Last week Apple removed the ability to rent TV shows in iTunes. Customers are now left with two options: buy an episode or subscribe to a Season Pass. Why the abrupt change, especially after Apple fought with the networks to drop renting prices to a low 99 cents almost one year ago? According to Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr, “iTunes customers have shown they overwhelmingly prefer buying TV shows. iTunes in the Cloud lets customers download and watch their past TV purchases from their iOS devices, Apple TV, Mac or PC allowing them to enjoy their programming whenever and however they choose.” This sudden change in philosophy may be part of an even grander scheme; according to the WSJ the company may be “working on new technology to deliver video to televisions, and has been discussing whether to try to launch a subscription TV service.” Whatever’s going on, newly appointed CEO Tim Cook will eventually have to lay out the future of iTunes and when that happens everything will be made clear. For now, though, I’m finding it hard to take in this news; when I happened to miss an episode of a show, turning on my Apple TV and renting it for cheap was always my favorite way of catching up. There was never a need to purchase a show (for $2.99) and keep it; why bother? But now that’s the only way to do it.

[Via Engadget; AllThingsD; WSJ]