Apple eNews: June 1, 2006

	“Apple’s latest 17-inch model once again defines the gold standard for portable computing,” says Henry Norr (Macworld) in his review of the 17-inch MacBook Pro. Calling it “a fabulous machine” for those who desire “high performance,” a “huge screen, and impressive versatility,” Norr praises its built-in iSight camera, Apple Remote, MagSafe Power connector, strong Airport reception, and virtually silent operation of the 17-inch MacBook Pro.
	Awarding the MacBook a solid rating of 9 (out of 10), Clint Ecker (Ars Technica) reports that “Apple’s new consumer level laptop is full of new features (iSight, widescreen display, MagSafe power connector, optical audio connections, etc.) and the prices are reasonable. The machine’s value is increased exponentially by Apple’s foresight to sanction the installation of Windows XP alongside the venerable OS X. Being able to boot into Windows to check out a new Windows app or to play a fun Windows-only game makes me that much happier I made this purchase.”
	CNET concurs, editor John Morris noting that “the 13.3-inch MacBook offers a great compromise between size and portability for a reasonable price .” Of the display, Morris remarks that its “13.3-inch wide-aspect display is just about the perfect size: it’s large enough for watching movies or working with two windows open side by side, yet small enough to keep open on an airplane tray table or your lap. It’s also incredibly bright (an above average 230cd/m? on our Minolta luminance meter), and its 1,280x800 native resolution offers the perfect amount of detail for the size of the display.”
	“Running Windows on a Mac is not just cool,” suggests Bob LeVitus (Houston Chronicle). “It’s very cool.” And LeVitus indicates that “my less fortunate Windows-using friends say that my MacBook Pro running Windows XP is as fast as or faster than their computers running Windows XP.”
	More news...

Like to see the creative doors that Final Cut Express HD can open for you? Just play any — or all — of the Quick Tours we recently posted to acquaint yourself with the powerful new features now available in the Universal version of Final Cut Express HD.

With more than 130 presentations, highly informative hands-on coding sessions, the opportunity to work directly with Apple engineers, and the chance to get a preview of Mac OS X Leopard, developers who create hardware and software products for the Mac should definitely plan on attending WWDC2006. This year, the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference takes place in San Francisco on August 7-11. For details and registration information, visit our WWDC2006 pages.

Thanks to a great solution from Dymo, you can now print the exact number of stamps you need whenever you’d like. Without standing in line at the post office. And without paying a monthly fee. Dymo Stamps — a new solution for anyone who sends postcards, pays bills, or mails packages — makes it easy and extremely convenient to print just the postage you need. Learn more about Dymo Stamps by viewing this Mac demo.

Last year, you fell in love with photo stamps, enjoying how easily you could turn images from your iPhoto library into beautiful, funny, touching, or dramatic stamps you can place on postcards, invitations, thank you cards, and other mail. This year, thanks to a new service from both stamps.com and picturepostage.com, businesses can now affix photo stamps to their mail and packages bearing company products, logos, icons, or whatever. Like to put your business on a stamp?

Sign up for camp this summer. Apple Camp, that is. Available at all Apple Store locations, Apple Camp lets your kids have a great time this summer. In our short workshops, they’ll learn to create their own podcasts, websites, music, and movies. The 2.5 hour workshops are free, but participation is limited, so sign your kids up today. For complete details, visit Apple Camp.

Every day, thousands of people around the world take on new identities, embark on exciting adventures, and face life-altering decisions. Thanks to their Macs, of course. They’re playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games or MMORPGs (for short?) and our new feature article on the genre can drop you right into the thick of the action.

Found an article you think a friend ought to read? Send her to the online version of today’s issue of Apple eNews.

Every week, developers release new products for us to enjoy. Like to see some of the more recent arrivals?

^{* Performance for the non-replaceable battery in the Nike+iPod sensor will vary considerably based on use and other factors. To access nikeplus.com, you’ll need Internet access (fees may apply) and a free account on Nike’s service. Please visit our Nike+iPod site to read the hardware and software requirements for the forthcoming Nike+iPod Sport Kit. Visit, too, the iTunes download
page for fee, terms, and availability information regarding access to the iTunes Music Store.}

Apple eNews
June 1, 2006
Volume 9, Issue 11

We hope you thoroughly enjoyed reading today's issue of Apple eNews. We're already working on the next issue, scheduled to come your way on Thursday, June 15. See you then.

Written and designed by Apple in Cupertino, Apple eNews is a free, bi-weekly email publication.

Event dates are subject to change. Some products, programs, or promotions are not available outside the U.S. Visit your local Apple site or call your local authorized Apple reseller for more information. Prices are Apple Store prices as of the date of this publication. They do not include sales tax or shipping charges, are subject to change, and are listed in US dollars. Product specifications are subject to change.

Apple and Nike — a team come true — bring you a simply revolutionary way to take your run on the road. Slip on a pair of new Nike+ shoes. Pop a Nike+iPod sensor into the shoe. Plug a Nike+iPod receiver into your iPod nano. And you’re good to go.

While you hotfoot it, the iPod nano wirelessly converses with the Nike+ sensor, keeping track of and displaying your time, distance, and pace, as well as the calories you’ve burned. No silent partner, iPod nano offers performance-based oral feedback on the fly. iPod nano even records your most recent workout, letting you sync the results both to iTunes and nikeplus.com, where you can check workout stats by run, by week, or by month.

For inspiration, pick a playlist from the new Nike+iPod menu. Or choose from the exclusive Nike-created Sport Music content coming soon to the iTunes Music Store.

We expect to ship the Nike+iPod Sport Kit this summer for just $29. Sign up today, and we’ll let you know when we begin taking orders.*

Time was, if you wanted to do great work and saw yourself collaborating with the very best, you moved. To New York or LA or Chicago. Because that’s where you found all the top-tier creative agencies.

And that’s just one of the paradigms that Final Cut Studio has shattered.

Now firms like coreaudiovisual have proven decisively that creative houses can compete at the very highest levels. No matter where they’re located, they can attract the most demanding clients — like Pontiac or Karl Lagerfeld — and win them over with spectacular work. All done on a Mac. All done in Final Cut Studio.

“Using our design aesthetic plus this real-time technology,” says Core founder John Danes, “we’re able to bring this reinterpretation of reality to people in a way they haven’t seen before.”

It’s really sad that so many people have to be wary about opening email, visiting websites, chatting with presumed “buddies,” or downloading music, photos, movies or other files over the Internet.

No one should have to zealously guard their computers against spyware, viruses, trojan horses, or various other types of malware. Or run a bewildering assortment of (quickly obsolete) virus-protection apps. And no one should have to run a computer to a nearby computer store, so it can be “cleaned” on a routine basis.

Do you know why people put up with that? If their cars didn’t drive where they wanted to go; their TVs didn’t play what they wanted to watch; or their phones didn’t connect to the party they called, how long would they keep using them?

In their new book, “Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture,” Ben Long and Orlando Luna offer an in-depth exploration of this indispensable tool for pro photographers. The equivalent of a comprehensive, two-day Aperture course, it takes you through every step of the digital workflow. And the authors fill the book with tips designed to unleash the full potential of this powerful application.

That includes a chapter dedicated to automation. Designed to work closely with Automator, Aperture lets you automate such redundant tasks as importing and exporting images. Imagine setting up Aperture to automatically prep an entire album of RAW images for export as 640x640-pixel JPEGs, compress them into a ZIP file, and include that file in a new email document. Long and Luna show you how in “Apple Pro Training: Aperture.”

You probably have a ton of photos you can use. They were taken at picnics, vacations, football games, birthday parties, and other family gatherings, and you probably already know the ones that have special significance for your Dad. It wouldn’t take you very long at all to create a beautiful iPhoto Book just for him. In fact, iPhoto makes it easy. Simply:

•	Create an album called Dad’s Book
•	Drag all the photos that mean so much to him into the album
•	Then click on the Book button

You’ll find lots of Apple-designed themes to get you started. And with all the options iPhoto provides, you can customize Dad’s Book however you’d like. Ordering is easy, too.*** And the results — simply spectacular.

^{*** Because iPhoto print services — available in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and select European countries — require Internet access, fees and terms apply.}

Visualization — turning mountains of scientific data into images — lets researchers at NASA and universities around the world experience phenomena that would otherwise be too small (cross-sections of the brain), too large (Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier), or in too much flux (a developing El Nino) to see in any detail or analyze with any confidence using conventional display or projection techniques.

So they’re turning to the Mac and assembling visualization theaters using multiple 30-inch Cinema Displays.

Take, for example, the research team at the University of California at Irvine. Hoping to draw themselves a truly big picture, they’ve assembled a HIPerWall consisting of fifty — that’s 50 — 30-inch Cinema Displays. Driven by 25 Power Mac G5 computers, the HIPerWall yields a total display resolution of 200 megapixels. And you won’t believe what it allows them to see.

Breaking paradigms. That’s what the Mac and Apple pro software are doing. Empowering creative pros to do anything they can conceive. Enabling them to bounce from one type of media to another. Affording them the freedom to create the truly radical. It’s a freedom we celebrate on our newly designed Pro site. Stop by and take a look at the future. It’s playing now. On your Mac.