Linked List: July 25, 2007

Wednesday, 25 July 2007

I believe I would do very well at this game.

$69 to extend the iPhone warranty for repair coverage from one year to two. I’ll risk the jinx and admit here that I never buy AppleCare — or extended warranties for anything, for that matter. But I know a lot of AppleCare fans have been waiting for this.

Regarding Opening Weekend iPhone Sales and Apple’s Stated Revenue Therefrom ★

Peter Hosey observes that Apple’s Q3 summary data (PDF) lists 270,000 units sales for “iPhone and Related Products and Services”, but only $5 million in revenue from them.

It’s not clear from the description in the data summary whether that means 270,000 iPhones were sold, but during the conference call, Apple made it clear that that’s exactly what it means. As for why the revenue from those iPhones is just $5 million, that’s because, as stated during their previous earnings call three months ago, Apple is accounting for iPhone revenue and earnings over 24 months, which they believe is required to comply with U.S. accounting regulations while still providing new features in future free software updates. The revenue from an iPhone sold today won’t be fully on the books until 2009.

TUAW: Live Coverage of Apple’s Q3 Earnings Call ★

Apple won’t comment on its cut of iPhone subscriber fees from AT&T, and won’t say how much it’s getting from Yahoo or Google for the iPhone apps that are tied to their services.

Michael Gartenberg: ‘Is the iPhone a Success or Flop?’ ★

Smartest thing I’ve seen so far regarding AT&T’s “146,000 iPhone activations in two days” number.

Apple Reports Third Quarter Results ★

The highlights: 1.7 million Macs sold, 9.8 million iPods, $818 million in profit; those three numbers are up 33, 21, and a whopping 73 percent from the same quarter last year. Notebook computers are outselling desktops by 2-to-1. These numbers certainly validate Apple’s decision to delay Leopard — Tiger certainly isn’t hurting Mac sales.

270,000 iPhones sold in the first two days, and Jobs is quoted in the PR saying “we hope to sell our one-millionth iPhone by the end of its first full quarter of sales”.

Pixelmator: Still Vaporware ★

Note to everyone who complained about my skepticism that they’d ship in July: Told you so.

Caroline McCarthy: ‘The Vintage Allure of Fake Steve Jobs’ ★

Caroline McCarthy:

Yeah, he’s funny. But take away the push-button publishing, the RSS feeds, and the post tagging, and look at the bigger picture: Fake Steve, as a concept, is downright old-school. Think about it. In a culture captivated — obsessed, even — by the antics of high society, an anonymous satirist starts publishing over-the-top missives purporting to be from an insider in that privileged niche.

(Via Anil Dash.)

Jeffrey Zeldman: ‘What Apple Copied From Microsoft’ ★

Zeldman:

Maybe all Windows users won’t switch to Macs, but many Mac users will dump Entourage, Eudora, and the like once they sync an iPhone to their computers. What “free” wasn’t enough to achieve, “seamless” just might be. If I can change work habits, anyone can.

Andy Ihnatko: ‘The Truth About Fake Steve Jobs’ ★

3000 words of classic Ihnatko genius, wrapped around this four-word admission:

I’m not Fake Steve.

Borked iPhones Boot Into Single-User Mode ★

Full restore from iTunes fixes it, apparently.

Jinx ★

Data center 365 Main issued a press release yesterday morning bragging about having provided two years of 100 percent uptime. In the afternoon, they lost power and all the sites they host went down.

Punchscan ★

Wikipedia:

Punchscan is an optical scan voting system invented by cryptographer David Chaum and is designed to offer integrity, privacy, and transparency. The system is voter-verifiable, provides an end-to-end audit mechanism, and issues a ballot receipt to each voter. The source code was released on November 2, 2006 under a revised BSD licence.

AT&T Reports Disappointing iPhone Numbers From First Two Days ★

Laurie J. Flynn, reporting for The New York Times:

AT&T said it signed up 146,000 iPhone customers, well below analyst estimates, which ran as high as 500,000 units. Shares of Apple fell more than 6 percent, closing at $134.89, down $8.81 on the day. AT&T’s shares were off less than 1 percent, closing at $39.68, a decline of 35 cents.

Apple’s stock got decked by this news. It’s not clear to me what exactly AT&T reported here; the iPhone went on sale with just two days left in the quarter, but clearly it seemed like more than 146,000 iPhones were sold over the opening weekend. Maybe this is only the number of iPhones AT&T sold itself?

We should find out more when Apple reports its earnings Wednesday afternoon.