Year: 2010

Apple says movies from major film studios including 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM), Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Entertainment, as well as European studios including E2 Entertainment, Lionsgate UK, Optimum Releasing, Pathé, SND and StudioCanal are now available on the iTunes stores in France (http://www.itunes.fr) and Ireland (http://www.itunes.ie) for rent or purchase.

The Steam gaming service and Valve gaming engine from Valve (http://www.valuesoftware.com) will steam up things on the Mac starting May 12. Steam and Valve’s library of games include Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series.

“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” says Valve President Gabe Newell, “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

A note at the Lala web site (http://www.lala.com) says “The Lala service will be shutting down on May 31” and “unfortunately, we are no longer accepting new users.”

Lala — which offered “the first and only free fully licensed service to instantly provide anywhere web access to an existing music library such as iTunes” — was purchased by Apple earlier this year. The goal is probably to allow Apple to implement a new iTunes feature that would allow users to stream their purchased media content remotely. In fact, rumors of such a service surfaced earlier this year.

Apple will be closing its retail stores in the U.S. Friday afternoon from 4-5PM to get ready for the launch of the 3G version of the iPad. Some folks who have pre-ordered ’em may receive them prior to this time.

The Wi-Fi + 3G models of iPad have a suggested retail price of $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB model and $829 for the 64GB model. The iPad is sold in the US through the Apple Store (http://www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.