Apple Previews Device Linking Computer to TV

THE NEW YORK TIMES September 12, 2006 By JOHN MARKOFF

Steven P. Jobs, Apple Computer’s chief executive, concluded a company event on Tuesday morning with his usual tease, noting that he had “one last thing” to introduce.

Then, in an unusual departure from the company’s practice of announcing new products only when they are ready to ship, he talked about a product due out early next year that will be the company’s first step into the living room. The device, which Apple is calling iTV for now, will wirelessly stream video and music from a Macintosh computer or from the Internet to a television. The $299 box is about the size of a slim paperback novel.

As expected, Apple also added movies to its iTunes Store. It will initially offer 75 movies for download from four studios, all owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, on whose board of directors Mr. Jobs sits. He is also the company’s largest individual shareholder.

Other movie studios were conspicuously absent from the announcement. Some have resisted the idea of offering downloadable movies that might compete with lucrative DVD distribution channels.

The iTV device places Apple squarely in the consumer electronics market and gives it a way to compete directly with Microsoft and PC industry giants like Dell and Hewlett-Packard, which are also eagerly eyeing ways to deliver entertainment beyond the PC screen. Apple is a late entrant to the living room market, which is already crowded with video players like the Xbox and PlayStation and Microsoft-based Media Center personal computers, along with extenders of every shape and function.

That appeared not to faze Mr. Jobs, who showed off a simple interface for playing video and music on a TV, patterned on the company’s Front Row software.

Mr. Jobs said wireless streaming of digital entertainment was the missing piece of the puzzle. He said Apple was in the den with the Macintosh, in the consumer’s pocket and car with the iPod, and was now poised to enter the living room.

The new streaming device partially sheltered Mr. Jobs from criticism that he had failed to line up Hollywood movie studios in the same way that he won the backing of the music industry when he originally launched the iTunes store. Mr. Jobs suggested that other studios would join the movie service in the future.

“He did what he needed to do,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director for Jupiter Research. “It puts him way ahead of everyone else” in the effort to extend the PC to the living room, he said.

Apple also refreshed its industry-dominant line of iPod music and video players. Mr. Jobs noted that the company had maintained a share of the market for digital music players in the United States that was greater than 75 percent, and that an iPod-compatible system developed by Nike that measures running speed and distance had sold 450,000 units in its first 90 days.

Apple said that it was introducing its fifth generation of hard-disk-based iPod music players at prices between $249 and $349, as well as a new suite of colorful iPod Nano players that have more storage capacity and a 24-hour battery life, priced between $149 and $249.

Mr. Jobs also introduced an ultrasmall version of the iPod Shuffle that disappears in the palm of a hand and clips onto clothing. As noted by several members of the audience, the tiny iPod seemed to be inspired by a “Saturday Night Live” skit that poked fun at the relentless shrinking of each new generation of iPods.