Category Archives: Apple Inc.

Apple to announce Q2 financial results today

In a highly anticipated announcement & analyst/investor conference call later this afternoon, Apple Inc. will disclose their second quarter financial numbers and answer long-standing questions about the performance of the company’s business under the most challenging (external/marketplace) conditions in the company’s history even as it offers its strongest line-up of products in that history.

AT&T has already posted their Q2 results, and among other interesting tidbits we’ll dig into later on, announced that they have activated 1.6 Million iPhones in the just-completed quarter; this dovetails closely with the grapevine’s expectations and strengthens our confidence in the “insider” picture we’ve been given regarding sales numbers across all of Apple’s product lines.

Overall, we’ve been led to expect by many reliable sources and industry power players, analysts & so on that this quarter’s AAPL financial results will out-perform the vast majority of standing Wall Street estimates. Read more

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Apple to announce its quarterly financials in just over two weeks

With both the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas (Sunday the 19th) and Apple’s second quarter financial results announcement/conference call (Wednesday the 22nd) coming up in about two weeks’ time, excitement and speculation are running high over what might be unveiled this month.

Many have already catalogued what we can probably expect to *not* see/hear during the course of these events — news of Steve Jobs, any new Macs (or iDevices for that matter, most likely), or major strategic shifts.

But most of those reports are based on basic logical reasoning, public information, historical trends/behavior patterns and simple speculation….not hard evidence or “insider information” of any sort.

At the upcoming NAB conference, we expect several significant new software announcements including major new versions (or at least previews of summer releases) of its major video/animation apps such as Motion, Compressor and Final Cut as well as the very significant possibility of two entirely new video production related Pro applications which we are in the process of seeking to bring out from under source embargo so we can speak about them in more detail soon…. Read more

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Mark Papermaster, subject of IBM/Apple lawsuit, starts work in April

A former big-wig within IBM’s PowerPC processor division, Apple employee Mark Papermaster will at long last begin actively working at his job as head of the iDevice group at Infinite Loop now that a settlement betwen the two companies has been achieved. Some debate has taken place over whether a relevant contract expires before mid-June, but a press release from Apple today specified April 24th as Papermaster’s start date.

Originally hired in October of last year, Papermaster has been a key player in several divisions at IBM’s technical centers — notably its PowerPC development team — over the years and was vital to the project that brought the POWER4 architecture to the Mac in the form of the PPC 970 “G5.”

Papermaster will replace Tony Fadell, who ran the iDevice Division through November and who remains a technical consultant with the company. Read more

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The Mac’s 25th Anniversary — Founder’s Column, Part 1

25 years ago this past weekend, an upstart development team within Apple Computer brought to market a cheaper, faster, better alternative to Steve Jobs’ pet project the “Lisa” (named after his daughter).

Though Jobs’ own feelings about the Macintosh were mixed, he undertook a famous event to introduce it to the world with a unique, historic advertisement (“1984”) and a demonstration that blew away the crowd: the very first Mac 128K seen in public spoke to the crowd that day, using a first-of-its-kind speech synthesizer technology developed specifically for that first Mac — a technology that has been a unique strength of the Mac platform ever since.

This weekend, even as the moment of the announcement event’s anniversary passed us by, the Rumors team was watching an amazing film called Welcome to Mac. Read more

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Apple Web store(s) offline; rumblings of announcements build

As of Sunday morning Eastern time, reader and source reports have been coming in at a blistering pace as the online Apple Store reportedly went offline for most of the night. It came back later Sunday morning, and remained online throughout the remainder of the weekend.

Although the timing suggests it could be routine, the sheer volume of source reports and other reasons to suspect new hardware product announcements — almost certainly one or more new Macs — combined with the similarity between current speculation and long-standing rumors about new Mac Minis, price cuts, and/or a new Mac Pro….give us reason to suspect that such announcements could be imminent; if not in the next couple of days, then quite possibly before the week is out. Read more

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Community reeling from news of Steve Jobs’ “medical leave of absence”

As many of you already know, recently the community has been consumed by fears, doubts, debate and concern over the state of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ health. This culminated in a series of announcements from Jobs, the most recent of which made intense waves on the Mac Web with the news that he will be stepping down from his position until at least June for a “medical leave of absence.”

The following message was sent from Jobs to Apple employees on Wednesday:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. Read more

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Steve Jobs specifically addresses health rumors

As a group with several members who have dealt with serious and/or chronic illnesses including one who has had serious, extreme pancreatic surgery similar to Steve Jobs’ own procedure (his cancer may have been “treatable” but the surgery to do so is still dramatic and the details are enough to turn even tough guys a rather green shade of pale!)…..the Rumors site team has made a point not to fuel unproductive speculation about something that only Mr. Jobs himself could have genuine first-hand knowledge of and which is a highly private, personal and even painful matter. However, on Monday he broke his protracted silence on the much-speculated-upon issue and with limited commentary from our own still-healing editors, here’s the news.

On Monday, Steve Jobs personally and specifically, for the first time since long-running rumors began last year as people became concerned about his gaunt appearance and lowered public profile, addressed questions about his health in a press release meant to clear the air and focus Apple’s presence at Macworld on other matters. Read more

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With the first Steve-less Keynote looming….


We have a lot to post tonight and throughout the week as our Macworld San Francisco coverage launches into full swing, so stay tuned! Xerces Media and all of the partners old & new of the Xerces Int’l partnership, now in its 10th year, have many exciting and time-consuming projects in flight even as we ramp up the most extensive and complete coverage machine we have wielded in Mac OS Rumors’ going on fourteen years of dishing out the most exclusive dirt and breaking the most exciting new rumors of Apple’s dramatic resurgence to become the world’s leading technology company by virtually any measure.

Phew! That’s a mouthful, and the past thirteen-plus years have been a roller coaster ride worthy of a book — if not a hefty tome of a novel. Read more

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Update to Infinite Loop Bldg. 6 fire news…..

According to sources who returned to the scene of the fire after having left overnight shifts or other late-night work at the company the previous evening….construction to add physical networking & other datacenter/office infrastructure had been installing air conditioning units to offset heat produced by the fast growing server iron located in that part of Building 6’s IS/IT/Networking division offices had been underway for several days prior to the incident which apparently sparked the fire.

Reportedly welding operations being done to support the heavyweight air conditioning hardware and ductwork somehow resulted in a fast-growing fire which escaped notice until it was too late for the welders or other construction personnel to put out directly.

Stay tuned for further developments as reports come in, and for a resumption of normal daily updates with some really hot dirt coming your way shortly….. Read more

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BREAKING NEWS: 3-Alarm fire damages Apple HQ in Cupertino

According to the latest reports which we will continue to bring you as developments are relayed to us by long-time sources who have been on the scene through the whole ordeal, a building separate from Infinite Loop’s central structures which currently houses much of the company’s IT/server/networking team — the people who bring us Apple’s web sites, downloads, Software Updates and other services both internal and external in its vast corporate network — suffered a serious fire and considerable damage early Wednesday Pacific Time.

Over $2 Million US Dollars in damage is believed to have been done, possibly including physical items and/or data which is considered either irreplaceable or only able to be reconstructed at considerable effort — in some cases, according to our sources, solutions to Apple’s internal networking problems and an emerging package of solutions for Apple’s severely strained Retail Store network (forcing some stores’ managers to pay out of local funds for business-class broadband to take strain off their anemic corporate-provided connections which are even now usually painfully slow due to the traffic overload) which could cost far more than the physical damage might suggest to restore and actually begin implementing for future product roll-outs so there are no repeats of the “iPhone 3G roll-out snafu”….. Read more

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AT&T, Apple scramble to keep up with heavy consumer demand

On July 11th, when the new iPhone 3G hit Apple and AT&T store shelves across America, one million units were sold in the first weekend alone.

If conditions all around Maine and other parts of New England are any indicator of what’s happening across the nation….

For every happy new iPhone user, there are at least a few dozen others left out in the cold, still waiting for their new equipment.

At the Maine Mall AT&T store location in South Portland, Maine, a line stretched out dozens deep at six a.m. on July 11th.

Any customer wandering in on their lunch break with the hope of scoring a new iPhone was disappointed at best to be turned away with the hopeful promise of another delivery for the next morning. Read more

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Apple announces best quarterly financials ever!

Apple has posted a $1.58 billion profit on revenues of 9.6 billion and setting all-time company records in virtually every measure of success from strong product sales — both Macs and iDevices — to the substantial margin by which the results beat Wall Street Estimates.

Unfortunately, due a combination of several factors including the looming general recession, shares of AAPL dropped nearly 4% on the day and more than 10% in after-hours trading; all told, Wednesday’s price drop was $16.57(!), bringing AAPL to 139.07 at the close of trading — this down from the previous month’s high of approximately $200 a share. Read more

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Jobs interview: MBA development, Kindle will fail, CableCARD “loopy”

Jobs gave quite a bit of detail on the development of the Macbook Air and of his fondness for the new laptop, saying he would be the “first one in line to buy one of these”. In a testament to the secrecy surrounding Apple, Jobs stated that they had been developing the Macbook Air for over 2 years, and had gone through over 100 designs before developing something that was light enough, powerful enough but also attractive. Jobs went on to blast competing devices, saying that many of them were “flimsy” compared to the Macbook Air.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jobs doesn’t see the Amazon Kindle being successful, but not because it’s a poor device or undesirable. Jobs is of the opinion that Americans simply don’t read books anymore, and therefore a device based entirely on reading will do poorly. Read more

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Q3 Financials

Of greatest interest to most Mac fans will be the iPhone, though with iPhone released just before the close of their third quarter July 1st we will get but a small glimpse of potential sales and revenues from our favorite new iDevice.

With all the flurry of attention to details both large & small surrounding the iPhone, it would be easy to forget the upgraded MacBook Pro and Final Cut Studio both released last quarter. All three are worthy additions to the Apple family that should help Apple continue its steady growth in recent months.

With this year’s second quarter outdoing last year’s counterpart by an 88% growth rate, we can only hope the numbers are indicative of future growth. Last quarter Apple saw a gross of $5.25 billion, netting $770 million in profit. Read more

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What an incredible time for Apple….

Despite a very strong product portfolio, incredibly powerful new Macs in the pipeline and some full-out Insanely Great stuff in store for the period between now, through the Holidays & into early 2007….today’s resignation of long-time Apple CFO Fred Anderson and a set of hard admissions by CEO Steve Jobs has really taken a bite out of Wall Street’s optimism about Cupertino’s near-term future.

And this, even as the markets hit an all-time high for the second time in two days.

The Rumors staff has been preoccupied by this breaking news in the leadup to today’s announcements; the very same sources who tipped us off 36 hours in advance of the sudden exit of former Apple CEO Gil Amelio & the beginning of the “Second Steve Jobs Era”, then the introduction of the iMac, iPod, G3-G4-G5, Intel transition, et cetera….have been telling us quite a bit of interesting news. Read more

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