Apple Unveils Super Slim Laptop

Steve Jobs Announces New Products, Services At San Francisco MacWorld

(CBS/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 thick; at its thinnest, it's .16 inches, 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.

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 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.

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 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, which will work on Macs, Windows-based machines, iPhones, iPods or Apple TV set-top boxes.

While Apple may have a reputation for thinking different and being an iconoclast, the theme of this conference seemed to be partnerships, reports CBS News producer Amy Birnbaum. In addition to the movie companies, Apple touted partnerships with Google and even Microsoft, which got a shout out for its release of Office 08 for Macintosh.

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.

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.

[rmdude]

More than any other company, Apple has seemed to introduce the best integration of software and hardware in their products. I think most of those people bashing Apple here let their bias feelings keep them from recognizing how good most Apple products are. Can you people honestly claim that the popularity of their products comes from purchases made just by Apple fans? Read reviews, look at their iPods or computers in an Apple store, compare to them with other manufactures and then purchase what floats your own boat, but don''t poison others with your prejudice.

[MacTrek777]

If Apple and it''s products aren''t that great why do so many folks get all upset? Perhaps they''re nervous about something? ;-)

acrnmnts, hey you just let everyone know you are full of hot air and nothing important to say.

[excoachken]

Now, would the please start working on a "slim Lap" so I could see my keyboard?

[gmond]

But is it green??

[jlwesley]

I fail to understand why anyone with so much as one functioning brain cell would buy an iPhone or a Mac built computer, the iPhone will not work with the most used business software on the market, cost twice as munch as my iPaq that will. A Mac or apple computer will not run most popular applications unless you fool it into thinking it is a PC. As I tell my customers, let me spend the money on a PC, that you will spend on a MAC and I will blow the MAC off of the table not only in performance, but in overall cost and ease of operation.

Dont buy into Jobs hype

[jerr11]

Apple''s good at only one thing: HYPE!!

Don''t believe a word of what they claim.

Take their Ipod.

The one I bought, the battery life is a miserable 2 hours!! NOT the 8 hours they claimed!

And what''s worst, they don''t stand behind their products!!

They needed a classaction suit to settle their defective overhyped batteries!

That was the last apple product I bought!

[jerr11]

I hear Apple''s buying the Bravo channel next, got to have a place to showcase their macho products!!

LOL

[hypnotoad72]

I wish this new one had firewire ports on it.

Posted by jh6379
-------------------

Gee, that''s sad. Do you know how to buy a firewire card? Need somebody else to put it all in for you? PC gives you expansion and usability options "macs" don''t. More of it too, which is why they don''t come with everything minor under the sun (while ignoring everything major, such as an optical drive...).

Which is ironic, "Macs" are NOTHING more than Intel PC architecture with one TPM chip and a souped up version of abandoned open source code. Whee. No wonder Adobe''s been shying away from them; prompting Apple to want to buy them... makes competition a good thing; I''ll miss photoshop, but can still make professional results with some competitors'' apps...

Meh. Back to learning SQL and ITIL. A job is more important than telling people x number reasons why they are drooling over a brand than really thinking.

[usayesterday]

Funny thing about Apple is that they release products that have already been created and improved. They just put an "i" in front of the name. What''s even more funny (actually pathetic) is the Apple religious fanatics get all excited as if the product that Steve Jobs announces has never been made before!

Case and point:

iPod "Shuffle"... an over priced USB thumb drive with two buttons on it to play your MP3s!

I would like to have seen/heard someone in the audience, at Steve Jobs'' keynote speech (as he is unveiling whatever it is), say something like...

..."OOH WOW! THAT''S REALLY INNOVATIVE...... NOT!"

[godseyesore-2009]

azure11 is asure00.