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Linked List: October 18, 2006

Wednesday, 18 October 2006

Apple Q4 2006 Financial Results Conference Call 

My favorite stats from today’s conference call:

  • 61 percent of the Macs sold were notebooks, about 1 million total. Clearly, more people are buying notebooks, and the MacBook family is a hit. (And imagine if they add a slender MacBook Mini to the lineup.)

  • Apple sold 5.3 million Macs in fiscal 2006, their best year ever.

  • iPod gross margin was “above 20 percent”, but down from the previous quarter because of price reductions.

  • According to Apple, a little over half the Macs they sold in their Apple retail stores were to people who had never before owned a Mac. Out of all the good news in today’s announcements, this might be the best of all.

Camino 1.1 Alpha 1 

On-the-fly spelling checker and better feed handling (feeds now get passed off to your default feedreader) are among the new features. Detailed release notes here.

Apple Reports Preliminary Fourth Quarter Results 

Profits, revenue, and margins are all up from a year ago. They sold 1.6 million Macs, the most ever in a quarter, and 8.7 million iPods.

Project Blackbox 

Buy your own datacenter from Sun.

Flapjax 

New web-based programming language built on top of JavaScript. The main flapjax-lang.org site seems to be down / extremely slow at the moment, but this looks interesting. (Via Michael Tsai.)

Apple: FY 06 Fourth Quarter Results Conference Call 

Streaming live via QuickTime at 5 p.m. EDT today. Lots of interesting stuff in the air, not the least of which is the stock options backdating issue. (Via Matt Deatherage.)

Apple Should Offer iPod Owners Free Anti-Virus Software 

MDJ makes a good suggestion regarding Apple’s reaction to the iPods that shipped with a Windows virus:

A company that prides itself on providing solutions would not blame Microsoft and link to trial versions of third-party software to fix the problem. The Apple that presents itself in advertisements would provide a free, limited, supported, non-trial version of one or more anti-virus programs that remove the affected virus on any system with an iPod connected, not just for 30 days, but in perpetuity. Oh, and they’d get rid of that buck-passing “it’s Windows’ fault” language, too. Be upset at Windows all you like, but don’t blame Windows for your error in not checking iPods for viruses — especially when you use the plethora of Windows viruses in ads as a reason to buy a Mac.

Ethnocentrism and Keyboard Shortcuts 

Frasier Speirs:

I have recently been using a 17" MacBook Pro with a US English keyboard layout. It’s interesting how certain keyboard shortcuts make so much more sense when you’re using this layout than a UK keyboard.

(Via Michael Tsai.)

Why Do People Call It ‘Mail.app’? 

The reason is obvious: “Mail” is a terrible name for the application. It’s like if Safari were instead named “Web”. People add the “dot-app” because they want to distinguish the app from the regular lowercase “mail”.

Lenovo Glossy vs. Anti-Glare Screen Poll Results 

ThinkPad users who read Lenovo’s weblog overwhelmingly prefer traditional anti-glare screens. (Via John Siracusa via AIM.)