Apple’s financials for fiscal 4th quarter, 2009:

The Company posted revenue of $9.87 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion, or $1.26 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.6 percent, up from 34.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

From CNNMoney.com:

• Mac sales: 3.05 million units, up 17.3% year over year
• iPhone sales: 7.4 million units, up 41% from last year
• iPod sales: 10.2 million, down from just over 11 million a year ago
• iPod touch sales were up 100% from last year
• Gross margin: 36.3%, up from 34.7% last year
• Cash: $34 billion, up $2.9 billion from $31.1 billion last quarter
• Guidance for the December quarter: revenue between $11.3 and $11.6 billion, EPS between $1.70 and $1.78, gross margin 34%

All this during a crummy economy.

According to the BBC’s Tim Weber, Apple botched Mac OS X Snow Leopard. How? Apparently, only Tim Weber knows. Nearly everyone else already knows that Snow Leopard has grown faster than any version of Mac OS X. Our friends across the pond have a penchant for hyperbole.

On Thursday, Microsoft launches Windows 7, the latest version of its operating system. Its success or failure will determine the future of the world’s biggest software company.

Windows Vista was a disaster for Microsoft, which has resorted to laying off thousands of employees and reported a huge drop in revenue and profits in the most recent financial quarter. Weber likes to use the term botched.

More importantly, three years ago Microsoft botched the release of Vista, the operating system that preceded Windows 7.

By botched, does Weber mean the actual launch, the implementation, or the product itself? Only Weber knows.

Windows 7 is Microsoft’s one and maybe only chance to redeem itself. “We have learned a lot from what went wrong with Vista,” is a mantra repeated by every Microsoft executive.

So, Windows Vista isn’t all that good, users and companies shunned it in favor of keeping Windows XP instead of upgrading to the latest, and Weber claims that Windows 7’s success or failure will determine Microsoft’s future. If Vista was a characteristic misstep for Microsoft, what of Apple?

Also useful is the misstep of its other nemesis, Apple, which uncharacteristically botched its new operating system Snow Leopard, not anywhere near as badly as Vista, but enough to give Microsoft a clear run for its Windows 7 launch.

How was Snow Leopard botched? Weber doesn’t say. Snow Leopard unit sales and penetration into the user base exceed that of Tiger and Leopard. Hiccups are rare. Most reviews point out that Snow Leopard is a faster, leaner, more polished version of Leopard. What exactly got botched?

Microsoft’s Jean-Philippe Courtois says:

We don’t feel great about Vista adoption… The Windows ecosystem is the broadest in the world, and we have to take care of that… We expect business to adopt Windows 7 much faster… I really have to go back to Windows 95 to remember people being so excited about a new operating system.

Evidently, Microsoft executives didn’t pay attention to the crowds lined up at Apple Stores to buy Mac OS X Jaguar, Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard. The last time Windows users lined up for anything except support was 1995.

Again, the basic question, How did Apple botch Mac OS X Snow Leopard? Or, did the BBC simply allow Tim Weber to spout off knowing that such a perspective would pump up page hits, which pumps up advertising impressions, which pumps up revenue? See how much Faux News has learned from the Brits?

Remember TypeStyler from the Mac OS Classic days? I used it and once loved it. The new Mac OS X version is available for $180 (vs. $40 for BeLight’s comparable Art Text). Jeffrey Mincey:

The 21st century TypeStyler looks and feels much like the 20th century TypeStyler. Why would TypeStyler’s developers spend seven years on an OS X version and then create the world’s ugliest Buy Now and Download Now buttons to entice potential customers?

High priced software from the past on an ugly web site.

So says EarthTimes based on a three-way battle by Chip magazine of India (next to impossible to find the original article). How did Windows 7 win?

The element that won the day for Windows 7, however, was security. Mac OS and Linux are rarely attacked, but don’t possess any real protective system, either. “Windows comes under fire every day, but also has the best defence.

And how well is Windows’ ‘protective system’ working for Windows users vs. Mac OS X and Linux?

Backing up my Mac’s 550 gigabytes of files (documents, movies, music, photos, files, applications) used to take 20-minutes using SuperDuper!

SuperDuper! (2.6.2) is up to 2x faster, adds great new features like Backup on Connect, Eject after Copy, Sparse Bundle support, and still lets you store a bootable backup alongside Time Machine backups, copy Time Machine backups to other drives, run scheduled copies on demand.

Version 2.6.2 is Snow Leopard ready, has a number of new features, and the same incremental backup is barely 10 minutes. Twice as fast. No additional cost.

Verizon goes on the attack with a new Android phone. The attack is aimed at Apple’s iPhone, not at AT&T.

Everything iDon’t, Droid Does.

Except let users choose from among 85,000 applications.

Verizon’s empire strikes back with a delicious point-by-point anti-iPhone list, most of which won’t and don’t matter to the over 40-million iPhone users. From Fake Steve:

If the only way you can market your product is to compare it to some other product, you’ve already lost.

Is it a wise idea to insult tens of millions of happy, satisfied users about their choice in a phone they so obviously love?

Ripping expose from Ashee Vance of NYT on Microsoft and the need for CEO Steve Ballmer to step down. Plenty of barbs from astute observers. Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO:

They are trapped in their own psychosis that the world has to revolve around Windows on the PC. Until they stop doing that, they will drag their company into the gutter.

Bruce R. Chizen, former Microsoft employee and former head of Adobe:

They are not the company they once were in terms of market position. They no longer have a monopoly that is critical to the future of computing.

CoreBrand CEO James R. Gregory:

This used to be the company that everyone looked to for innovation and excitement. It has lost that edginess in a fairly convincing way.

It goes on and one. Windows 7 will be the success that Windows Vista was not. The competition? It’s not the Mac. It’s Windows XP. Microsoft’s stock price since Ballmer took office in 2000 is essentially flatlined. Revenue and profits are down. How long will Ballmer stay at the helm? I hope he’ll be around for many years to come.

From Fake Steve’s case against IBM:

You don’t suppose that in the era of “cloud computing” companies might face any of the same dangers, do you? Except that instead of being controlled by IBM you’ll be controlled by Google? Could that be why Google is so excited about the cloud and is giving away all that free stuff?

iPhone apps, anyone?

Who’s running the show at Microsoft? Windows XP’s Start button is what you click to shut down the computer. Click Start to Shut Down. Apple hits Windows hard with the I’m a Mac and I’m a PC television commercials, and Microsoft responds with I’m a PC commercials, which totally miss the point. Microsoft’s soon-to-be-released cloud computing system is called Windows Azure.

azure |ˈa zh ər|
adjective
bright blue in color, like a cloudless sky

noun
1 a bright blue color.
• poetic/literary the clear sky

Only Microsoft would misname such an important initiative. Who’s running that place?

Microsoft’s Danger subsidiary suffered a massive and permanent data loss this week. Chalk this up to the dangers of cloud computing.

A week ago… Microsoft’s Danger unit experienced a huge outage that left many T-Mobile Sidekick users without access to their calendar, address book, and other key data. That’s because the Sidekick keeps nearly all its data in the cloud as opposed to keeping the primary copy on the devices themselves.

Just when you thought it was bad, it gets worse.

Things got even worse on Saturday, as Microsoft said in a statement that data not recovered thus far may be permanently lost. It’s not immediately clear how many people lost their data.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The Danger outage comes just a month before Microsoft is expected to launch its operating system in the cloud—Windows Azure. That announcement is expected at November’s Professional Developer Conference. One of the characteristics of Azure is that programs written for it can be run only via Microsoft’s data centers and not on a company’s own servers.

That’s a great confidence builder.

Apple’s Mighty Mouse is the mouse that comes with every new iMac or MacPro. Apple licensed the name Mighty Mouse from CBS. All would be well and good except that the trademark Mighty Mouse has been awarded to Man & Machine, Inc. instead. Lex Friedman:

Since Apple was licensing use of the Mighty Mouse name from CBS, and now CBS can’t quite do that anymore, Apple has only two options left: The company can try to license the name from Man & Machine, or come up with a brand new moniker altogether.

His suggestion for a new Apple multi-touch mouse?

Pepé Le Pointer.

Priceless.

Quote of the day comes from Merrill Markoe, former Late Night staffer and one of David Letterman’s many past loves:

As you can imagine, this has been a very emotional moment for me because Dave promised me many times that I was the only woman he would ever cheat on.

Priceless.

Goodbye rollover minutes, hello iChat, Skype and friends. AT&T has announced they will allow iPhone users to make VoIP telephony calls for the 3G network. AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega:

iPhone is an innovative device that dramatically changed the game in wireless when it was introduced just two years ago. Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer.

As a reminder, former Palm CEO Ed Colligan on the advent of Apple’s iPhone (from November 2006):

We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.

The bad news? Don’t expect to see Google Voice in the iPhone App Store.