Apple’s September quarter is shaping up to be a good one, if the latest metrics from NPD as reported by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster are any indication. According to the research outfit, Mac sales for July and August are up seven percent year-over-year.
While the highlight 
of the week was undoubtedly Apple’s Rock and Roll event on Wednesday featuring Steve Jobs 2.0, that was only the anodized aluminum, candy-colored, video-shooting cherry on top of another week of tech sector reporting from All Things Digital.
After nearly a year out of the public eye, Apple CEO Steve Jobs returned to it yesterday at the company’s annual music event. It was his first public appearance at an Apple gathering since Oct. 14, 2008, when he uncrated the company’s new unibody MacBooks, and it far overshadowed the new products he was about to announce. In fact, it could be argued that public confirmation of Jobs’s health since his return to the company was truly the most significant announcement of the day.
Apple’s iPhone continues to be AT&T’s marquee handset, though the data-guzzling “Hummer of cellphones,” as the New York Times has dubbed it, has inspired widespread customer dissatisfaction with the carrier’s network. Indeed, according to Piper Jaffray, the iPhone 3G and 3GS are AT&T’s top-selling phones.
When Steve Jobs described the iPhone at D5 as “the best iPod we’ve ever made,” he set the bar high for future iterations of the iconic device. Now, in the run-up to tomorrow’s invitation-only Apple event, the question is: Will Apple reach the bar? And with what? The answer, if the latest rumors prove true, depends on your feelings about iPods with cameras.
The Apple rumor mill has such a hair trigger, that even passing mention of an unreleased product can set it into yammering motion. As happened today after Digg founder Kevin Rose offered up some purported insider information about the focus of Apple’s “Let’s Rock” media event in San Francisco next Tuesday.
Apple’s oft-stated goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008 apparently doesn’t mean that it hopes to sell 10 million phones within this calendar year. Apparently, it means that it hopes to sell 15 million or more. Because according to FBR Capital Market’s latest Apple supply-chain checks, the company has substantially increased 2008 build volumes for the device.
Here’s a rather odd hybrid vehicle equally at place in the annals of science and science fiction: a sperm-powered nanoscale robot.
Scientists at Cornell University’s Baker Institute for Animal Health have nearly managed to reproduce (no pun intended) the minute biological engine that powers a sperm’s flagellum. That engine runs on a high-energy molecule called adenosine [...]
Apple gave us a “fat” Nano. Who’s to say it won’t give us that long-rumored “thin” MacBook as well?
Macworld San Francisco is still quite a ways off, but the Mac rumor mill is gearing up already. 9to5Mac, which correctly predicted the recent iPod Nano redesign, says Apple may be prepping a new, slimmer line of [...]
Awakened from its iPhone reverie by news of a special Sept. 5 Apple event called “The Beat Goes On,” the Apple rumor mill has regrouped and is now churning out visions of new OS X-based, touchscreen iPods and video Nanos.
“We expect Apple will enable video features on the Nano line for the first time, and [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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