By Scott Hillis Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple on Tuesday launched an aluminium-clad laptop just three-quarters of an inch thick, seeking to bring a new computer to market with the same cachet as its iPod and iPhone devices.

Apple also said it would let people rent films over the Web with upgrades to its iTunes online media store, a technological challenge to a movie industry still largely focused on DVDs.

Shares of movie rental firms Netflix and Blockbuster fell sharply in response, and Apple's own stock lost 5.5 percent since the announcements were widely expected and Chief Executive Steve Jobs failed to conjure up any big surprises.

Jobs set a high bar last year by unveiling the iPhone. In addition, many times he ends presentations with by saying, "One more thing..." as a prelude to something unexpected. This year there was none.

Still, Jobs' talents as a showman were on display when he took the stage at the annual Macworld convention in San Francisco to cheers and applause from a few thousand software developers, customers and Apple employees.

He detailed a series of new products and services but saved the laptop, dubbed the MacBook Air, for last, drawing it out of a standard manila envelope to emphasize its slim dimensions.

Jobs said the new notebook was the thinnest available, measuring 0.76 inches at its thickest point and tapering to just 0.16 inches.

Priced from $1,800 (920 pounds), the Air bridges the gap between Apple's entry-level and high-end laptops, but analysts voiced concern that it could steal customers away from pricier products.

"It's not really clear how many more incremental buyers you can drive, and there could be some cannibalization," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research.

Macbook laptops have been one of the company's strongest products, with sales rising 37 percent on the year in the fiscal fourth quarter ended last September.

NEW APPLE USERS SOUGHT

Phil Schiller, Apple's vice president of marketing, said the new laptop could appeal to a large swath of customers, including business travellers, those in education and people who wanted a more attractive computer at home.

"The goal overall is to continue to grow the business, so having another product in the line helps to do that. If the mix (of customers) changes a little bit, it doesn't matter as long as we grow everything," Schiller said.

Apple stock has nearly doubled since last year's Macworld, and in late December topped $200 for the first time, driven by market-share gains by Mac computers, continued iPod strength, and enthusiasm over the iPhone, which Jobs said had sold more than 4 million units since its release last June.

Jobs showed off new iPhone features such as displaying a user's location on a map and a way to customize the main screen with icons linking directly to specific parts of a Web site.

"The iPhone is not standing still. We keep making it better and better and better," Jobs said.

But the company has struggled to find a big audience for Apple TV, a product originally designed as a Mac accessory for watching Internet video on a television and unveiled alongside the iPhone a year ago.

"It's not what people wanted. We learned what people wanted was ... movies, movies, movies," Jobs said.

A new version of Apple TV will be able to connect to the Internet directly and download TV shows, movies and music through iTunes. Viewers will be able to choose movies directly from their TVs and Apple said viewers could start watching within seconds if they had a fast Internet connection.

Jobs announced deals with all six major movie studios and several smaller ones to offer movies for rental through iTunes, with new releases costing $3.99 and library titles $2.99. High-definition movies will also be available.

The revamp of Apple TV hardware combined with a broad selection of movies would give Apple an edge over competitors such as Amazon.com , Netflix and Microsoft , American Technology Research's Wu said.

News Corp's 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney , Time Warner's Warner Bros, Viacom's Paramount, General Electric's Universal, Sony's Sony Pictures, Lionsgate , MGM and New Line have all signed on to Web rentals, Apple said.

"It's too early to declare that this is going to be a big hit but this is arguably the best offering out there right now," Wu said.

Apple shares fell to $169.04, while mail rental firm Netflix shed 3.2 percent, and top video rental chain Blockbuster Inc dropped nearly 17 percent.

Believe it, Apple’s new ultralight notebook is perfect technology. It’s an elite product, something that seems to drive populist Mac fans crazy. But this notebook will be Apple’s next step in a strategy to infiltrate the enterprise.



Smart people at parties and on the show floor here at the Macworld Expo keep complaining about the MacBook Air. They are outraged.

“It’s just not right,” they say. The battery is all wrong. Or it’s incomprehensible that any Mac notebook would lack Gigabit Ethernet (or any Ethernet for that matter) or FireWire. Or that there’s no RAM upgrade slot.

This machine is so beautiful, but it’s unusable! How can this be happening to us?

Sadly, all of these complaints are dumb. There’s nothing at all wrong with the MacBook Air and everything is right about it. It’s an amazing piece of design and engineering. This machine will be a museum piece, no doubt.

It’s also sturdy. Pick up a comparable Windows-market machine by one hand at the corner and you may worry a bit from the squeaks and creaks. On the other hand, the MacBook Air is light and solid. And beautiful.

Somehow, longtime Mac users were deluded that this new machine would be some kind of a replacement for a MacBook Pro. Sorry, it isn’t the replacement for anything. The MacBook Air is something different.


(A brief sidetrack: I add that the whole notion that notebooks can be a “desktop replacement” is marketing nonsense, one that most computer users have bought into. Notebooks are designed for mobility and they make many serious trade-offs when compared with desktop machine, whether professional or consumer grade.

For example, my MacBook Pro is a fantastic machine, however, it can’t touch an 8-core Mac Pro’s amazing processor performance, networking and storage expansion, video performance and reliability. At the same time, it’s not so convenient to carry around a Mac Pro.

Now, if I had the money, I would have two machines, one for power and another for mobility; but I make do with one and by necessity, it’s a mobile machine. Still, in no way is it a “desktop replacement” other than by necessity that it’s used for all my primary computing — until I win the lottery.)

Instead, the MacBook Air is aimed at a narrow upscale segment of the market. These customers care about style and what that style says about them. It’s all a part of their personal brand.

These customers want excellent design and will value the drama created by the MacBook Air. When they open this machine at a meeting, it may say more about them than a $300 haircut, or a bespoke suit.

Will these users worry about connecting FireWire for digital video or external storage? They may worry more that a heavy briefcase filled with a heavy notebook could wrinkle their suit before a meeting. Listen, if one of these persons needs an power outlet because the battery is heading towards critical, someone will find them an outlet. And besides, there’s plenty of juice for notebooks and mimosas in the first class cabin.

What’s great about the MacBook Air is that this machine appears to be a new twist in Apple’s stealth campaign into the enterprise. The MacBook Air is all about switchers.

Who will be customers of this classy machine? Captains of enterprise and commerce. Traditionally, these customers have been Windows users. But now they will buy Apple’s new ultralight and join the ranks of switchers.

Read related story: Do switchers now rule the Mac?

These executives are helping to drive the adoption of the Mac in the enterprise and mid-market companies. I pointed this out a year ago, with the observation that project-centric software companies such as Mindjet were offering Mac versions. The company this week announced a Leopard-compatible update to Mindjet MindManager 7 at the Macworld Expo.

Mindjet does “mind-mapping,” or brainstorming for top-level execs. Brook Stein, senior product manager, told me last year that some of the demand for Mac compatibility came from switchers in the executive ranks.

“The biggest market we’re seeing growth in are people who use Windows at work [because they have to], but who buy Macs for home,” he said.

Now, with the MacBook Air in the briefcase (or manila interoffice mailer), these executives aren’t going to want to keep the Mac at home. It’s going to go straight into the board room.


Source:http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1196