Petteri Pyyny
13 Oct 2003 16:21
Apple has announced that its new version of Mac OS X operating system, dubbed as Panther, will support also DVD+R format for data backup purposes.
Apple has previously shipped some of its computers equipped with Sony's dual-format recorder, but modified in such way that only DVD-R discs could be used with the drive. The recent change is, according to Apple, made because of consumer demand -- many users have non-Apple DVD burners and they wish to use those drives with OS X as well.
However, Panther will only support +R/+RW discs for data backup purposes, but it is not known yet whether Apple will add support for "plus" formats into its movie editing tools, such as iDVD.
Now virtually all the major consumer brands have accepted that neither, DVD-R or DVD+R, will win this "format war", but rather live side-by-side. Sony was originally the first major player to develop a drive that would allow burning both formats and after that, most of the manufacturers have followed.
Most likely outcome is that both formats will remain until the next generation of optical discs make both formats obsolete (and this time it wont take 15-20 years to replace the format like it did for CD) relatively soon.
Source: News.com