Apple said it began selling Walt Disney Company movies at its iTunes online store.

"Today we are making more than 75 films available online and we will be adding more every month,"

Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs said during a press event in a San Francisco theater.


The offerings include recent releases including "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Cars," Jobs said.


The films were from Disney, Pixar, Touchstone and Miramax film studios, Jobs said.



New films would be available online for $12.99 dollars the same day of their release in DVD format, Jobs said. The price would rise to $14.99 dollars after the first week.


Library films would sell for $9.99 dollars each.






Other Articles: Super Bowl Ads - Downloadable on iPods | Wireless iPod coming next ? | Which iPod Should You Buy? iPod Nano

With my Macworld Senior Editor cap firmly in place, I’d like to say that I couldn’t have been happier when Apple shifted focus from the iPod to the Intel Macs and the next version of Mac OS X, Leopard.



iPod, iTunes, a trillion songs in your pocket, Pago Pago has been added to the line up of iTunes Music Stores, iTunes is now offering the complete works of Chad and Jeremy plus a pre-order on their new album, Old Sourdough reruns can be had for $1.99, oh look, there’s Bono on a blue background again….


Enough already.


But doffing that cap and replacing it with the sportier Playlist Senior Editor headgear, I push thoughts of Apple’s computer division aside and ponder, What’s Up With the iPod?




As Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference winds down and anticipation of the High Holidays winds up, Apple will turn its attention to its most gift-appropriate wares—the iPod and its accompanying accessories. Yet the landscape’s changed since the last revision of the iPod. How will this Second (or Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth) Coming of the iPod play out?

Read more »

Microsoft Corp. is reportedly readying an iPod killer set to hit retail shelves in time for the end-of-year holiday shopping season.


Microsoft's portable music and video player is rumored to include wireless connectivity, enabling users to download songs without being tethered to a PC, according to a report Thursday from The New York Times.


Microsoft faces an uphill battle in its efforts to take on Apple Computer Inc., which shipped 8.5 million iPods in the second quarter of 2006 alone, marking a 61 percent increase from its sales for the same quarter in 2005. Apple is due to announce its third-quarter earnings July 19.


Microsoft has already introduced initiatives to compete with Apple's iTunes music service. In May it launched along with MTV Networks the Urge music store as part of the Windows Media Player 11 public beta. The Urge store allows users to purchase songs for US$0.99 and albums for $9.99, as well as buy a $15.00 monthly subscription. The service is not compatible with Apple Macs or iPods.


Source: ITWorld


Related Articles: Target: iPod - MTV & Microsoft combine to attack | Apple iPod Doomed? | Is Microsoft Taking Aim at The iPod?

CBS has made several of its key TV series available for download through the iTunes service in the US.


Episodes from the recently-aired seasons of CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Numb3rs, Survivor and NCIS can be bought for $1.99 a shot. Earlier seasons are available in some cases, with others expected to follow in the coming months.

"iTunes has proven that people enjoy viewing shows on their computer or iPod, which provides an opportunity to reach new audiences with our hit shows and gives our existing viewers a chance to catch up on missed episodes,"

said Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media. CBS is the last of the major US networks to join the service.

Given U2's ongoing close relationship with Apple over the past few years, it's not entirely surprising that Apple chose to reincarnate the Special Edition U2 iPod as its way of giving the Fifth Generation iPod lineup a mid-term boost.


And it's far less surprising that Apple chose to give the lineup a boost, as it's done so midway through previous iPod generations with enhancements ranging from capacity to color screens. Unfortunately, this time around, the "boost" only applies to users who opt for this specific model, and even then there are no actual functional enhancements, only stylistic ones. But after spending forty-eight hours with the device, we're left to conclude that the new U2 iPod does indeed do enough new things stylistically, some of which we expect to see incorporated into future iPod generations, that the product merits a full review. Well, an almost full review; we'll bypass the functionality all of you are already familiar with, and go straight for the stylistic enhancements.



We don't normally discuss packaging in product reviews, as packaging usually finds its way immediately to the trash and ends up counting nothing toward the user experience, but we're well aware of iPod users' penchants for keeping their iPod packaging around for sentimental reasons (often under a guise of practical-sounding excuses), and we're as guilty of that as anyone. So it's worth noting that while the new U2 iPod comes in the same half-depth boxes as other recent iPods, the front and back faces of the internal box both feature all four members of the band; the front from the current era, the back from the band's earliest days. As with every other iPod ever released, the film on the U2 iPod's face reminds users to do business with the iTunes Music Store, or "Don't Steal Music" as they phrase it.

Read more »