Dear Friends,

Grace and I have been poring over maps and guidebooks as we plan our upcoming vacation to Italy and France. You may remember that Grace gave me an awesome trip to Africa for my 60th birthday; well, I had to come up with something to rival that.

So, at the end of the month we will fly to Milan, pick up a couple of rented BMW motorcycles and tour around the Italian Alps and Dolomites for a week and then head to Annecy, France, where my friend and Small Dog advisor, Geoff Blanck, has allowed me to stay in his family’s house while we tour the French Alps for a week. We know we cannot do everything we want in the short time we will be there, but I have this sneaking suspicion we are going to have some great motorcycling!

The MacBook Air is currently one of the hottest-selling Apple products. So much so, that the 13-inch model has gone on constrained supply. We were fortunate to snag a bunch before they became rare, so if you are looking for one of these sleek new speedsters, please give us a shout. We will have stock of the 1.7GHz i5 with 4GB of RAM and 256GB solid-state drive arriving on Monday or Tuesday.

Apple surpassed Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable company in the world as measured by market capitalization (outstanding shares times share price)—simply an amazing accomplishment for a company who had obituaries written about it. Remember back when it was Microsoft that had “won”? Sure, Exxon is bigger in terms of sales, profits and number of employees, but Apple is the biggest in the world in sheer value as measured by investors.

The paradigm has really shifted in Apple’s favor as the iPod, iPad, iPhone and Mac are now seen as the standard for digital devices and making major inroads to all four major markets: Education, Government, Enterprise and Consumer.