The MacMost Newsletter: Issue #90
July 22, 2010

Apple ChartApple reported its Q3 financials this week, giving us a lot of data about the company's performance. The quarter featured record Mac sales and the first quarter with reported iPad sales. Here are the numbers.

  • Apple's total Q3 revenue: $15.7 billion. That's up from $9.73 billion for Q3 last year.
  • Net quarterly profit: $3.25 billion, up from $1.83 billion last year. That's $3.51 per diluted share, up from $2.01 per diluted share.
  • Both the revenue and profit numbers beat analyst expectations.
  • International sales were 52 percent of revenue in the quarter.
  • iPad sales: 3.27 million units and $2.17 billion in revenue. This is the first quarter with recorded iPad sales.
  • Macs sold: 3.47 million, a record, and 33 percent higher than Q3 last year.
  • MacBooks and MacBook Pros accounted for 71 percent of all Mac sales.
  • In the Asia-Pacific region, Mac sales grew 73 percent. China had 144 percent growth and Korea 184 percent.
  • iPhone sales: 8.4 million, a 61 percent jump from last year. This only includes a few days of iPhone 4 sales at the end of the quarter and in only 5 countries.
  • iPod sales: 9.41 million, an 8 percent decline over Q3 last year. But iPod Touch sales were up 48 percent creating an increase of 4 percent in total iPod sales revenue.
  • iTunes sales and related services: $1.2 billion in revenue, a 25 percent increase.
  • The App Store now has more than 225,000 apps, 11,000 of which are iPad-specific.
  • Apple's stores generated $2.58 billion in revenue, a 73 percent increase.
  • Apple Stores sold 677,000 Macs versus 492,000 for the same quarter last year. About half of sales were to people buying their first Mac.
  • Apple expects to open 24 new stores in Q4.
  • Guidance for Q4 is $18 in revenue with $3.44 earnings per share.


    In other news, Apple held a special press conference last Friday about the iPhone 4's reception issues. CEO Steve Jobs showed evidence that the problem was not specific to the iPhone, but occured on other smartphones as well. He then announced a free iPhone case program that will allow iphone 4 users to get a free case from Apple. Having a case has been widely reported as alleviating the problem. Details on the program should be posted on Apple's site by the end of the week. Apple also released small updates to both iTunes and the iBooks app. The new iBooks app will allow features like video and audio, which can be used by future books published for the platform.


  • Which email service do you prefer? Is it one from work or school? Or do you use a free service like Gmail or Yahoo? Perhaps you are a MobileMe subscriber? It would be interesting to find out which service preferred most by Mac users. Perhaps if one stands out, we can use it to decide which service to use in future email tutorials at MacMost.com. Take our poll.


    Some clipart collections and sites now provide images as PDF files. These work fine in Pages and other places, but often you need to convert the image to a JPEG or other format to use on Web sites or to adjust colors. You can perform this conversion with only Preview. Just open the PDF in Preview and select File, Save As. You now have the option to choose a format such as JPEG or the more versatile PNG.


    You can create iMovie projects that serve as templates for a future video or series. You can include titles, sequences and placeholders. Instead of starting from scratch with a new video project, you can then duplicate the template.

    Watch Video...

    Learn how to choose your own desktop background, use your own image as a background, rotate through a collection of images and other techniques. Also learn how to create a solid black background and use a third-party program to show video, animation or a web page as your desktop background.

    Watch Video...

    You can use the Help menu present in almost all applications to find menu commands, search documentation and get information. You can also use it as a way to navigate the menu bar using only your keyboard.

    Watch Video...

    Finally there is a good space adventure/trading game on the iPhone and iPad. Warpgate for the iPhone and Warpgate HD for the iPad offer deep playing experience and great graphics. Travel around in space trading goods, performing missions and destroying enemy ships.


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