rudy Pedraza, Psystar president has said:

“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. Blu-ray has become pervasive technology that is being widely adopted by consumers everywhere.  Blu-ray is not just for movies. The ability to burn 25-gigabyte discs is a feature that can help users in media editing or enterprise environments keep archives of large file sets. Our systems, regardless of configured operating system, can now provide this functionality”.

True to its word, Psystar now offers a 6x Blu-ray burner as a $310 option on their Open Pro desktop machine. However the company doesn’t say whether full Blu-Ray burning and playback is available as Commercial Blu-Ray playback is not supported in OS X leopard. Some considerable adjustments would have to be made to even mount a DRMed Blu-ray disk on OS X. Burning is fairly straight-forward and even conventional Apple machines can burn Blu-ray disks using Toast 9.

As if that wasn’t enough, Pystar also offer the Nvidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB video card in both single and dual configurations ($200 and $400). Rudy Pedraza reminds us that while the 9800GT is “ubiquitous in today’s PC hardware market” Apple does not offer it.

Apple has never been afraid to ditch technologies that it thinks users shouldn’t have (remember floppy disks, SCSI ?) but there was never a rival company before that would offer Mac-compatible machines with the shunned tech. So, Psystar how about some Firewire-equipped laptops?

Related Posts:

• Psystar’s Open(3) launch says “We’re not scared of Apple”
• Finally, Apple updates the Mac Mini — but only just!
• Apple announces MacBook Pro 17-inch gets Unibody and other upgrades
• Apple files Mac Tablet patent — let the rumours begin!
• Mac OS X Leopard arrives on October 26th

Tags: 9800GT, Apple, blu-ray, geforce, mac, nvidia, os-x, psystar,