As many of you know, I am a huge Apple fan. I feel strongly that they are the best computer maker out there, that there OS is far superior to others, and that they develop great consumer products. Although I do feel at times Apple's business model (aka greed) causes them to "miss the mark", and that today's announcement of the iTunes Movie Rental service is one of those moments.

I know that there are some of you thinking the same, while others are probably ready to post a comment telling me how great this new service is. But before you do, let me explain my reasoning. To begin with I would like to say that I think movie rentals via iTunes is a GREAT idea, and coupling it with an AppleTV makes Apple one of the first companies to deliver a set top box solutions to instantly rent and watch movies on your TV. I think the support for HD movies is wonderful, and has been a long time coming. I feel that the ability to move a rented movie from my AppleTV, to my iMac, to my MacBook Pro, to my iPhone is revolutionary, and something I will take full advantage of while traveling. I even think that the price points are reasonable, its competitive to what I would pay if I got in my car and went down to my local movie store. So if I am in agreement and support of all of these features, then why do I feel as if Apple missed the mark?

Well simple, most of us these days don't get into our car and drive to the store to rent a movie, we subscribe to a movie rental subscription service. So while I welcome the iTunes Movie Rentals with open arms, I think that without a subscription service that it is not going to be as great as it could be. Adding this would have given Apple the ability to take the movie rental industry by storm. I know that this is something Apple has steered away from with its iTunes Music catalog, and I can understand why. As Steve says "people want to own their music", but as Steve also points out in today's keynote "most of us watch movies once, and renting is a great way to do it, it's less expensive, it doesn't take up space on our hard drive, its a great way to look at movies." But renting movies on a one off, pay-per-movie basis is more expensive, less attractive, and honestly a weaker solution when you look at what the rental industry is currently doing, and how it has transformed over the past few years.

Several years back Blockbuster was the main rental giant, there was also Hollywood Video and a few others, but Blockbuster was the de-facto standard. Then along came Netflix with there online order / mail delivery movie rental subscription service. They didn't need a physical store, there were no late fees, and you paid a flat rate for an unlimited number of rentals per month, true you could only have X amount out at one time, but this was the solution people were looking for. This model was crippling to Blockbuster, less and less people were going to rent movies at a store if they had to watch them within 3 days or pay a late fee. So then came the no late fee policy (which really had late fees, make sure to read the fine print), but people wanted the ease of selecting their movies online and just having them delivered to their mailbox. So Blockbuster followed behind Netflix with an online / mail delivery system. And now you have Netflix offering movies delivered 100% over the internet, and there are rumors they are planning on developing a set top box to get the movies to where people really want to watch them... on their TVs.

So Apple already having the number 1 music download service with the iTunes Music store, has a great place to offer movie rentals. And with Apple already having a device that hooks up to your TV, the AppleTV, this gives them a perfect set top box (Apple TV Take 2). The only thing they are missing is the subscription service. I personally would be willing to pony up $25 even $30 (for HD rentals) a month for an iTunes Movie Rental subscription that allowed me to rent unlimited movies per month, but I could only have up to 3 movies "out" at one time. Even if I didn't own an AppleTV (which I am sure many of you don't) you could watch it on your home computer, laptop, iPod, or iPhone. But with the AppleTV costing only $229, I think many more people would be willing to pick one up, if only for the fact that they now have an unlimited movie subscription service right in their living room. For right around $250 (including the first months service), you would have your own unlimited catalog of movies that you could watch on your TV (now that is a home theater). Call me crazy, but I think every Mac owner that is currently subscribed to Netflix would be interested in doing this, hell I think a lot of non-mac users that are Netflix subscribers, or even no-mac users that don't currently subscribe to any of these services would be willing to do this. I know my parents would, and they don't belong to either group. The ability for my dad to pick up a remote and browse through an entire catalog of movies, selecting the one he would want to rent with only a few clicks (from a very simple remote) would be great for him. But being "old school" and recently retired, he is going to be uninterested to do it at a costs of $4.99 per movie (that already exists in pay-per-view, and he doesn't "believe" in that). Plus if your like me, you sign up for a subscription service that is only a few dollars a month, and you forget about it. Then you just sit down, watch a movie, and never worry with what it is costing you. So with this one move, Apple would have far surpassed Blockbuster and would have just leapfrogged Netflix.

While only time will tell if something like this is really what Apple is has in store for a future release. I personally think that Apple, a company known for being an "industry leader", just gave their 2 biggest competitors (in the movie renting space) an ability to come out with this solution first. So while I still plan on renting movies via iTunes on some occasions, I don't feel it is as revolution of an announcement as it could have been. Thus Apple, as much as I hate to say it... I think you missed your mark.