Macworld: Jobs unveils super-slim new laptop

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at Macworld today, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it's opened.

Jobs also confirmed the tech giant's foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections 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 ultrathin MacBook Air notebook computer to coos and peals of laughter from fans at the conference.

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.

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

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's Web site already has been updated to reflect today's announcements. The price is competitive with other laptops in its market segment.

The machine helps fortify Apple's already-sizzling Macintosh product lineup and burnish its polished image as a purveyor of cool.

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.

Other revelations during Jobs' keynote address reflected the Cupertino, Calif.-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 today 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 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.

Titles will be available within 30 days of their DVD release.

Apple is partnering with 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., 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 also unveiled a string of new features for the iPhone, showing how users of the combination iPod-cellphone-Internet surfing device can now pinpoint their location on Web maps, text-message multiple people at once and customize their home screens.

Jobs also said Apple has sold 4 million iPhones during their first 200 days on sale.

The crowd applauded when Jobs demonstrated mapping upgrades to the iPhone. Other features rolling out today include the ability to switch around icons on the iPhones home screen. Users also can create up to nine home screens.

Jobs also unveiled new software for the iPod Touch music player. New models will be able to process e-mail and perform new mapping functions.