Apple Q2 Financial Results

Net profit of 770 million on revenue of 5.26 billion

1.5 million Macs and 10.5 million iPods. 36 percent growth in Macs and 24 percent growth in iPods

43% of sales were International

Apple changing their accounting practices for AppleTV and iPhone to reflect a subscription model for revenue

Sales are accounted for over life of the product, rather than in one lump sum.

Steady software updates and features added over time for free. (more value)

Allows amortization of software development costs.

Forbes.com lists credits Jobs as the highest compensated CEO of 2007, despite his Apple salary of just $1.00. Jobs' total compensation was $647 million mostly from vested restricted stock last year.

Stock options questions still linger

Many thanks to Fred Anderson (former CFO) who while admitting no wrongdoing settled with the SEC for $150,000 in fines and a re-payment of 3.5 million.

Anderson also claims he made Jobs aware of the correct procedure relating to stock options grants made in 2001, but Jobs said the Board met and voted to proceed anyway.

The meeting never happened and Nancy Heinen is accused of (former Senior Vice President and Primary Legal Council) falsifying documents to show the meeting had taken place.

Bottom line, is a he said she said with no proof. SEC has not filed charges and don't appear likely to. Jobs has full support of the current board.

Personal opinion: If it looks like a fish, smells like a fish, it's a fish. There was definitely some manipulation going on and Jobs was likely aware of a lot of it, but in the fallout has his supporters and can raise enough doubt not to get in trouble. Anderson and Heinen are going to take the fall.

Apple battery fixes, woes and replacements. Oh my.

Lots of feedback from Listeners

Play comment from Greg

The issue seems to crop up between 6 and 12 months into the life of the notebook. First signs are dwindling batter life or performance and the swelling appears very rapidly.

Most reports from listeners seem to be on unit purchased in the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2006.

Battery replacement program for MacBook and MacBook Pro owners experiencing issues after update

Available on notebook purchased laptops purchased new between February 2006 and April 2007 exhibiting symptoms

Battery is not recognized. "X" appears in bar.

Battery will not charge.

Poor battery performance when fully charged and with a battery cycle count of less than 300 (can be viewed in System Profiler).

Battery physically deformed, "swollen".

Three options for replacement

Make an appointment at the Genius Bar

Get a replacement battery through an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP)

Call the Apple Support Contact Center (1-800-275-2273)

Old batteries must be returned to Apple for recycling and customers are responsible for transportation costs and if you want overnight delivery of your replacement battery.

If you get a new battery the battery repair coverage is extended up to two years past the date of purchase of your MacBook or MacBook Pro.

QuickTime 7.1.6 fixes security flaw recently used to hack a MacBook and win a contest at the CanSecWest security conference. The update also adds FinalCut Studio 2 support. Available for Mac or PC via Software Update

Apple's European plans revealed

Apple's VP for Europe confirmed some of Apple's plans for 2007

iPhone in 4th quarter

Full length films on iTunes by the end of the year

Plans to open an Apple retail store in Paris, France sometime in the future.

Jobs talks about a "greener" apple

Jobs published another open letter Wednesday obviously designed to openly respond to criticisms levied by environmental groups (mostly Greenpeace) and to address concerns expressed recently by investors.

A Greener Apple

In the letter he reveals Apple's future plans (something they typically don't discuss) for developing more environmentally friendly business practices.

In the letter Jobs highlights several of Apple's environmental successes, like their elimination of CRTs (which contain large amounts of lead, in mid-2006 and their elimination of PVCs form all their packaging 12 years ago.

Jobs also reveals that Apple plans to introduce their first Macs with LED backlight technology in 2007. This supports earlier theories from rumor sites of an LED backlit iMac coming from Apple.

Greenpeace applauded Apple's plans for the elimination of polyvinyl chloride and brominated fire retardants from their products by 2008, but still felt they needed to do better with their recycling program which is only available to US residents.

Apple drops Pro-Care training and goes one-to-one

Apple has reworked it's USD$99.00 year ProCare service. The added, personal shopper service, but dropped the free training. With the new Pro Care you can also schedule Genius Bar appointments up to 14 days in advance, get free setup and transfer of old files with every new Mac purchase, receive a yearly tune-up with keyboard/monitor cleaning, same-day and Quick-drop no appointment needed service at the Genius Bar, and backup consultation.

A new One-to-One training service is now also available for USD$99.00/yr. The service offers individual training and help in 11 different areas, including digital photography, moviemaking, Apple TV, podcasting and more. There is also a Open Project option to get help with a project of your choice.

Customers who had ProCare prior to May 2nd, 2007 will get both Services with their existing membership.

MacNN reports that while the US, Canada, and the UK are now offer the 2 different services. Italy and Japan still just offer the single original ProCare.

Denmark Lab verifies denied iBook flaw

In a report from the Register, the Consumer Complaints Board in Denmark says they have proof of a design flaw in the iBook G4 that cased thousands of systems to start powering down, boot to a blank screen, and spin-up their fans wildly. And all of this happening just after their 1-year warranty expired.

Apple has denied any flaw and users without extended Apple Care warranties ended up buying new systems or footing the bills for the repairs.

An independent lab discovered a flaw where each time the machines were powered on and off the solder joints between two components would loosen and then eventually break.

Danish users effected by the issue can now return the systems to Apple and Apple is beginning to settle many of the cases. The Danish Consumer Complaints Board is now urging Apple to take responsibility for the flaw Internationally as well.

Feedback on buying your software

Many people reminded me that there is great freeware and Open Source alternatives out there.

Open Office or Neo Office are great alternatives to Word. Mac GIMP instead of Photoshop.

Sources for OpenSource and free Apps

SoftwareFor.org OS X and Windows ISO CD ROM image with many great starter apps.

softwarefor.org

Open Source on the Mac, great list of available apps. (Thanks Ben & Joe)

Mac OpenSource List

Other "developers" to support. Play comment from Roland

Backups and Restoring

Different backup apps

Test your restore procedure and backups. They are no good if you can't restore from them.

Off site backup, Mozy.com ($4.95/mo unlimited), .Mac

mozy.com

Recover using "Show contents" and mounting the sparse image from a .Mac Backup archive.

Tip: OS X Smart Folders

Play tip from Jakko

Smartfolders are great for making weekly backups of new and modified files. Can create by file kinds(documents, images, music, etc.)

Upgrading your notebook hard drive

Play comment from Keith

Can't speak for Mac Service, but have heard good things about MCE. They do optical drive upgrades as well.

MCE Technologies

I suggest DIY on the MacBook, just two screws and slide in the new SATA drive. Remember to detach old drive from the carrier with a T-8

For the braver DIY'er, I suggest the guides at iFixit.com

www.ifixit.com

I like to get my bare drives from Fry's or OWC and like Hitachi or Seagate drives

www.macsales.com

Tip: 2 iTunes Libraries, 1 Mac, and AppleTV

This tip come from Dave, he had a master iTunes Library and one with just all his Apple Lossless tracks. Used the Option+Launch trick to switch between them. Doesn't work well for Apple TV

Set up two accounts, moved on library to the new account, reset permissions for the new account (use Get info, apply to enclosed, or repair permissions), then enabled fast user switching to have iTunes open at the same time under both accounts.

Set energy saver so the computer doesn't go to sleep. Can sleep the display and hard drive, but not the CPU.

Firewalls and opening ports

Play question from Alan

Ports are like the mails slot or doggie door in your front door. They allow specific types of data to flow back and forth trough the otherwise locked door. Ports are typically used to map data to a particular process running on a computer. Some common ports are 80 for HTTP, 25 for SMTP, 110 for POP, 21 for FTP.

2 types of traffic User Datagram Protocol (UDP) or Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Without getting into a lot of detail UDP packets can arrive out of order or possibly not at all, is considered faster (less overhead), used for things like streaming video or VOIP. TCP is typical for IP traffic like HTTP

Opening ports is relatively safe and certain ports. The risk really depends on what is listening for traffic over those ports. So a flaw or exploit in your Bittorrent client could be exploited by traffic coming over the port is is listening on.

Rather than just opening ports through the firewall for the whole network you can also look into port forwarding when you route the traffic to just on specific computer.

Little Snitch

Docking a notebook

Play comment from Gavin

Bookendz offers great docking solutions for Mac notebooks

Bookendz Docks