Jan 15, 2008 4:36 pm US/Eastern
Jobs Reveals Tiny New Laptop
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ―
Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim
new laptop at the Macworld trade show on Tuesday, unveiling a personal
computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it is opened.
Jobs also confirmed the consumer electronics company's foray into
online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie
studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections within 30
days after they're released on DVD.
Always a showman, Jobs unwound the string on a standard-sized
manila office envelope and slid out the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook
computer to coos and peals of laughter from fans at the conference.
At its beefiest, the new computer is .76 inches (1.9 centimeters)
thick; at its thinnest, it's .16 inches (0.4 centimeters), he said. It
comes standard with an 80-gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a
64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade.
The machine doesn't come with a built-in optical drive for reading
CDs and DVDs, a feature Jobs says consumers won't miss because 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 buy an
external drive, however, that will retail for $99 (euro66.51).
Trading in Apple stock was heavy Tuesday, the first day of the
Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. It fell 5.52 percent
to $168.91 at midday.
The new laptop, which has a 13.3-inch (33-centimeter) screen and
full-sized laptop keyboard, will cost $1,799 (euro1,208) 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.
The machine helps fortify Apple's already-sizzling Macintosh
product lineup and burnish its polished image as a purveyor of cool.
Apple's Macintosh business hit record sales of 7 million units in
the company's fiscal 2007, up more than 30 percent from the previous
year.
After hovering for years with a 2 percent to 3 percent share of the
personal computer market in the United States, Apple's slice has grown
to almost 8 percent, making it the nation's third-largest PC vendor,
according to the latest figures from market researcher Gartner Inc.
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.
The movie-rental announcement capped months of speculation that an
Apple movie rental service was in the offing. The service launched
Tuesday in the United States and will roll out internationally later
this year.
Apple will have more than 1,000 movies for online rental through
iTunes by the end of February, with prices of $2.99 (euro2.01) for
older movies and $3.99 (euro2.68) 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, which will work
on Macs, Windows-based machines, iPhones, iPods or Apple TV set-top
boxes.
Jobs cut the price of Apple TV from $299 (euro201) to $229
(euro154) 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.
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 said Apple has sold 4 million iPhones during their first 200 days on sale.
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.
Jobs also unveiled new software for the iPod Touch music player.
New models will have be able to process e-mail and perform new mapping
functions.
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
