Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, is in negotiations with Hollywood’s big studios to make feature films available for download via the firm’s online music software, iTunes.
The company, which already controls more than 75 per cent of the music- download industry, hopes to introduce a service that would allow users to download films for $9.99 each by the autumn. If it followed the pattern of Apple’s involvement in music, it would launch in the US, and might not prove quite such a bargain when it arrived in the UK.
“Steve wants to get this done, and the studios want to reach an agreement, too,” one person with knowledge of the negotiations was quoted as saying in the New York Times. Disney, on whose board Jobs sits, is expected to be the first studio to make its films available.
The smallness of the iPod’s screen has not prevented Apple from successfully marketing some music videos and, in the US, television shows, via iTunes. But the files are of too low a resolution to be watchable when expanded to the size of an Apple computer screen.
· Oliver Burkeman
