MacBook Air, Apple TV and iTunes Movie Rentals among Macworld Announcements

Steve Jobs called it the world’s thinnest notebook in his keynote today. It’s a 3-pound laptop and the Apple Chief demonstrated just how thin in true showman fashion by pulling it from a manila envelope.

At less than one inch thick, MacBook Air has a 13-inch screen and is made from a recyclable silver aluminum. Green initiatives at Apple were a big part of Jobs’ speech citing that Air contains a mercury free display, arsenic free glass and is made with PVC-free circuit boards.

The size is certainly impressive but it comes at a cost that goes beyond the $1800 retail. Like most of Apple’s sexy devices it’s a closed system. There’ll be no upgrading memory, hard drive or battery replacements with this device. But those are trade-offs the Apple faithful must be used to by now.

I admire Apple taking a forward-thinking risk by not including optical storage. It makes Air’s diminutive stature possible and Apple is promoting it more as a wireless device and less as a computer.

I find it disappointing it includes a mechanical hard-drive instead of solid state flash storage. Micro-hdd is just sooo 2004.

Lastly, since MacBook Air is designed to be ultra-portable so as to benefit the Traveling Wilburys’ among us  - why not include 3G? That would have made it a true wireless and mobile device.

If what Andy Ihnatko says is true the Apple faithful will not only find the $1800 to spend but they’ll stand in line for hours to get one.

iTunes Movie Downloads

It’s been rumored for months but Apple was able to secure a deal with six major studios to sell more than 1,000 movies through iTunes by the end of February. Rentals will be good for 24 hours after you begin viewing and will cost $2.99 for older movies, $3.99 for new releases and one buck extra for high-definition video.

HD movies will be available at a maximum resolution of 720P

Apple TV

Jobs admitted that the Apple TV didn’t work out as they hoped. But Apple will lower the price on the current Apple TV models to $299 within the next two weeks.

Steve Jobs said of Apple TV’s failure:

”We’ve all missed - no-one has succeeded yet. We tried with Apple TV. Apple TV was designed to be an accessory for iTunes and your computer ... that’s not what people wanted. We learned what people wanted was about movies movies movies. So we’re back with Apple TV take two...”

Apple TV take two will not require a computer, but you’ll probably want one to and it has a reworked interface focused around movie rentals. The new iteration of Apple TV will make it easier to interface with iTunes and other Internet content providers including YouTube to download movies and TV shows in full widescreen HDTV and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.

I’m still not sure about Apple TV. It seems to try to be an HTPC/media extender for the masses. But I’m not sure the masses are ready for anything more complicated than the set-top-box provided by the local cable company. But if this silly high-definition disc format war doesn’t end soon –Apple might just start to take a slice of Toshiba’s and Sony’s market pie.