MGM goes iTunes: Apple today announced that MGM movies have been added to the iTunes Store. The $9.99 films include Dances With Wolves, Mad Max, Rocky, and more, with "other titles to be added in the coming weeks." Apple also announced that more than two million films have been downloaded from the iTS, and that over 500 films are now available. Coupled with the release of a new Apple TV ad and - coincidentially - the confirmation of the rumor that Sling Media is working to make its Slingbox compatible with the Apple TV, it appears that the Apple TV is gaining even more momentum.

The latest Windows-on-your-Mac news: MacWindows.com has a thorough report (as does LowEndMac) on running the beta version of the VMWare Fusion virtualization environment on your Intel-based Mac, and a comparable report on the competition, Parallels Desktop for Mac. MacCompanion has a report on CodeWeavers' CrossOver Mac, which lets you run a select group of Windows apps directly on your Intel Mac, no Windows needed. If you're using Apple's Boot Camp to dual-boot Windows and Mac OS X, remember that it's a beta, and that its license is scheduled to expire either when Apple comes out with a commercial version of Boot Camp, or - at the latest - September 30th. Boot Camp is scheduled to be part of Leopard, and there's no word yet from Apple as to what their plans are for Boot-Camp-using Tiger-runners after the next big cat is released from its cage.

New frontiers in storage: Samsung has released the industry's biggest laptop drive: a 7,200rpm 200GB beastie. Is your 80GB iPod too small for your burgeoning music/video/TV/film collection? iPodMods can bump it up to 100GB using Toshiba's new 100GB 1.8-inch drive. If you go that route, ArsTechnica can show you how to build an external battery pack to help keep that little bunny going and going and going. Speaking of iPods, just this Monday we reported that iPod sales had passed the magic one-hundred-million mark, and today one analyst is predicting that 'Pod sales won't slow until they pass the half-billion mark.

More Apple prognostications: CitiGroup is bullish on Apple, opining that the upcoming releases of Leopard, the iPhone, new iPods, and new notebook Macs will keep it growing for the foreseeable future. Interestingly, the same report projects that Apple will release a true 3G iPhone in 2008 - we certainly hope so, as the current spec of the relatively slow EDGE "kindabroadband" internet connection is one of the things we find disappointing about the as-announced iPhone. An IT observer says that Apple's products are increasingly attractive to corporate clients, and that "Apple in 2007 is back in business or at least at the edge of it," and another is also predicting further Apple growth, saying that "My crystal ball is showing me a Mac stampede." There's still work to be done, however: appleology weighs in on "Six Things Apple Needs to Fix by 2008."

In other news: A beta version of Skype 2.6 has been released (download it here), with new features such as the ability to transfer calls (which will initially be a Mac-only feature), the ability to join public chats, automatic updates, and more. A casting call for upcoming iPhone commercials indicates that they'll be multi-cultural in style - so if you're fluent in Mandarin, Hebrew, or French, or are Jamaican and can "speak with a thick patois accent," give 'em a call. Finally, Apple appears to be looking to refresh the design of its Apple Stores, MacLinkPlus has a solution for reading those those pesky - and Mac-incompatible - Office for Windows Word 2007 and Excel 2007 file formats, and IT-Enquirer is less than kind to the new Adobe Creative Suite 3, branding it as "bloatware."