The IT Nerd

Apple released their quarterly numbers after the close of the markets and they blew any expectations that the street had for them. Here’s the highlights:

• Apple posted revenue of $74.6 billion
• Apple had a net quarterly profit of $18 billion or $3.06 per diluted share

This compared to revenue of $57.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $13.1 billion, or $1.98 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. The company currently holds $178 billion in cash and marketable securities

More highlights:

• Apple sold a record 74.5 million iPhones during the quarter, up from 51 million
• Apple sold 5.5 million Macs up from 4.8 million units
• iPad sales were down to 21.4 million from 26 million

Samsung must just be freaking with numbers like those.

Oh, there’s one more thing. The Apple Watch will ship in April. This was confirmed by Tim Cook on the earnings call tonight. Start getting in line now.

Besides an update to iOS, Apple released OS X 10.10.2 today to fix a whole host of issues that has plagued the OS since its release last year. Here’s the list of fixes:

• Resolves an issue that may cause Wi-Fi to disconnect. Of course, that’s what they said with 10.10.1 and it wasn’t true. So we’ll see.
• Resolves an issue that may cause web pages to load slowly
• Fixes an issue that caused Spotlight to load remote email content when the preference was disabled in Mail. That’s something I reported on here.
• Improves audio and video sync when using Bluetooth headphones
• Adds the ability to browse iCloud Drive in Time Machine
• Improves VoiceOver speech performance
• Resolves an issue that causes VoiceOver to echo characters when entering text on a web page
• Addresses an issue that may cause the input method to switch languages unexpectedly
• Improves stability and security in Safari

Also, according to the document that details the security content, it contains fixes for the Thunderstrike exploit along with all three issues that Google disclosed last week. I’m downloading it now and I will be testing it and reporting back shortly. It will be safe to say that if WiFi isn’t fixed in this update, Apple will have some very ticked off users to deal with very shortly.

UPDATE: It’s early days yet, but so far my WiFi is more stable and Safari feels much faster. I still need to do more testing to confirm. Continuity works better and the user interface feels a whole lot more fluid, I’ll let you know if I notice anything else.

So, Apple released iOS 8.1.3 to the world. It brings with it a bunch of fixes including:

• A fix for an issue that prevented some users from entering their Apple ID passwords for Messages and FaceTime
• A fix for a bug that caused Spotlight to stop displaying app results
• A fix for a problem that prevented multitasking gestures from working on the iPad.
• It reduces the amount of storage space required to perform an iOS update…. Which I am guessing has something to do with this lawsuit.
• It adds new configuration options for education standardized testing.

So in the interest of being able to report the results to you, I downloaded and installed this update a few minutes ago. For the first time since iOS 8 hit, I was able to update over the air without having to delete some of the contents of my iPhone 5S to do it. Not only that, after the update I had 1.3GB free which is almost double the free space I had going in. That alone makes this update worth the price of admission. I also notice that some weird user interface glitches that were pervasive are absent. I will continue testing and post my results. But if you have any feedback, please post a comment and share your experiences.

UPDATE: I note that Continuity works more consistently. Other than that, I haven’t noticed anything else other than a prompt for the iCloud Photos beta.