TheMacFeed

Apparently the rest of the TMF staff is incapable of posting all but two of the 93 news stories from the past couple days. So… here we go.

A day after Apple announced its Q3 financial results, Microsoft did the same and at least for now, they are Redwood is ahead. Apple has promoted Jeff Williams to Senior Vice President of Operations with a focus on Quality Control. Apple’s huge data center in Charlie’s secondary backyard should be ready by the end of the year. iSuppli believes that by 2011, Apple will be the second largest purchaser of semi-conductors. Apple was announced #2 in something this week: software instability. This might have something to do with the recent Safari Auto-Fill vulnerability. Apple updated Snow Leopard Server. Apple released yet another Xcode 4 preview to developers.

Turns out Steve isn’t done mocking other smartphones, the next victim: Nokia N97 Mini. About a week after Apple’s press conference, Apple launched the iPhone 4 Case Program App. Apple also began refunding purchases for those who have already acquired Bumpers. Shockingly, there were some hiccups.

AT&T’s dropped call rate has dropped from 1.44 per hundred calls to something along the lines of 0.91 (This link will download a .PDF) Other relevant AT&T news? They activated 3.2 million iPhones this last quarter. Apple could help add a couple more pretty soon. In other news, our friends at Verizon said that Apple changed their mind about something, too bad it wasn’t antenna placement. Chitaka Research is reporting that half of iOS devices are running iOS 4.

In patent news, Apple has filed for patents regarding a mono playback option on the iPod. There were also some ramblings on some small products. AppleInsider continued to promote the illogical idea of an ad-based OS.

iMac shortages seem on the brink and that comes in the wake of Mac Pro supply problems. The blogs are caught up in some idea that because someone posted the publish date a French helpbook for iLife 2010 as September 23, 2010. Here’s my take:

1. If it gets released in September, it will be 2011
2. There’s no actual evidence from Apple that it will be out then
3. Anyone could have posted that book
4. This is a load of crap

My favorite Microsoft blogger bought an Apple product, apparently she likes it.

Since Daniel couldn’t do this and no one responded to my Tweet. Apple hosted its Q3 Conference Call and announced its quarterly earnings. The highlights:

• $15.7 billion revenue (Record) (Q3 2009: $9.73 billion)
• $3.25 billion net (Q3 2009: $1.83 billion)
• 39.1% gross margain (Q3 2009: 40.9%)
• 3.46 million Macs sold (Record)
• 8.4 million iPhones sold
• 9.41 million iPods sold (down eight percent)
• 3.27 million total iPads sold
• International Sales 52%
• Steve said there are still new products yet to be announced later this year

Press Release After the Jump

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple sent out satisfaction surveys for the iPhone 4. There was some discussion about whether Apple was going to charge for iPads moving to iOS 4 that basically resulted in a whole lot of nothing. Our friends at FileMaker have launched FileMaker Go for the iPhone and iPad. Apple donated MacPaint and QuickDraw to the Computer History Museum. Most importantly, Apple announced its Q3 results, yes – it was yet another record-setting revenue.

Apple held the much anticipated press conference today, essentially: death grip applies to everyone, media blew it out of proportion and free cases for everyone. Apple also announced it had sold three million iPhones in the first three weeks. Starting up the Verizon iPhone rumors, Steve said that there is a Verizon cell site on the Apple campus. We’ll have more on this later.

Jason Chen got his stuff back after the DA dropped charges over the $5000 Gizmodo iPhone. Foxconn denied ripping off its workers. USB 3.0 is said to be part of the newest Macs. Firefox Home is in the App Store.

Apple handled it… beautifully. Starting with the release of the iPhone 4, there seems to be a change in the way of Steve’s attitude. He joked that no one had seen the phone and today… he called everyone out. He mentioned Gizmodo by name, YouTube users were shown, “websites” as a whole were called out for the hoopla. He called out an entire industry and demonstrated that the problem wasn’t just the iPhone 4s.

Let’s walk through it. He made some jokes, reminded everyone that the world still seems to love the device, pointed out that it’s everyone’s problem and then basically called out the internets for making a large issue. Barely a half of percent of users have complained and pretty much no one returned the thing, shocking… we know. It was an interesting line to watch Steve tread as it seems without a doubt that Apple’s popularity on the internet, through sites like yours truly may have caught up with them. He mentioned the internet repeatedly. The fact remains the problem is still there, no fix was offered and nothing really that new was revealed: no change to return policies, no new solutions, nothing.

So what was accomplished? Well… Apple used its power in the media (the same one that blew this out of proportion) and threw it back in our face with numbers and stats. Apple’s presence in the media was put on display here and Steve used it to his advantage. The offer for the free case shows that Apple knows it needed to do something and while it won’t make everyone happy, it’s a start. And remember, Apple loves its users.

A day after reporting that Apple was prepared to launch smaller versions of the iPad during this year’s holiday season, Digitimes is now predicting that a smaller version of the MacBook Air is coming. Apparently, Apple attempted to purchase Palm before HP did. TechEye is suing Apple, anyone shocked? Boy Genius is reporting that FaceTime is coming to the iPod touch and iPad. Yeah, neither of those devices have camera currently.

As we all brace for tomorrow’s press conference, Apple 2.0 is predicting a 50/50 chance regarding an in-store fix. Apple released iOS 4.0.1 and iOS SDK 3.2.1. Woz had some comments regarding the latest iPhone.Bloomberg reported that Apple may have known about the iPhone’s antenna issues. For the second time in a couple weeks, Apple called B.S.

Despite it seem like almost a weeks since the last one of these came out, it hasn’t really been that long. Late Friday, reports of Apple taking a new role in the TV industry began to pick up. A new Apple Store opened in Paris, while that may not seem like news – the new design is something of note. Reports of iTunes App Store hacking surfaced over the weekend, as MacRumors pointed out – it seems to great exaggeration. This somehow didn’t make it into last Thursday’s news, but Disney acquired Tapulous.

Remember the conversation one user had with Steve over reception issues that Boy Genius posted last week? Apple claims it’s fake, Boy Genius stands by its report. Anyways, Consumer Reports claims that the issue really isn’t that unique. Despite earlier reports that Apple would not be giving everyone free Bumper cases, at least one individual has received them compliments of Apple. Despite earlier reports that Apple would bar Google’s AdMob from selling ads in iOS, the initial roleout seems to say otherwise. It seems Nike+ and iOS 4 aren’t the best of friends as users are reporting issues.