Apple surpassed analysts’ expectations with $42.1 billion in revenue in the back-to-school season, buoyed by unprecedented iPhone sales and surprisingly strong demand for Macs.
While breaking down the Q4 2014 numbers during today’s earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri offered insights into the company’s Q4 performance in China, the struggling iPad and hints of new product categories coming down the pipeline.
Here are the biggest takeaways.
Apple announced its financial results for Q4 2014 this afternoon and the numbers were big.
Backed by strong iPhone and Mac sales, Apple posted $42.1 billion in quarterly revenue, with $8.5 billion net profits, or $1.42 per diluted share. Both profit and revenue for the quarter bested Apple’s previous record in the year ago quarter.
Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri are getting ready to follow up the launch of Apple Pay by revealing Apple’s Q4 earnings with investors this afternoon. The results are expected to be record breaking, anchored by the unprecedented demand of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Apple’s earnings call will reveal just how much money the company raked in over the past three months and we’ll be here to liveblog whole thing. AAPL shares are up 1.60% this afternoon, with the earnings expected to arrive shortly after the market closes, so keep this page open for the full scoop on how ridiculously profitable Apple was last quarter.
OS X Yosemite has changed the way your Mac deals with your privacy. On the one hand, Apple has decided to enable hard drive encryption by default, despite the FBI requests not to.
On the other hand, every time you type in Spotlight, your location and local search terms are sent to Apple, and, according to developer Landon Fuller, other third parties like Microsoft.
Fuller’s created a website, Fix Mac OS X Yosemite, where he’s posted up a way to stop Yosemite from sending such private data out. He’s also been contributing to a developer project on GitHub to find out and fix other ways that OS X phones home.
Yosemite’s new Dark Mode is one of my favorite new features in OS X 10.10, but toggling it on and off can be a pain.
Apple didn’t include a hotkey combo that lets you switch from Light to Dark mode, but with after digging through Yosemite’s code, someone has discovered a single line of code you can paste into Terminal that will allow you to dynamically switch to dark mode without digging through your System Preferences each time.
Here’s how to do it:
The first iOS app to receive Apple Pay integration is of course one of Apple’s very own. The official Apple Store app has been updated with “easy one-touch checkout with Apple Pay” on Touch ID-equipped iOS devices.
Using Apple Pay requires iOS 8.1 and a credit or debit card on file in Passbook. While NFC in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is required for making Apple Pay transactions at physical stores, online payments only require Touch ID. That means you can use Apple Pay through apps on the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 3.
Several other apps should be updated with Apple Pay support any minute now, including Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Groupon, Instacart, OpenTable, MLB.com, Panera Bread, Target, and the Disney Store app.
Source: App Store
Apple Pay is finally here and now that retailers are letting us use iPhones instead of credit cards, the Cult of Mac team is heading out into the real world to put Apple’s mobile payment solution to the test.
Leander will be shopping around San Francisco. Alex is testing Apple Pay in the backwoods of Kentucky. And I plan to sputter around Phoenix in search of a burrito shop with Apple Pay.
How easy will it be to use? Do retail staff even know what is? We expect there will be some bumps along the way on the first day, but we can’t wait to be able to burn our wallets. Keep an eye on this page throughout the day as we test whether the wallet-less future of buying stuff with your iPhone is truly here.
iOS 8.1 is now available to the public. Along with bringing Apple Pay into the wild, this major update is packed with new features that bring harmony to your iPhone and Mac workflow. Instant Hotspot and SMS Relay connect your iPhone like never before, and there are a few other sweet new features you probably haven’t heard about yet.
Here are the biggest features in iOS 8.1 you need to know:
Apple Pay is finally here, and while Eddie Cue says in-app purchases will make up most of the purchases during launch, there are tons of things that you can buy in the real world right now.
iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners looking to toss their wallets in favor of Apple Pay can go into hundreds of stores today and purchase everything from clothes, toys, gas, or even furniture. Not all stores are supporting Apple’s mobile payments platform, so knowing which retailers accept Apple Pay will be half the battle toward replacing your wallet. Luckily, we’ve compiled this list of everything you can buy today with Apple Pay.
Here’s what you can buy starting day:
Apple just released iOS 8.1, bringing Apple Pay, iCloud Photo Library and other new features to the mobile operating system.
Available now via Software Update, iOS 8.1 will let you quickly set up Apple Pay on compatible devices. Upgraders running OS X Yosemite will also notice additional Continuity features that let iOS 8 work with the latest version of the Mac operating system.
Got a MacBook that you just love but find that the screen sometimes leaves you wanting more? Ever dream about owning a huge 27-inch Thunderbolt monitor so you can work with every pixel unhindered?
You could make that dream a reality by entering The Dream Desk Giveaway at Cult of Mac Deals today.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus may be Apple’s best-selling iPhones in history, racking up a massive 10 million+ sales in their first weekend alone, but how does this massive success translate into numbers going forward?
Ahead of today’s Apple earnings call, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has taken a shot at forecasting how the rest of the year may play out, in a research note to investors. His guess? All in, Apple can expect to sell between 56.7 million and 62.7 million iPhones this quarter.
If Munster’s on the money, that means unit sales of the iPhone could leap between 25 to 45% compared with the previous quarter last year. Not bad, huh?
Having helped pioneer the concept of the $0.99 music track on iTunes, Apple is now trying to bring down the price of streaming music.
According to a new report published by Re/code, Apple is pushing music labels for extensive price cuts that would bring the cost of a Beats Music subscription from its current $10 price point all the way down to $5.
Thinking of buying Apple’s new Mac mini? Make sure you get plenty of RAM when you place your order. Unlike its predecessors, the new machine’s RAM is soldered to the logic board, so you’re unable to add your own later on.
The Chinese authorities are staging a “man-in-the-middle” attack on Apple’s iCloud service in an attempt to steal username and password information, according to anti-censorship watchdog group GreatFire.org.
As per Wikipedia, a man-in-the-middle attack “is a form of active eavesdropping in which the attacker makes independent connections with the victims and relays messages between them, making them believe that they are talking directly to each other over a private connection, when in fact the entire conversation is controlled by the attacker.”
GreatFire.org first noticed the apparent attack when it became aware of the fact that certain connections made to Apple’s iCloud site in China no longer responded with a trusted digital certificate, thereby risking decryption.
In Spike Jonze’s film Her, Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with a Siri-like “digital assistant,” played by Scarlett Johansson. But falling in love with Siri doesn’t just happen in the movies. In The New York Times, there is a beautiful piece about a 10-year-old autistic boy named Gus whose best friend is Siri.
Today marks the official roll-out of Apple’s long-awaited mobile payments service, Apple Pay. But while paying for items in-store using your iPhone is definitely an exciting prospect, Cupertino expects in-app purchases will make up the vast majority of early transactions, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Shanghai’s #Unicom store offers alteration service to enlarge pants’ pockets so to fit #iphone6 pic.twitter.com/uvjuTskGcn
— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) October 17, 2014
Is your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus just too big for your skinny jeans? You’re not alone: a store in China is actually keeping a tailor on hand to enlarge pants for customers who can’t fit their new smartphones in their pockets.
Particularly if you work with computers, Dropbox is one of the most useful tools available, and a new update for its official iOS app has just made it handier than ever.
Adding support for Touch ID, iOS 8 users now have the ability to unlock their Dropbox with a fingerprint. In addition, the update also adds support the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, along with sorting out general stability and performance issues, such as a fix for previewing rich text format files on iOS 8.
Spotify is finally allowing music lovers to share their subscriptions with their family and friends with a new Spotify Family plan. Prices starts at just $14.99 a month for up to two, while the top tier $29.99 a month plan allows one subscription to be shared with up to five people.
Now that Marc Newson is one of Apple’s design bigwigs, the guys at Curved Labs wondered what sort of new products might result from the collaboration.
Their concept? An updated AirPort WiFi router that is also a smart smoke and CO2 detector, a la Nest Protect.
Having previously taken a crack at the smartwatch market with its now-discontinued SPOT technology, Microsoft is looking to get back into the wearables space according to a report from Forbes, citing anonymous sources.
The watch will apparently be launched in the next few weeks and will work across a variety of platforms, which makes perfect sense since Windows Phone is a distant third compared to Android and iPhone handsets.
Its timing is an effort to capture the potentially-lucrative holiday market.
Hit TV show Family Guy followed a trajectory that’s very similar to Apple’s. The show appeared as a breath of fresh air early on, underwent a decline during which it almost vanished, then made a triumphant return.
In that way, Family Guy always seemed a perfect fit for iOS. Earlier this year, that pairing finally happened when developer TinyCo debuted Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, a mobile game that follows Peter Griffin and the rest of the Fox TV show’s colorful supporting cast as they rebuild the town of Quahog after it’s been destroyed.
Six months down the line — and with the game currently in the middle of a haunting, courtesy of its Halloween update — Cult of Mac spoke with the developers about Seth McFarlane, making games funny, and the perils of in-app purchases.
The NBA season is set to tip off on October 28th and Beats is ready to celebrate with a new epic ad all about King James’ return to Cleveland.
The long cinematic ad is similar to Beats’ incredible World Cup ad, and flashes between LeBron’s fierce workout regimen he went through this summer – while rocking the Beats earbuds of course – as well as showing spurts from his past like St. Vincent-St. Mary high school, his old Spring Hill apartments, and his mom.
Check it out:
This week has seen some pretty awesome offers at Cult of Mac Deals.
Today we put a brief spotlight on just a few of the best to make sure no one misses out on a good thing. Of course, you can go to Cult of Mac Deals to see every single deal at any time.