Apple Unveils Slim Laptop and Movie Rentals

On Tuesday, the first day of the Macworld trade show, Chief Executive Steve Jobs unwrapped a super-slim new laptop, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it’s opened. As Jobs unwound the string on a standard-sized manila office envelope and slid out the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook computer, fans at the conference cooed and laughed.
 
Dubbed the MacBook Air, the laptop is at its widest, .76 inches thick; at its thinnest, it’s .16 inches. The laptop comes standard with an 80-gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade. While the machine won’t come with a built-in optical drive for reading CDs and DVDs, Jobs noted that this was a feature that most consumers won’t miss as they can download movies and music over the Internet and access the optical drives on other PCs and Macs to install new software. They can, however buy an external drive, which will retail for $99.
 
The new laptop, which has a 13.3-inch screen and full-sized laptop keyboard, will cost $1,799 when it goes on sale in two weeks, though Apple is taking orders now. The company’s Web site is already touting the machine. The price is competitive with other laptops in its market segment.
 
Shebly Seyrafi, a Caris & Co. analyst told AP that the MacBook Air’s price tag "may have been higher than people would have hoped for. Investors also may be "incrementally" concerned that Apple’s iPhone was not updated so that it can connect to faster cellular networks, he added.
 
iTunes Movie Rental
 
Jobs also unveiled online movie rentals in its iTunes services. The movie-rental announcement finally quelled months of speculation that an Apple movie rental service was in the near future. According to AP, the service launched Tuesday in the United States and will roll out internationally later this year.
 
Jobs said that Apple will have more than 1,000 movies for online rental through iTunes by the end of February, with prices of $2.99 for older movies and $3.99 for new releases. Users can watch instantly over a broadband Internet connection, or download and keep the movie for 30 days while having 24 hours to finish the movie once it’s started.
 
Apple is partnering with 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony on the service. He also explained that the service will work on Macs, Windows-based machines, iPhones, iPods or Apple TV set-top boxes.
 
High-Def AppleTV
 
Jobs cut the price of Apple TV from $299 to $229 and announced new software that allows users to order movies through the device and play them directly on their TV sets, eliminating the need to route the content through a personal computer first. The software is free to existing Apple TV customers and will be included in new Apple TV devices shipping in two weeks.
 
According to Jobs, this new version of the company’s Apple TV product is aimed at making it easier to watch movies delivered over the Internet.
 
"We’ve all tried how to get movies over the Internet onto a wide-screen TV, and you know what — we’ve all missed. No one has succeeded yet," he said, as he rolled out the new version, which will support high-definition movies and work with the company’s new movie rental service.
 
iPhone Upgrades
 
Jobs also unveiled a string of new features for the iPhone, showing how users of the combination iPod-cell phone-Internet surfing device can now pinpoint their location on Web maps, text-message multiple people at once and customize their home screens. Jobs also told fans that Apple has sold 4 million iPhones during their first 200 days on sale.
 
According to AP, the crowd applauded when Jobs demonstrated mapping upgrades to the iPhone. Other features rolling out Tuesday included the ability to switch around icons on the iPhones home screen. Users also can create up to nine home screens.
 
More”¦
 
Additionally, Jobs announced a new product called Time Capsule that allows Mac users to back up their data wirelessly on a 500-gigabyte drive that will sell for $299 and another with a terabyte of storage that will sell for $499.
 
Jobs also unveiled new software for the iPod Touch music player. New models will be able to process e-mail and perform new mapping functions.
 
Other revelations during Jobs’ speech reflected the Cupertino-based company’s intensifying efforts to push deeper into consumers’ living rooms with technologies that blend Internet technology into home entertainment devices.

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