Apple Ships Air, Falters on Apple TV

Apple said Wednesday that it has begun shipping the MacBook Air, which it dubs the world's thinnest notebook, and that it has fallen behind in shipping Apple TV's new software.

"The new Apple TV software update, which allows users to rent high definition movies directly from their widescreen TVs, is not quite finished. Apple now plans to make the free software download available to existing Apple TV customers in another week or two," the Cupertino, Calif.-based company said in a statement.

The MacBook Air, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced two weeks ago at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, weighs 3 lbs. and features a 13.3-inc back-lit LED widescreen display. It measures 0.16 inches at its slimmest and widens to a mere 0.76 inches.

The MacBook Air is powered by either a 1.5 GHz or a 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and has 2 GB of memory and an 80 GB hard drive or 64 GB solid-state drive.

The delayed Apple TV software update, which would allow current Apple TV owners to rent movies directly from the iTunes store and watch them on their televisions, is just the latest in the product's misfortunes after sluggish sales keep it from hitting superstar status like its iPod and iPhone cousins.

The news comes a week after Apple reported strong but disappointing earnings for the first quarter 2008, giving Wall Street a less optimistic forecast for the second quarter than it had wanted.