Brand: MacNews

The Wall Street Journal has published a feature on Jon Rubenstein and Jonathan Ive, the two individuals at Apple who perhaps most shape the company’s products. Rubenstein’s team handles the technical aspects of a product, while Ive and his colleagues focuses on design. “Mr. Rubinstein says the hardware and design team currently have about a dozen projects going on. But he is keeping mum. ‘It helps give the product a bigger impact when it actually comes out,’ he says.”

Essential Reality is demonstrating its new P5 Glove at Macworld Expo (booth #2205). Designed for interactive gaming, entertainment, and education, the P5 glove allows users to interact in a life-like manner with 3D environments. The glove will be available later this fall for Mac OS X. Video demos of the glove’s uses are available online.

Aladdin Systems has released StuffIt Express 1.1, formerly known as Transporter. The new version adds OS X compatibility and a number of other new features to the utility for automating certain aspects of file transfers. Pricing begins at $399.95 for a 5-client license.

Toon Boom Technologies today announced Toon Boom Studio 1.0, an advanced drawing, inking, and painting and composting tool for Mac OS X. Toon Boom Studio uses vector graphics, allowing animations to be resolution-independent while keeping the file size small. The software is available now for US$379 (packaged) or $349 (download). A discounted version is available to students for $99.

Shares of Apple are trading down about $4.50 today, or 18 percent, on heavy volume following yesterday’s earnings. Shares opened at $21.781, down from yesterday’s close of $25.10, and have slid some more since.