The answers: hell no, meh and hell yes, respectively.

Oh – and Apple destroyed the most bullish of estimates for what seems like the 20th quarter in a row. Seriously, Street: when are you guys going to get a fucking clue?

Highlights:

Revenue: $15.7 billion (vs. $14.75 billion predicted)

Earnings: $3.25 billion or $3.51/share (vs. $3.11/share predicted)

iPads: 3.27 million units sold (tough for analysts to blow that one since Apple has been announcing sales)

Macs: 3.47 million units sold (vs. 3.2 million predicted)

Lowlights (courtesy of WSJ Marketwatch):

Francisco Jeronimo, a mobile analyst with IDC, said Tuesday that the antenna issue may still impact results for the fourth fiscal quarter. His firm’s research indicates that 66% of current iPhone owners were delaying their upgrades until a solution was announced.

My research indicates that IDC is a shill rag and 66% of Francisco Jeronimo’s family thinks he’s a jackhole. I don’t know the compensation basis for IDC analysts, but being right is not among them.

Just goes to show despite the efforts of frothing media putzes and characteristically clueless analysts, Apple just keeps printing money.

So what could be the holdup? I mean, the app exists for the iPad; it’s essentially the same port. These announcements are usually followed by a product in relatively short order. What could be responsible for the delay?

Unlimited. Data.

You see, there’s a shitload of iPhone users out there (present company included) that didn’t think a $5/month savings on their AT&T bills was worth it – especially when 3G streaming media options were in still their infancy.

There are 14 million Netflix subscribers and over 35 million iPhone users. This is in no way scientific, but while monitoring my Netflix stream on my laptop, the smallest pull I could achieve was about 250kb/second. If this is even close to what an iPhone app would pull, AT&T’s network would be toast.

AT&T may be stonewalling until more people switch to capped plans or new users join (unlimited data is no longer an option for new accounts); it may have no intention of allowing the app it at all. I don’t believe the company is in any position to allow its network to be jammed up any further and that’s exactly what Netflix on the iPhone would do.

Daniel’s latest Newsweek foot-stomping tantrum explains why he’s moving to an Android phone. Using sound bytes from Google’s I/O keynote and a healthy dose of misinformation, Dan serves up his argument thusly:

The new version of Android—version 2.2, a.k.a. Froyo—blows the doors off the iPhone OS. It’s faster, for one thing.

Faster…how? Is it more responsive touch-to-feedback? Does it boot faster? Surely a description of a product “blowing the doors off” its competition will have some very specific performance descriptions.

/crickets

What Dan is probably referring to was Google’s Froyo demo to developers, which was limited to a Javascript performance. So: a home-field demo of a browsing feature subset. Let’s be specific, shall we Dan? You write for Newsweek, after all.

It also will support Flash,

*yawn* This movie again? /changes channel

something Apple refuses to do, mostly out of spite.

Yes, that’s the reason, Dan. Thoughts on Flash is actually pretty concise, even for someone of your attention span.

Froyo also will let you buy songs over the air and download them directly to your phone. It will also stream songs from your music library to your phone. I don’t really use my phone as a music player that much, but still, it’s impressive that Google has this feature and Apple still doesn’t.

I’m assuming that Apple could have done this already, but chose not to. Who knows why? Maybe they want to keep people locked into their old way of doing things. Or maybe because they were a market leader with no real competition and just got lazy.

Ummm. This is Dan Lyons, the person who made a ton of scratch off of Apple’s success and someone who writes articles for Newsweek’s “Techtonic Shifts”, so you’d think he’d have a decent grasp of product features and shortcomings, right?

The iPhone has supported over-the-air music purchases since Day 1, version 1. There are at least half a dozen apps that allow you to stream audio – and video – over the air. The reason Apple “didn’t do this already” is because Apple’s very healthy developer ecosystem has numerous products serving that niche. Seriously, at this point in the reading, if you didn’t see this asshole smirking next to the byline, you’d swear this article lifted from the comment section of a third-rate tech blog. This is Newsweek’s top tech writer. Embarrassing is an understatement.

The Android OS is already outselling iPhone OS in the United States.

The quarter before a major iPhone release (that everyone knows about thanks to Gizmodo) and during a quarter where every other carrier is basically fire-hosing the market with buy-one, get-ones. APPLE = PWNED.

Now it’s blowing past Apple in terms of the technology it’s delivering.

You mean the technology it’s announcing. Fixed that for you.

We’ve seen this movie before. In the 1980s, Apple jumped out to an early lead in personal computers, but then got selfish. Steve Jobs, a notorious control freak, just could not play well with others.

You mean the movie where Apple ousted its CEO and then ran itself into the ground under the leadership of a Pepsi salesman? I think maybe your grasp of tech history is about as astute as your grasp of basic features of popular tech products, Dan.

Dan goes on to claim that Apple’s refusal to use flash, its revenue sharing model for apps and ads, its ban of porn (apps I assume, but it’s tough to tell with Dan’s shaky knowledge base) is all “about Apple wringing every last dime out of its ecosystem and leaving nothing on the table for anyone else”. I honestly don’t even know what that means. If I weren’t busy stuffing my ears with cotton balls to prevent my brains from running out, I’d give it a shot.

I think this hissy-fit thinly disguised as lousy journalism may signal a new phase in Dan’s hatred of Apple. Once he was content to jab at Apple as FSJ, and occasionally be funny in the process, but his contempt has outstripped his satiric capabilities. The fact that his only morsel of success has come from the work of a company he hates, only makes it worse. As a typecast writer, Dan Lyons has reached the Paul Rubens breaking point. Pee Wee wants out of the Playhouse. This article is the journalistic equivalent of masturbating in the back row of a porn theater.

Those are the two “Clock” apps in the HTC Eris and the iPhone, respectively. Aside from the passing similarity between the 2 Timer tabs themselves, the 4 tabs across the bottom, World Clock, Alarm Clock, Stopwatch and Timer, use the same text and almost identical icons. Wow.

Now I realize the freetard chuckleheads want to scream about how the patent system sucks because such nebulous things like “naming a World Clock” and “sliding Hours and Minutes placeholders” get undeserved protection and that the winner is always the person with the biggest patent portfolio and litigious crappy blah, blah….

/BOOM

Excuse me while I reassemble my head.

As I was saying, kudos to the Obvious Brigade and their comments about the patent system. The shittiness of the system itself belies a pretty important point. Someone – probably a team of someones – spent months developing a way to represent 4 important things you might want to do with time on the iPhone. They came up with the names, the icons and the functional elements of each individual tab – in short, they put more work into it than anything you’ve ever worked on.  Android 1.5 comes along and says “that’s pretty cool” and absconds to a degree that’s almost comical: 4 almost identical icons in the same order, with the same names. Nevermind that the timer tab’s dialer-alert sound-start top/bottom orientation is a straight-up rip-off of the iPhone’s.

There are a lot of things short of this comparison that would make innovation more competitive and less litigious.  This exceeds that point.  This is theft, plain and simple.

I had attributed a lot of the negative press around “Apple vs. Google” as just a way for hacks to drum up page hits (which it still is) and perhaps a little bit of the Jobster pissing on the fence posts of along his property line, however poorly the USPTO lets him define it. When I see stuff like this, which is not one of the documented claims against HTC, I can understand why Apple is dropping napalm too.

Apple is not Microsoft
Apple is not motivated by market share, earnings per share or number of markets entered. Apple’s motivation begins and ends with the design of excellent user experiences. The perception that Apple will get to a place in the industry where it stops innovating, sits on its cash cows and perpetuates its existence by bludgeoning more dextrous upstarts with its patent portfolio is simply never going to happen, at least not while Jobs is alive. Jobs relentlessly whips the crop at Apple, pushing innovation like WiFi, Firewire and DisplayPort to the point where comfortable technologies like floppy disks, serial connections and removable media drives are phased out with pundit (and occasionally fanboy)-wrankling regularity. Apple outpaces any other computer or consumer electronics maker in terms of version hustle. Anyone who believes that Apple is capable of laying off the gas at the expense of bleeding-edge innovation does not know the company.

HTC, upstart mobile phone maker saunters along a beautiful forest path, oblivious to the exquisitely-crafted “No Trespassing” signs. Sun is streaming through the trees as the company approaches a glittering spring. They stoop and drink deeply, savoring the delicious, refreshing water.

/cue shotgun pump

“Say…you got a purty mouth…”

TMA knows that version 1 of products like the iPad are going to have their limitations – just like the iPhone did in 2007.  But then came the SDK, and the App Store and 3G, etc. Even at version 1.0, the iPhone was itself an amazing device, not just because Apple made it but because of what came before it. Do you remember a lot about your cell phone before you got your iPhone? Me either. Those memories are tucked away like a childhood incident of inappropriate touching.  The iPhone rocketed to success off the back of an industry that seriously needed – and got – its ass kicked.

TMA also knows the iPad – in the short term – may also be a victim of Apple’s prior successes.  2 of Apple’s most innovative products, the MacBook Air and the iPhone, are the parents of the iPad. The light/thin Air with its non-removable battery and the touch-based UI of the iPhone combined. That awesome bloodline may also limit some people’s perception of what is possible with the device.   The iPad is an evolution of 2 existing products made by Apple, not a revolution against crappy products made by others. People may perceive the *want* factor slightly differently because several Apple products share some of its functionality.

I believe the ultimate success of the device – which it will enjoy by the way – will come down to how quickly developers can take advantage of the iPad’s increased real estate and some of the SDK’s bonus goodness like “popovers”.  Scaled up iPhone apps are nice, and the fruits of the 2 week development cycle afforded the handful of developers that presented the iPad at the Apple event give an inkling of what’s possible, but what’s concocted before the late March/early April release will be much more of a harbinger of the iPad’s success – in the short-term.  No one thought the iPhone would resonate in the market the way it did, but Apple took its revolutionary 1.0 product and proceeded to make measured, relentless improvements to keep it well ahead of the market. Apple’s commitment to that leadership, backed by the App Store model bodes well for the long-term success of the device.

People made retarded comments when the iPhone was announced.  There’s as much accountability as there is memory on the internet.  That didn’t make a whit of difference with the iPod or the iPhone. It won’t make a difference with the iPad.

Tell you what guys: I support your scary proposition to charge people for what they use and to smash the buffet table of unlimited use you currently grace all of us ingrates with.

Here’s the thing: if $30 represents unlimited use – by your definition - then $30 should be your ceiling.  So those piggish 3% should pay $30 – or more if they account for more than the established average bandwidth of that 3%. The rest of us should pay less.

That’s what you had in mind, right?

Apple is acting alone and has not consulted with AT&T about whether or not to approve the Google Voice application. No contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T have been a factor in Apple’s decision-making process in this matter.

Well then, so much for conspiracy theories.  This makes the non-approval both less seedy and more niggling:

The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail.

No AT&T SMS revenue protection scheme, just plain a old-fashioned fencepost pissing by the chief UI stormtrooper – or maybe a desire not to make Google products “just work” with the iPhone as well now that Google has thrown their hat into the OS ring.

Pffffffft.

Apple will stomp these estimates for 2 simple reasons: 3GS and MBP.  We know the 3GS blew past predicted sales and it looks like the price cut in the MacBook Pro line may make June one for the record books at Apple.   Get ready for the “boom”‚ indeed.

Update: $1.35/share on $8.34B in revenue – a new record for a non-holiday quarter.