Apple quietly kills 99 ¢ TV show Rentals

Cris Velasco is a writer who studied English language and marketing at Rutgers University and mobile enthusiasts. Once upon a time he was a News intern for MobileCrunch, and between them, he worked in wireless sales at best buy. After graduation, he returned to the new TechCrunch in mobile as a full-time writer. He counts the advertising works, musical theater ... ? Read More

Bad news for those looking to rent the latest episode of Top Gear from iTunes as Apple quickly and quietly removed their 99 ¢ TV Rental version today.

The functionality of Apple's interface disappeared from TV and iTunes store proper, marking a sharp shift in Apple's pricing policy. Selected episodes from the series can still be purchased as usual and rentals of the film remains the same is going to cost, so not every client will be crying over the loss of iTunes.

AppleInsider also found that supporting documents related to iTunes Rentals episode similarly were pulled, although cached versions can still be found for those who don't mind a little digging.

In an ideal world, this is not so subtle signal that Apple is looking at various ways of handling television distribution. Apple's big push in cross device music and app sharing with iCloud could be over, and the tenancy can reappear in a new format (and possibly a new price point), but with the ability to be pulled at any iDevice during the same period of 48 hours.

Alas, it's also completely within reason that factors such as powerhouse unrest forced Apple axe rental service. Large Studio scoffed at low price for iTunes Rentals episode with players like NBC Universal Jeff Zucker, saying that such a lease for 99 cents episode "devalues their content. Lease, to be fair, were not very affordable for people who have cable TV, but here's hoping that they live in the new shape.

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It's official: HP kills off webOS phones and touch pad

Greg Kumparak — editor of MobileCrunch.com, the mobile industry blog TechCrunch network. Greg writing for TechCrunch network since May 2008. Greg was born in the vicinity of San Jose, California and currently lives in East Bay. ? Read More

Brace yourselves, webOS fans.

In the hours before the Conference call Q3 later today, HP has just confirmed that they would cease operations associated with the touch pad and all the phones webOS.

According to their press release:

HP announced that it plans to announce that it will cease operations for webOS devices, specifically the touchpad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options for optimizing the value of the webOS software, go ahead.

This news will come as a huge hit in the gut for fans of webOS (including me, although you can't say that we could not see it coming), many of which were the product of years — the first in the hope that eventually the Palm will be worthy of a pretty fantastic device's operating system, and later in the hope that the HP purchase of Palm could spark a fire, which simply never seemed tolight.

On the upside, webOS, the itself is not dead – at least not just yet. HP wording up above leaves things a bit blurred, with at least two potential routes remains open: licensing webOS to other other, phone/tablet device sticking webOS (HP has already made plans to put it in the printers and cars). Until further notice, however, this is essentially dead in the water.

One for webOS devices this evening, my fellow geeks.

Update: If HP output still saving face, here's a way to do it.

Update: HP Stephen Dewitt says, "we are not going from webOS." they will continue their efforts to advance and may license the OS, but his life as we know that it is definitely over.

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