CF Apple Computer

5 There s a ton that could be done and is being done in this space that doesn t require studios or additional content. How about sharing content recommendations with friends like Boxee or streaming my own content from ATV like a Slingbox. Or how about producing some speakers and amplifiers and building out a Sonos-type solution with ATV as the centerpiece.

Speaking of music, how about establishing a relationship or Rhapsody or launching a subscription music service? Heck, the PS3 now has Flash in their (limited) web browser allowing for Hulu playback. Let me sync and natively playback more file formats. Or how about an television-based Open Table reservations system with restaurant video reviews? Or make Ben Drawbaugh happy and hook up with or create some home automation stuff. Vista Media Center, and thus the Xbox, has a new MSNBC video gadget.

And while CableCARD is a royal PITA and a complex concept for consumers, what s stopping them from a putting out OTA DVR functionalities? Etc, etc, etc. Maybe a lot of this isn t mainstream or easily understood today, but isn t that what Apple excels at? Steve s response yesterday just suggests they ll be mostly sitting on the sidelines with what they have - possibly depressing to current customers and possibly a deterrent to potential customers. Pretty weak if you ask me.

As Washington Post s Rob P said to me yesterday , it s telling people not to buy the thing until Apple gets serious about it.

Apple did lower its least expensive laptop, the existing version of the entry-level MacBook, by $100 to $999. But in the updated versions of its MacBook and MacBook Pro machines, Apple focused mainly on adding features. Some had been in the svelte MacBook Air, including thinner laptop casings and a “multitouch” track pad, which, like the iPhone, understands gestures for spinning and zooming.

In an event at Apple s headquarters, Steve Jobs, Apple s co-founder and CEO, also said Apple broadened its use of graphics chips and associated technologies from Nvidia Corp., at the expense of Intel Corp., which still supplies the computers central processors. Jobs said the change speeds up processing-intensive activities playing popular 3-D video games, for example as much as six-fold.

As at other events in the last few months, Jobs appeared thin but, in a tongue-in-cheek nod to persistent questions about his health, projected a slide with his healthy 110-over-70 blood pressure reading. The redesigned laptops are thinner and lighter, and use what Apple touted as a construction “breakthrough” when it debuted in the super-slim MacBook Air in January. All the new laptops now use casings cut and tooled from aluminum, without a stronger skeleton fused to the insides.

At the lowest end of the redesigned laptops, a MacBook will cost $1,299, while the most expensive MacBook Pro, which comes with two graphics chips from Nvidia for extra-fast graphics processing, costs $2,499 a $300 reduction from the previous top model. An updated MacBook Air, the ultra-thin portable notebook that does not have a CD or DVD drive on board, begins at $1,799, just as the previous Air did. The track pads built into MacBooks and MacBook Pros also got a makeover.