“In the end, I’m really pleased that I cut this film myself, because that’s where it took form,” explains Lance Hammer, who used Final Cut Studio and a MacBook Pro to create and distribute his award winning film, Ballast. “The fact that I could load it on my laptop and cut at coffee shops or travel, essentially be anywhere and keep cutting film, I can’t tell you how much power you have when you can do that.”

Children have been reading and falling in love with Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit for more than 100 years. And now they can relish it on iPhone or iPod touch. While Grandma Janice Greene reads the story aloud, young listeners can enjoy the illustrations or read along with the provided text. Just $0.99, The Tale of Peter Rabbit joins other “talkie” books from LoL Software on the App Store.

Awarding it an “Excellent” rating of 9.1 (out of 10), Tom Yager asserts that “on the criteria that matter most to me — durability, longevity, flexibility, power efficiency, and ecological impact — I’ve yet to come across a mainstream notebook that measures up to the unibody MacBook Pro. Apple’s MacBook Pro,” he adds, “is still the best notebook you can buy.”

“Because iPhone apps seem to multiply with every click,” Michelle Maltais (latimes.com) offers a new weekly series for those with “an irresistible urge to download iPhone applications.” Called appiphilia, the new LA Times column “highlights and reviews” new apps “that catch our fancy.” So what tempting apps does Maltais serve up in her first installment?

“The Mac has really become an indispensable aspect of the lab” explains Adam Gazzaley, an assistant professor studying the mechanisms of human memory and attention at the University of California, San Francisco. “Our entire workflow integrates the Mac at all the different levels” — from “stimulus presentation and data acquisition” to “the actual publication and presentation of the data.”