Apple unveils new super-slim laptop

Apple CEO Steve Jobs shows off the new Macbook Air ultra portable laptop during his keynote speech at the MacWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco on Tuesday. PHOTO: AFP

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 25mm thick that turns on the moment it is 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 to coos and peals of laughter from fans at the conference.

At its beefiest, the new computer is 19mm thick; at its thinnest, it's 4mm, he said. It comes standard with an 80-gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64-gigabyte flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade.

The machine doesn't come with a built-in optical drive for reading CDs and DVDs, a feature Jobs says consumers won't miss because they can download movies and music over the Internet and access the optical drives on other PCs and Macs to install new software. They can buy an external drive, however, that will retail for US$99.

Trading in Apple stock was heavy on Tuesday, the first day of the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. It fell 5.52 percent to US$168.91 at midday.

The new laptop, which has a 13.3-inch screen and full-sized laptop keyboard, will be priced at US$1,799 when it goes be on sale in two weeks, though Apple is taking orders now. The company's Web site is already touting the machine. The price is competitive with other laptops in its market segment.

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 on Tuesday in the US 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 US$2.99 for older movies and US$3.99 for new releases. Users can watch instantly 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.

Apple is partnering with 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony on the service, which will work on Macs, Windows-based machines, iPhones, iPods or Apple TV set-top boxes.

Jobs cut the price of Apple TV from US$299 to US$229 and announced new software that allows users to order movies through the device and play them directly on their TV sets, eliminating the need to route the content through a personal computer first. The software is free to existing Apple TV customers and will be included in new Apple TV devices shipping in two weeks.