After Hours: $149.50, Change: +12.24 +8.92%

Goodness gracious.

Apple is on a roll, and the company shows no sign of slowing down.

After the close of the stock market Wednesday, Apple reported profits of $818 million, or 92 cents a share, for its fiscal third quarter. That’s a 73 percent jump compared with last year, when third-quarter profit was $472 million. It’s 9 cents higher than Wall Street was expecting and 26 cents better than the company’s own projections. Strong Mac and iPod sales led the charge, but Apple also has a third business these days.

The company reported selling 270,000 iPhones during the 30 hours before the quarter ended on June 30. That’s at the upper end of what estimates were going into iPhone weekend, though far below some of the extremely high estimates that surfaced following the launch. Still, some were anticipating a smaller number after AT&T reported activating 146,000 iPhones during the same period.

via cnet

It was everything I thought it would be and more.

The coolest feature might be maps.

Typing did suck first time round. I heard it gets better. I can’t believe they didn’t make message composition (SMS, Text, whatever) happen in landscape mode. I’m baffled by that. My accuracy was pretty good in portrait, but in a wider format my thumbs would have been much much happier picking out the little character keys.

The period, comma, question mark character handling (you move to a different keyboard layout for these) I’m ambivalent about. Maybe it will turn out to be very fast.

Pinch-to-zoom works with web page browsing. Holy smokes. I thought it was just a photo thing. Awesome.

Of course the little things like the “weight” and velocity inherent in the scrolling behavior is Just. Incredible. And the way paging side-to-side from one tab to another in Address Book (?) has a little bump stop… wow. Only Apple could do an interface so nicely. (My Microsoft project manager [pretty high up] friend even agreed.)

I think I’m going to get an iPhone now.

Apple plans to launch a cheaper version of the iPhone in the fourth quarter that could be based on the ultra-slim iPod Nano music player, according to a JP Morgan report.

Kevin Chang, a JP Morgan analyst based in Taiwan, cited people in the supply channel that he did not name and an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office for his report.

Apple filed a patent application document that refers to a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano’s scroll wheel.

via msnbc

Danger! Watch out for high capacity SanDisk CF cards going for “insane” prices, especially on eBay.

Fortunately, there are a number of tell- tale signs, which indicate a counterfeit CF card, though those committing the fraud are becoming increasingly good at disguising it.

Among these are…

• Performance - Write speed significantly lower than genuine SanDisk CF cards
• Operation - Your camera may fail to operate correctly and the red LED may be flashing indefinitely
• Label printing - In direct comparison, the counterfeit cards will show poor label printing quality
• CF card casing print - Counterfeit cards will be lacking correct batch number and manufacturer ID printing

We have received and examined one of these cards and have found that:

• The card labeled SanDisk Extreme IV 8.0 GB in reality is an 8.0 GB CF Card made by Apacer (No indications of Apacer being
• involved in the fraud!)
• The card performs at 1/4 the speed of an original SanDisk Extreme IV 8.0 GB CF Card
• The counterfeit CF card does not support UDMA performance
• The counterfeit CF card will work in a non- UDMA compliant device, such as a 35mm DSLR camera
• The official Apacer 8.0 GB CF card sells for USD 148 on E-Bay
• SanDisk Extreme IV 8.0 GB CF Cards list at USD 269

courtesty pictureline

In a half day session before the Independence Day holiday, Apple stock closed at an all-time high on news of phenomenal iPhone sales and fat margins.

Analyists say almost a quarter million iPhones have been sold since they went on sale Friday evening.

AAPL 127.17, +5.91, +4.9%