Apple news

Computer Shopper makes the quad-core Mac Pro an Editors’ Choice, citing its speedy performance, easy upgradability, and new lower price. The reviewers write: “Creative professionals who need a machine with both muscle and good looks, and Mac fans who love to game, will find a lot to like in the new Mac Pro.”

In just over three years, iTunes U downloads have topped 300 million — making it one of the world’s most popular online educational catalogs. A dedicated area within the iTunes Store, iTunes U offers users public access to university courses, lab demonstrations, special lectures, and more from world class institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, University of Melbourne, and Université de Montréal.

JM Family — an $8 billion diversified automotivate company and the largest Toyota distributor on the planet — has integrated iPhone and business apps available in the App Store into all of their daily operations. The company has also created a custom app that enables their sales organization to quickly track, review, and update dealership numbers.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Apple’s iAd mobile advertising platform is “getting favorable reviews from the companies whose advertisements were the first to run on the new system.” The article quotes Joe Jacoby, a senior manager of Nissan’s media operations, who says, “What iAd promises is the most progressive thing I’ve seen to date” in digital advertising.

PC Magazine makes the new quad-core 27-inch iMac an Editors’ Choice, calling it “a highly sophisticated, yet simple to use media PC.” The magazine found the new iMac to be faster than other all-in-one models they’ve recently tested and concludes that it “cements the Apple iMac as the all-in-one desktop to have and to beat.”

Editor Bradley Buecker describes how he cut his first feature film, Eat Pray Love, using Final Cut Pro. To edit more than 70 hours of footage shot on location in New York, Italy, India, and Indonesia, Buecker found a fast, efficient editing format in ProRes 422 (Proxy), introduced in Final Cut Pro 7.

SF Weekly profiles a Redwood City mother, Shannon Rosa, who blogged that iPad had helped her nine-year-old autistic son, Leo. “With the iPad, Leo electrifies the air around him with independence and daily new skills,” she wrote. The article credits Rosa’s post with contributing to a “quiet revolution” in the autistic community focused on using iPad for teaching communication and social skills to autistic children.

The San Jose Mercury News reviewer Troy Wolverton gives Magic Trackpad a 4.5/5 rating, calling it a “winner” and noting that it “could give other desktop users a good reason to finally ditch their mice.” He concludes, “I like the Magic Trackpad a lot and hope it will spark imitators on the PC side.”

Gadgetwise blogger Nick Bilton at The New York Times reports taking Magic Trackpad for a test drive that covered “two-finger scroll on Web pages, pinch and zoom on images in Apple’s Preview application, and a number of other multitouch features.” He concludes: “I’m pretty certain I will never own a traditional mouse again, at least when I use an Apple computer. Instead I will own a trackpad — a Magic Trackpad.”

Check out a few new iPhone apps demos to see how apps are changing the way businesses do business.The featured apps and the companies that use them are: Workday, used at illumina; Cisco WebEx, at RTKL; Documents to Go, at Unisys; and Airstrip OB, at Memorial Hermann.