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macworld

Apple announces ultrathin laptop, movie rentals

Apple CEO Steve Jobs once again managed to impress a Macworld crowd during his keynote address Tuesday morning by introducing an ultrathin laptop called the MacBook Air, which the company touts as the world's thinnest notebook.

Jobs also introduced a movie rental service (watch the video), which he said has the support of all major Hollywood studios. In addition, he announced Mac Office 2008; a backup appliance called Time Capsule; and new features for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.

Jobs said the MacBook Air has a 13.3-inch LED backlit screen and a full-size keyboard. The computer … Read more

Keynote Reaction

By now you're surely read the big news -- Time Capsule backup device, a strong iPhone update, movie rentals with an accompanying Apple TV update and the ultra light MacBook Air -- so the Macalope won't rehash it.

It's a solid follow-up to last year's Keynote which was a tough act to follow. You can't get a new iPhone every year, but the MacBook Air comes pretty darned close.

One thing the horny one will call out is that Fox's Jim Gianopolus is one entertainment industry executive who seems to "get it" (… Read more

New iTunes now ready for download

Among the new product announcements at the Macworld 2008 keynote, iTunes received a brand new feature: movie rentals! With the latest version of iTunes for both Windows and Mac, you will be able to rent movies from all the major studios including Touchstone, MGM, Miramax, Lions Gate, Fox, WB, Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony. Apple was able to strike a deal with studios which allowed iTunes to receive new releases 30 days after the DVD release. The first wave of movie rentals will launch by the end of February with over 1,000 titles.

Once you find a movie … Read more

HP tosses its $550 photo printer in the ring

These days, the $500-$550 mark seems an oddly expensive place for a consumer photo printer to live, but for printing your digital SLR shots larger than 8x10 or churning out those digital scrapbook pages, that's how much you've got to pony up for quality output. Not that there's a huge choice. The field consists of the relatively old, dye-ink-based Canon Pixma Pro9000 (admittedly, with some street prices that dip below $400), the not-quite-shipping pigment-based (but recently reviewed) Epson Stylus Photo R1900, and the newly announced, also pigmented, HP Photosmart Pro B8850.

You won't find a … Read more

Live blog from Macworld 2008

Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage Tuesday for his keynote speech at Macworld 2008. For CNET's complete Macworld coverage, go here. What follows is a record of continuous updates as his speech unfolded.

9:03 a.m. PST: Welcome once again to Macworld, Steve Jobs' annual dog-and-pony show from the Moscone Center in San Francisco. We're in place and waiting for the keynote to start. I think we'll be a little later than 9 a.m.; it took the doors some time to open. So far, standard Apple keynote music: Coldplay into Green Day.

9:14: … Read more

Electronic Arts will bring 'Spore' to the Mac this year

This post has been updated to confirm when we should expect an official announcement from EA.

As has been anticipated, Electronic Arts is set to announce Tuesday that it will be bringing its highly anticipated game Spore to the Mac sometime in 2008. It's a big deal, because PC and Mac versions of a game are often released months apart, if at all--some major game manufacturers skip the Mac platform altogether because they simply don't see the market value. EA, however, plans to bring Spore to both platforms simultaneously.

The announcement has been timed in conjunction with--you guessed … Read more

Apple releases the "MacBook Air," but will it measure up?

Apple has put the "Wow" in computing, today announcing its MacBook Air. What had been rumored to be a MacBook with wireless broadband built in turned out to be nothing so pedestrian. Apple, the Arsenal of computing, surprised many with an insanely thin new MacBook Air

Intel and Apple started collaborating on the project a year ago and the result is nothing short of spectacular. Whether it's something that you'll actually want to buy is an entirely different question, however. At $1,799.00, it's not cheap, but no one buys excellence for pennies.

Here are some of the more incredible/interesting aspects of the design:

Dimensions: 0.16" to 0.76". 13.3" screen. As demonstrated, it fits within an envelope. It is dramatically thinner than anything else on the market. The option of flash-based memory.… Read more

Apple flies in the MacBook Air

With Macworld kicking off today, that tangled web of rumor, innuendo, and outright fabrication known as the Internet has been abuzz with all kinds of supposedly inside top-secret documentation, downloaded directly from Steve Jobs' frontal lobe.

Naturally, we didn't believe a word of any of the oh-so-fake "leaked" Steve Jobs keynote addresses and product spec sheets, but one area where most of the speculators were at least partially right was in Apple's latest laptop, the MacBook Air.

As was heavily predicted, the new laptop is not quite an ultraportable, but still very small. Mimicking the 13-inch … Read more

Move over Netflix, VOD services; here comes Apple

Quickly filling up Netflix's rearview mirror is a sight that no tech company wants to see: Apple.

Apple announced on Tuesday that the company has cut licensing deals with every top film studio--deals that will enable iTunes to offer first-run movies a month after they are released on DVD.

This means that Apple has won a major advantage in the Web movie-rental business. One of the biggest complaints customers have with online movie services is that none offer first-run features. The same is true with some of the video-on-demand services operated by the cable companies.

Moreover, Netflix offerings don't work … Read more