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Apple Unveils Super-Slim Laptop Computer

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By MAY WONG and JORDAN ROBERTSON, The Associated Press

Published: January 16, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at the Macworld trade show on Tuesday, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it's opened.

Jobs also confirmed the consumer electronics company's foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections within 30 days after they're released on DVD.

Always a showman, Jobs unwound the string on a standard-sized manila office envelope and slid out the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook computer.

At its beefiest, the new computer is 0.76 inches thick; at its thinnest, it's 0.16 inches, he said. It comes standard with an 80-gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade.

The machine doesn't come with a built-in optical drive for reading CDs and DVDs. Consumers can buy an external drive, however, that will retail for $99.

Caris & Co. analyst Shebly Seyrafi said the MacBook Air's price tag "may have been higher than people would have hoped for." Investors also may be "incrementally" concerned that Apple's iPhone was not updated so that it can connect to faster cellular networks, he said.

The new laptop, which has a 13.3-inch screen and full-sized laptop keyboard, will cost $1,799 when it goes on sale in two weeks, though Apple is taking orders now.

Apple's Macintosh business hit record sales of 7 million units in the company's fiscal 2007, up more than 30 percent from the previous year.

After hovering for years with a 2 percent to 3 percent share of the personal computer market in the United States, Apple's slice has grown to almost 8 percent, making it the nation's third-largest PC vendor, according to the latest figures from market researcher Gartner Inc.

Other revelations during Jobs' speech reflected the Cupertino-based company's intensifying efforts to push deeper into consumers' living rooms with technologies that blend Internet technology into home entertainment devices. The movie-rental announcement capped months of speculation that an Apple movie rental service was in the offing. The service launched Tuesday in the United States and will roll out internationally later this year.

Apple will have more than 1,000 movies for online rental through iTunes by the end of February, with prices of $2.99 for older movies and $3.99 for new releases. Users can watch over a broadband Internet connection, or download and keep the movie for 30 days while having 24 hours to finish the movie once it's started.

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