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During today’s fourth fiscal quarterly earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the massive pile of cash that Apple has in the bank. As it turns out, about two-thirds of Apple’s available cash is currently held overseas.

Apple is known for being incredible conservative when it comes to spending. The company very rarely makes high-profile buyouts, and internal operations are streamlined for efficiency. Holding money offshore allows Apple to defer taxes until the money is brought back to the United States.

During today’s Q4 earnings call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer talked about how “pervasive” iPhone rumors hurt Apple’s fiscal business. While nearly every product saw a significant increase in sales for the fourth fiscal quarter, the iPhone saw a lackluster 17.07 million iPhones sold. That’s 21% year over year growth. The iPad saw 166% year over year growth.

It’s typical for product sales to taper off right before a refresh, but this last fiscal quarter’s iPhone sales were even lower than what Apple expected. Oppenheimer blamed the rumor mill for hurting Apple’s fiscal business with regards to the iPhone.

To honor Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Apple retail stores around the U.S. will close for around 90 minutes on Wednesday, October 19.

From 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. (PST) tomorrow, Apple’s iconic stores will be shuttered so employees can take part in a memorial service for Jobs. They’ll watching a live broadcast of the event being held at an outdoor amphitheater at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. Apple employees outside the U.S. will be able to view a re-broadcast of the celebration.

Reuters reports that in preparation for the closure, stores across California aren’t accepting online bookings for Wednesday morning, either for tech-support or tutorials.

Via Reuters

Apple today announced its most recent quarterly earnings for the fourth fiscal quarter. Despite missing Wall Street projections for the first time since 2002, Apple saw incredible growth in multiple areas, including record-breaking sales for the Mac.

760,000 more Macs were sold than any other previous quarter. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that sales were largely fueled by MacBook Air and MacBook Pro sales, with growth in Asia also contributing to the Mac’s continued success.

There were rumors flying around months ago that Apple was looking to buy Dropbox. The popular cloud storage service has made a name for itself as one of the most relied-upon wireless sync solutions in the consumer market.

The rumors were true. Apple did want to buy Dropbox, so much so that Steve Jobs himself offered the startup a nine-digit acquisition offer. Dropbox said no to the offer, so Apple created iCloud.

Apple today announced its earnings for the fourth fiscal quarter, with $28.27 billion in revenue and $6.62 billion in profit. In Q4, Apple sold 17.07 million iPhones, 11.12 million iPads, and 4.89 million Macs.

This is the first time in years that Apple has missed its Wall Street predictions. However, Apple surpassed its own estimates of $25 billion for the fourth fiscal quarter.

Want to see just how good the iPhone 4S is as a video camera? Yeah, so did this guy. So he made a side-by-side comparison – and the results show the 4S is a pretty impressive piece of video recording kit.

Here’s a new exercise workout tip courtesy of Motorola: next time you’re considering buying that 8,000 calorie heart attack on a bun, instead layout your cash on an iPod Nano clone that costs $100 more than the real thing. You’ll surely work up a sweat kicking yourself for buying that new MotoACTV watch.

It never ceases to amaze me about what people will do to get your attention so today’s video tidbit shouldn’t be much of a surprise. After all we’ve seen MacBooks, iPhones and iPads go through all kinds of hell on the wrong end of a gun and even a PT Cruiser.

So it shouldn’t surprise you that someone has taken the iPhone 4S and shot it with a .50 caliber incendiary round. He even goes so far as to ask Siri if it is bullet proof. See how Siri replied and how well the iPhone 4S did or not after the break.

Color Uncovered is a neat little educational app for kids and grown-ups, all about the weird and mysterious science of color.

Unfortunately, Steve Jobs passed away before the hugely successful launch of the iPhone 4S last Friday, but we’re certain he had lots of time to play around with it while it was in testing at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. If you’d like to use your shiny new device to pay your respects to its creator, these Steve tribute cases that were found in Thailand should do the trick.

The BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones wanted to find out which smartphone was the best listener, so he conducted a quick test of his own.

He spoke the same text into a Siri-equipped iPhone 4S and a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and compared the transcribed results.

Despite past protests against a smaller iPad, Apple appears to be moving ahead with plans to introduce a smaller iPad possibly as early as 2012. Two iPad display firms reportedly have sent samples to Apple for approval. If true, today’s report would lend credence to an earlier Wall Street report that the tech giant is setting its sights on Amazon’s $199 7-inch Kindle Fire.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hckrig2BwNY

Remember Jontahan Mann? He’s the YouTube singing sensation behind the ‘Song A Day’ project, which has seen him sing songs the iPhone 4’s ‘antennagate‘ issue, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak. For his latest track, Mann teams up with Siri for a wonderful duet.

Isn’t it just beautiful?

[via Daring Fireball]

Sometimes is seems as though Samsung puts its greatest efforts into causing a ruckus with Apple’s legal team. The Korean electronics giant is already involved in countless legal spats with Apple for allegedly copying the iPhone and iPad, but it continues to closely follow Apple’s products… or just rip them off completely.

It’s USB charger, for example, is an exact replica of Apple’s, only in black instead of white. It recently littered one its retail stores with a bunch of Apple icons for the App Store and Safari. And its latest trick? Using an iPhone screenshot to sell its Galaxy Player 5.0 media device.

How do you sell a security product to owners of devices that have no real security problem? You get into hand-holding business. That’s what it’s like for Lookout Mobile Security, a San Francisco, Calif. firm unveiling Tuesday the free Lookout for iPhone app. Kevin Mahaffey, co-Founder and CTO, Lookout Mobile Security, says his new app is all about positive reinforcement.

Apple pushed out another update to its Apple TV yesterday which was set to fix a number of bugs in the 4.4 firmware, however, version 4.4.1 comes with a major issue of its own, so we’re suggesting you ignore this update for the time being.

Following recent rumors that claim a refresh to Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup is imminent, I’m sure many of you are eagerly awaiting the new models before you go out and purchase a shiny new notebook. You may not have much longer to wait, according to Apple’s own website, which hints the new models are just weeks away.

You have to watch this to believe it, and then you probably still won’t. Benjamin Dowie threw together a quick series of iPhone 4S video footage and made a beautiful short film.

The iPhone 4S shoots 1080 HD video at 30 frames per second with advanced image stabilization technology. As you can see in the footage above, the camera in Apple’s newest smartphone is nothing to laugh at.

Although they missed the chance to picket his funeral and memorial service, the Westboro Baptist Church still plans to stage two hate-mongering protests for Steve Jobs in Cupertino on October 19.

The Kansas-based congregation, infamous for picketing the burials of slain soldiers and its “God Hates Fags” slogan, plans to picket outside Apple headquarters during the employee celebration of Jobs and at a local high school.

In a rambling online statement, the church cited the immorality of “some nerdy people possessing ONLY what God loaned them for a very short while, have stolen God’s glory and given it to themselves.”

Earlier, the church had announced plans to picket Jobs’ funeral on October 6.

There is an open discussion on Apple’s discussion forum where iPhone 4S owners are reporting problems they are having with their new phones display. The majority of complaints are about how the display has a yellow tint which is especially clear when you place the iPhone 4S next to an iPhone 4. There are other lesser complaints about color washouts and contrast in the same discussion thread.

Some have noted that the lines for the iPhone 4S on Friday were disappointingly short. Apple might have sold a record 4 million devices in four days, but the launch day lines were nothing compared to those for the iPhone 4 or the iPad 2.

But there was one place where the lines went around the block — and no one seems to have reported it yet.

Apple is now selling the iPhone 4S by reservation-only in the US and Canada, meaning that you’ll need to reserve a unit by 9 PM for pickup the following day. This indicates that iPhone 4S stock is running low, and Apple wants to ensure that customers are able to walk out of the store with an iPhone 4S in-hand.

The “How to Buy” page on Apple’s website has been updated with information regarding this change in policy. The two options are buying online (with a 1-2 week shipping estimate), or reserving for pickup at a local Apple Store.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHjX7LlS7OY

What’s better than an iPhone 4S? An iPhone 4S in space, of course! Final Cut King from YouTube sent two iPhone 4S’s to space and obtained footage of the voyage.

“We launched 2 iPhone 4S phones with a weather balloon to go up to 100,000. We put one of the iPhone 4S’s on an interval photo timer app and the other on video mode. We used s Spot GPS tracker (though I would not recommend it because it only tracks in 15 minutes increments).”

(Tip: Ask Siri to “Beam me up Scotty” on your iPhone 4S)

Celebrities and industry leaders have come out of the woodworks over the last couple of weeks to pay tribute to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. His passing has spurred dozens of anecdotes from those that have come into contact with Jobs throughout the years.

Famous singer/songwriter John Mayer is known for loving Apple products. He has taken the stage at Macworld multiple times to help introduce products like Garageband. As it turns out, Mayer developed a personal friendship with Jobs years ago.