Is Apple Ready to Bust a Blu-ray Move?

Apple has never been big on alliances, coalitions or other formal industry-wide groupings. Case in point: The company joined the Blu-Ray Disc Association in 2005 promising to help promote the high-definition format and then did pretty much nothing (at least in a commercial sense) for close to three years.
This despite Jobs acknowledging that "consumers are…anxiously awaiting a way to burn their own high-def DVDs." Apparently, they weren't anxious enough to warrant sticking Blu-ray drives in Macs.
Given the ongoing format war, Apple's hesitation is more than understandable. But with Toshiba finally waving the white HD flag on Tuesday -- and other BDA members like HP and Dell starting to offer more Blu-ray equipped systems -- that reluctance could finally be morphing into actual concrete plans. But don't expect Apple to hop on the Blu-train just yet. Apple's approach will be probably be different than other industry players.
"Apple wants to use [Blu-ray] as a creative tool," notes Yankee Group's Carl Howe, not simply add it to a MacBook Pro's feature list. Put another way, Apple is waiting for some decent Blu-ray software.