Apple

(Credit: CNET)

Apple Insider has unearthed proof that YouTube uploading will be built into the upcoming version of QuickTime that ships with OS X 10.6.

According to beta testers, several video-sharing options will be baked into the latest release of Apple's QuickTime media playback and editing software, including the capability to directly upload to YouTube. With the new QuickTime, you will be able to convert and upload any supported video file type to the online video service and all you will need is to be a registered YouTube user. You also will be able to seamlessly upload supported video to the MobileMe Gallery.

In addition to these new sharing options, iTunes also will offer ways to convert and export your video files to work on your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. All of these options will be available to you from the same convenient location and will automatically be imported to iTunes before being synced to your supported devices.

With this latest discovery, Apple will effectively offer built-in support for YouTube across all of its main products. Both the iPhone and Apple TV already offer YouTube support, along with some of Apple's other software including recent releases of iMovie. With the addition of direct uploads through QuickTime, Apple is providing support for desktop and laptop Macs.

Apple fell far short of its goal of rolling out 1,000 movies for rent through the iTunes Store by the end of February.

Macworld's Christopher Breen checked in Friday on Apple's promise, and found that just 351 titles are available to rent through the latest version of Apple TV. If you check the iTunes Store from a Mac or PC, there are 399 movies available to rent. Breen notes that even if you include all the movies available through the iTunes Store, for both purchase and rentals, there are only 770 available.

Apple missed its target of having 1,000 movies available for rent by the end of February.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

At Macworld, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the rental service, the company promised to have 1,000 titles available for rent by the end of February. Apple TV owners seem pleased with the rental service so far, but a limited selection will slow its growth.

For example, Netflix says it has over 6,000 movies and television shows available for downloading through its Web site. Still, there's an awful lot of filler there. Netflix counts the 2005 NCAA men's lacrosse championship game (Go Johns Hopkins!) as a selection, as well as "Learn Yu-Gi-Oh!: Level 2: Advanced," where you gain insight on how to deploy your Continuous Spell Cards.

Apple also missed its goal of shipping a software development kit for the iPhone by the end of February, although we'll learn details about that SDK for the first time later this week during an event at Apple's headquarters. It will be interesting to see as well what Apple shareholders have to say to Jobs on Tuesday during the company's annual meeting.

Apple is reportedly planning to get into the movie rental business and license its digital rights management technology, and it could announce a deal within the next few weeks.

Both the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal are reporting that Twentieth Century Fox Film has signed a deal with Apple to let iTunes users download new movies and keep them for an unspecified (but likely short) period of time.

Both reports say Apple CEO Steve Jobs will make this news part of his Macworld keynote on January 14.

You might soon be able to rent Fox's movies and put them on your iPod, if new reports come to pass.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The reports also says that as part of the deal, Fox is also going to use Apple's FairPlay digital rights management technology on its DVD releases, which would allow DVD buyers to rip their movies onto their computers using iTunes and also move those store-bought movies to iPods and iPhones.

Rumors of Apple getting into the movie rental business have been swirling all year, as it has become clear that the per-song pricing strategy that worked so well for Apple in the music business hasn't worked as well in video.

The movie studios want the same thing the record labels want--variable pricing, and more control over it--and people want the option of either buying or renting. There are lots of films I'd pay $4 or so to rent, but not $15 or $20 to buy.

Part of the problem, of course, is that only Walt Disney, which counts Jobs as a member of its board of directors, sells its first-run movies on iTunes. Adding Fox's movies would provide a significant boost to iTunes, not to mention a lineup of iPods that has been almost completely redesigned around making it easier to watch video.

This move would also have interesting implications for Apple TV. A rental service from a new movie studio would give Apple TV owners another easy-to-access source of entertainment to watch on their big-screen televisions. Right now, they're restricted to buying movies and TV shows on iTunes, or watching skateboarding bulldogs on YouTube, and that gets old.

But it might not just be movie studios that feel the implications of this deal, should it come to pass.

In February, Jobs wrote an open letter on DRM and music that contained this sentence: "Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies."

Apple's concern was that if FairPlay were licensed to outsiders, the encryption technology could quickly become public, and the company would be unable to keep up with those bent on cracking the code and ensuring unlimited usage rights for their songs.

However, if the reports are right, Apple has come to grips with the idea of licensing FairPlay in spite of those concerns. So is FairPlay now up for grabs? Licensing FairPlay to companies like Microsoft or SanDisk would allow the Zune or Sansa to play songs and videos purchased from the iTunes Store; right now, you can play iTunes Store purchases only on iPods.

In any event, it sounds like Macworld will once again involve more than just Macs. Apple's stock is at an all-time high, and it went up further Thursday on reports of the movie rental deal.