It’s no secret that Steve Jobs isn’t a fan of Blu-ray, as he had once referred to Sony’s licensing rules for the format as a “bag of hurt.” As such, official Blu-ray support from Apple in OS X is most likely never going to come. However, for those who disagree with Jobs’ opinion and want to take a third-party route to bring Blu-ray support for their Macs, there is now that option.

According to reliable sources over at The Boy Genius Report, the ninth version of iTunes will have some nice new features. The first of these rumored features says that iTunes will be receiving Blu-ray support finally, despite some of Apple’s (or should I say Steve’s) comments in the past. This isn’t the first time Apple Blu-ray has been rumored, but it seems a little more plausible now that HD DVD has had some time to fade away.

Remember the days when you had to fight for those around you to buy a DVD player to replace those blasted VHS players? You likely stressed how much better the resolution on DVD would be. Or perhaps your experiences was more about storage instead of playback. Maybe you were trying to get others to switch from CD to DVD, or something similar. This is, of course, a result of its superior storage space. Blu-ray is no different, and FastMac would like to help your Mac recognize or even burn BluRay discs.

It seems that Apple’s iTunes 8.2 may have support for Blu-ray as indicated here by the screenshot of the About screen from 9to5Mac. The support may just be Gracenote support though. This doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, though, as iTunes would be able to identify a Blu-ray disk but not be able to actually play it back.

Sometimes when I observe the desperate struggle for relevance, it makes me sad. How can you watch a recent Madonna video, the latest Jim Carrey movie, or anything having to do with the Microsoft Zune and not be sympathetic to their plight? Don’t we all eventually come to fear that our time in the sun has past? The answer to that, is no, because not everyone has trouble staying relevant. Case in point, Roxio, with their update to Toast 10 Titanium.

No, I’m not talking about the iPhone you tried to jailbreak a few months back. Rumors have been flying about Apple’s next “One More Thing” announcement that’s supposed to happen at an October 14th Apple event. The common theme in many of these rumors is the “brick.” But what exactly is this brick?

It’s pretty doubtful Apple would name any of its products the “Brick,” so I think it’s safe to assume that if this turns out to be real, it’s a codename. There are two rumors circulating, and iPhone Savior is reporting on both of them. Sadly, both of them are exciting, and logic would dictate that only one could be the brick. Even still, I’m hoping for both.

Since its introduction by Apple on January 9th, 2001, iTunes has become one of the most popular music library organization apps ever. It started off simple and eventually became what it is today, a place not only to organize files, but to shop, learn, and watch. With so much growth, large deals, and new features in the past few years, it makes me wonder where iTune’s place will be in the future. When digital sales take over physical media, will it be because of iTunes? Will iTunes one day start a revolution in how we purchase and handle all of our DVDs, music, and TV shows? Or will iTunes eventually slip away into the past and be replaced by a whole new app or movement?

With the direction iTunes is headed now, it seems like it very well could be the driving force behind moving totally to digital sales for some. It has one of the biggest music selections available anywhere, allows you to rent movies, releases new DVD titles the same day as hard copies, and contains all sort of other media, such as podcasts and TV shows. With only a couple more deals and updates, iTunes could soon be the place to go for all of your media. This would almost completely eliminate the need for physical media. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t think this will happen anytime very soon, but it is possible. But what would seal the deal for moving completely to digital media?

NetBlender recently released an SDK App for the iPhone and iPod touch that allows it to interface with BD Live and Wifi Enabled Blu-Ray Players. It is called BD Touch. When combined with a Blu-Ray authoring application, such as NetBlender’s DoStudio, the app allows an iPhone or iPod Touch to seamlessly connect to a Blu-Ray more »

You will soon be able to use your iPhone or iPod Touch to control and do much more with your Blu-ray player. NetBlender will release a new technology this week, on April 10th, that links Blu-ray content to Apple devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch. They call this new technology BD Touch, and it more »

Shaw Wu of American Technology Research is one of the many analysts making predictions on Apple’s third generation version of Apple TV. His predictions remain similar to those of many others: Apple will most likely include digital video recorder functionality (as reported) and will transform the Apple TV that we know into a TiVo-like device, more »