It looks like Mac clone maker Psystar doesn't see eye-to-eye with Steve Jobs and his recent comments dismissing the possibility of selling computers with Blu-ray drives, as the company has begun offering its models with an option for the high-definition optical drive. Psystar's been butting heads with Apple since last April when it released its Open Computer, a PC running a copy of OSX, hacked to work on non-Apple hardware. Do-it-yourself-ers pulled off the feat before Psystar even appeared, but the process was tricky to get working just right, relying on specific hardware and configuration tweaks to function. Psystar's Open Computer avoids many of those issues by selling the system with the OS pre-installed.

 

The Blu-ray news follows a response Steve Jobs made at October 14th's Apple laptop unveiling to a question about when the format would be available in one of the company's notebooks. Jobs called the format a "bag of hurt" from Apple's position as a hardware and software developer, pointing to complicated and expensive licensing requirements for Blu-ray players. So, although on the surface Psystar is stepping up to provide an option that customers want and Apple isn't ready to provide, it's a bit of a hollow gesture, as the Psystar systems can't play Blu-ray movies, only read and write data discs.

The problems Jobs discussed in licensing Blu-ray don't affect the availability of drive hardware, but the software needed to decrypt and play the discs' movie content. Even before Psystar started offering the drives in their systems, you could always just hook up a Blu-ray drive through an external adapter to a legitimate Mac, but you'd find yourself stuck with the same problem: no way to watch your movies. Psystar glosses over this minor detail in its press release, implying the drive would be great for editing movies, a task that doesn't directly involve the Blu-ray encryption.

Until some company releases Mac-based software able to work with Blu-ray's DRM, Psystar's $310 optical drive upgrade is little more than an expensive tool for making backups. You're probably going to have to wait on Apple to warm to the format for that to happen, though: until it starts shipping systems with the drive, there won't be much of a demand from users for the software.

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