SAN FRANCISCO — Apple on Tuesday shook up its online video offerings with a new Internet movie-rental service and a revamped product for getting Internet video to television sets. The company also rolled out a new ultra-thin laptop computer, the MacBook Air.
Apple also said it is updating the software on its iPhone with new features, including one that automatically determines a user’s location when looking up directions on the phone, The Wall Street Journal reported. Apple also introduced a device called Time Capsule, starting at $299, for backing up a computer’s files over a home network.
Apple said a new version of the software that runs the product will allow users to rent or buy movies directly from their Apple TVs. Apple dropped the product’s price to $229 from $299 and said the new software will be free to existing users.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs, speaking at the Macworld conference, described Apple’s new MacBook Air laptop as the “world’s thinnest notebook” — measuring only 0.76 inch at its thickest — a point he sought to drive home by dramatically pulling the computer out of a large envelope on stage. He predicted Apple will help expand the market for “sub notebooks” by offering a larger screen, keyboard and faster processor on the $1,799 MacBook Air than are typically found on such products.
All of the major movies studios agreed to participate in Apple’s new movie-rental service. For more than a year, the Cupertino, Calif., company has sold movies on the iTunes Store, but only a small handful of major studios participated and just one, Walt Disney Co., permitted Apple to sell new releases in addition to older films. Apple and the studios have wrangled over issues like pricing of movie purchases and piracy.
Overall, Apple has sold four billion songs through iTunes and 125 million television shows, but only seven million movies, which didn’t meet the company’s expectations, Jobs said.
Jobs predicted that Apple’s new movie-rental service would find a wider audience because it is less expensive for consumers than purchasing movies. While new releases on iTunes currently cost $14.99 and older “library” titles cost $9.99, consumers will be able to rent titles in both categories for $3.99 and $2.99 respectively. Consumers can download the movies to their computers, iPods and iPhones, and are given a 24-hour period to finish viewing them after first starting to play the movies.
News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney, Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros., Viacom Inc.’s Paramount, Sony Corp.’s Sony Pictures Entertainment and others said they will offer movie rentals through the service.
Studio executives said they warmed to joining the rental service, in part because Apple agreed to help them with the thorny problem of piracy by users copying movies onto computers from DVDs and sharing them over the Internet. Apple and Fox said they have devised a feature called Digital Copy for iTunes that will allow Fox to place digital copies of movies on DVDs that can be easily copied to computers, iPods and other Apple devices.
The copies will come with Apple’s anti-piracy software, which will prevent users from sharing them online. Other studios like Paramount said they planned to offer the feature on their DVDs in the future.
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