Steve Jobs' much-anticipated MacWorld presentation this morning was not nearly as exciting, as revolutionary as his same stint last year, when Apple unveiled the market-changing iPhone. But, the spate of new products and enhancements do justice to the typical overheated expectations that preceded MacWorld.
What Jobs announced:
1. iTunes Movie Rentals Are Here: As has been long rumored, Jobs announced 
the iTunes movie rental store that will feature films from all the major studios, including 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, New Line Cinema and MGM. Library titles are priced at $2.99 while recent films cost $3.99 per rental. HD version are $3.99 for library titles and $4.99 for recent films. The movies can be viewed on Macs or PCs, all current generation iPods, iPhone and Apple TV. iTunes movie rentals launch today with over 1,000 titles, 100 of those in HD format. Customers have up to 30 days to start watching a rented film, and once a movie has been started they have 24 hours to finish it or watch it multiple times.
2. 20th Century Fox to Offer iTunes Digital Copy with Purchased DVD: One of Apple's studio partners (and it's not Disney), 20th Century Fox, will offer what the companies are calling Digital Copy for iTunes, a free digital copy of a film that appears on purchased DVDs and that can be transferred to iTunes for viewing on a PC or Mac, iPod, iPhone or Apple TV. The first film that will include this bonus copy is the Family Guy "Star Wars" parody, "Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest," but "many more" DVDs this year will feature the add-on transportable film.
3. Apple TV Take 2: Jobs acknowledged that Apple TV, unveiled at last year's MacWorld, hadn't set the world on fire. So, Apple is launching a do-over version of the PC-to-TV device that Jobs referred to as Apple TV Take 2. (Here's a guided tour and more info.) 
The new Apple TV unit comes with upgraded software that supports movie rentals from the iTunes store without requiring a PC. Customers can rent DVD quality or HD films "with a click of the mouse" through home wireless networks without setup or management or syncing with a computer. Purchases are automatically synced back to the users' iTunes account on the computer, as well as to iPods or iPhones. Apple TV 2.0 users can also access YouTube videos and sync their Flickr or .Mac Web galleries to the TV-oriented device. Better still: Apple TV is priced at only $229, down from $299.
4. iPhone Software Update that Delivers Various Goodies: Jobs unveiled an iPhone software update that enhances the iconic device so that users can automatically find their location using a 
redesigned Google Maps application; text message multiple people in one message; create Web Clips for their favorite websites; customize home screens; and watch movies rented from iTunes. The Google Maps upgrade is particularly interesting because it "triangulates" your position using nearby Wi-Fi base stations or cellular towers (just as they do on TV crime shows!) to find your location automatically, a useful tool when wandering aimlessly.
5. MacBook Air: As expected, Jobs announced the MacBook Air, an incredibly thin (.16 inches to .76 inches) and lightweight (3 lbs) notebook computer that nonetheless features a full-sized keypad and 13.3-inch display. It comes with other bells and whistles, including a built-in iSight video camera, but is priced at $1,799, higher than existing MacBook Pros, and doesn't feature an internal optical drive, although an add-on is available for an additional $99.
6. Time Capsule Computer Back-Up: Jobs unveiled a less-glitzy but extremely useful product called Time Capsule, which automatically and wirelessly backs up everything on one or more Macs running Leopard. A 500-gigabyte model is available for $299 and a 1-terabyte model is priced at $499.
7. iPod Touch Gets Upgraded: The least sexy bit of news, which Jobs used as his warm-up announcement, is a series of upgrades for the iPod Touch, involving mail, the new maps enhancement, stocks, weather and notes. The iPod Touch will also feature the Web Clips enhancement as well as the ability to watch rented iTunes movies. In terms of mail, the iPod Touch will now support email via Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, .Mac Mail or most POP or IMAP services. Stocks and weather allow iPod Touch users to check on weather and stocks, while notes is simply the ability to jot down stuff and store it on the portable device. In what many iPod Touch owners will consider an insult, the package of upgrades is not free. It costs $20.
In kicking off the keynote, Jobs announced some key sales statistics.
*Apple has sold four million iPhones to date, which are currently selling at a rate of 20,000 per day.
*iTunes has surpassed its 4 billionth song sold, hitting an all-time one-day sales high on Christmas Day 2007 when 20 million songs were sold on iTunes.
*125 million TV shows and seven million movies have been sold on iTunes.
That's a lot to digest in one sitting, but, again, not nearly as difficult to absorb as the iPhone. I'll be back at some point later with a more detailed assessment of what the movie rental announcement means and whether this is a revolutionary or incremental development in the online video world.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:39 PM | Print | Comments (0)The NYT's Seth Schiesel has this piece today about the formation of a political action committee designed to promote the interests of the gaming industry. Operated out of the Entertainment Software Association, run by former NTIA head Michael Gallagher, the PAC plans to donate from $50,000 to $100,000 to national candidates this year.
The big threat to the gaming industry is the continual push to either ban games that feature adult or violent content or to limit their sale to minors. Both of these efforts to limit video gaming have been struck down by numerous courts as violations of the First Amendment. Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), has in the past been one of the biggest proponents of limiting video game bans and has spearheaded efforts to conduct federally funded studies that document the harm of playing these games (courts have routinely ruled that no one has proved the harm of violent video games, for example.)
According to Schiesel's piece, Senator Clinton has "made peace" with the game industry given that video games, once the province of children and teenagers, are now primarily an adult activity, with the average age of gamers hovering around 30.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:38 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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