Steve Jobs did his usual job of prestidigitation at this week's Macworld expo. This was no mean feat, considering that Apple's CEO and pitchman extraordinaire had to follow last year's spectacular iPhone launch with a much less impressive bag of tricks.
But he managed to prove that Apple has turned the corner from also-ran computer company to premiere purveyor of gadgets and entertainment. That's where the market, and the money, is today, so Apple is chasing it.
The really big news was about movies. Thanks to a deal Apple struck with the major studios, you can now log onto the iTunes music store with your Mac or PC and download a rental movie ($2.99 for back titles, $3.99 for new releases).
You can store the movie for up to 30 days - a friendly feature - but once you start watching, the title expires in 24 hours, which matches the rules for on-demand service from most cable providers.
Now it gets cool. You can transfer a movie from one device to another, which means you can start a video at home in the evening and finish it on your iPod on the way to work in the morning (but not if you're driving, please).
Some high-definition titles will be available for a buck extra, but only for users of AppleTV, a wireless, set-top box designed to deliver the video stored on home computers to a home TV set.
Apple's normally loyal customers ignored the original AppleTV in droves, but Jobs hopes to resurrect it with a price cut (from $299 to $229) and new software that allows it to download movies directly from Apple's iTunes store without a computer as middleman.
Don't underestimate these video moves. Apple made the online music market by providing simple, legal access to a vast library of tunes and a dazzling little gadget to play them.
The new arrangement will ultimately give customers access to 1,000 film titles, and there are plenty of even-more-dazzling little gadgets to play them.
One of them is the iPod Touch, Apple's least appreciated but most endearing gadget. Think of it as an iPhone without the phone (which is no great loss), created when Apple realized that not all potential customers would want to switch to the iPhone's sole cellular service provider, AT&T.
So Apple produced an iPod with the same beautiful wide screen and superb, multi-touch Safari Web browser as the iPhone, but with no talk capability or external network access. To use it online, you need access to a Wi-Fi network, which isn't hard to come by these days.
