Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs unveiled movie rentals from iTunes, a superthin notebook computer and new software for the iPhone and iPod iTouch at his Macworld presentation in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Jobs said every major movie studio will make its films available at a price of $2.99 each for older films and $3.99 each for new releases. High-definition videos will cost $1 more. The downloaded rental can be watched for 24 hours after it's initially launched. Jobs said more than 1,000 films will be available by February.
Jobs unveiled what he called the "world's thinnest notebook," the MacBook Air, which will join the MacBook and MacBook Pro laptop lines.
He showed that the new computer, which is 0.76-inch at its thickest point, can fit inside an interoffice mail envelope. Jobs said the new computer has a 13.3-inch wide screen, an LED backlit display, a built-in iSight camera and a full-size keyboard. The MacBook Air has 5 hours of battery life and weighs 3 pounds. It runs on a 1.6-gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo chip, has 2 gigabytes of buffer memory, and an 80-gigabyte hard drive.
The computer will not have an optical drive for reading DVDs and CDs, with Jobs saying that task can be done by iPods and wireless movie rentals. But he said the MacBook Air will have software that will allow it to "borrow" the optical drive of nearby Macs and PCs.
The price will be $1,799, and it will be available in two weeks, Jobs said.
For widescreen TV owners, Jobs unveiled new software for the Apple TV device that will allow the downloading of movies, podcasts, photos and music directly to the screen. He also announced a lowering of the Apple TV device's price to $229, and said a free software upgrade will be available to existing owners.
The Apple CEO showed off new software for the iPhone, including a mapping application that works in conjunction with Google. The application uses a Wi-Fi network instead of GPS software. There's also a new text messaging feature and a way to put clips of Web pages on the iPhone screen.
For the iPod iTouch, Jobs unveiled five new software applications, available for $20 for those who already have the device. The applications are mail, stocks, notes, weather and location.
The Apple CEO also unveiled a wireless Mac backup device, called Time Capsule, as a companion to the Time Machine component in Apple's new Leopard version of its operating system. Time Capsule will be sold in a 500-gigabyte version for $299 and a 1-terabyte version for $499.
Jobs also unveiled the first version of Microsoft Office for Mac computers made with Intel chips.
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technorati tags: apple, steve jobs, macworld, macbook air, time capsule
Apple unveils movie rentals, thin laptop, software upgrades for iPhone
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2 comments:
i watched Steve Jobs' presentation of this new THINnovation and i've set my eyes on buying this baby. :-)
i love Apple.
wow! a guaranteed buyer already! Pahiram ha :) Eniweys.. it does look attractive, let's just hope that it's performs well.. most laptops (even slim playstations) are prone to overheating, and same with iPhone.. the MacBook Air has a sealed, non user-replaceable battery. You have to swap it out to the nearest apple store.. and that would probably cost a lot.
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