MacRumors

Apple has posted a media alert announcing details for the January 21st release of their financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2009. The results will cover sales from September 28th through December 27th, 2008, and will be released at the close of trading (4:00 PM Eastern / 1:00 PM Pacific) on Wednesday. Apple's conference call discussing the results will follow at 2:00 PM Pacific and will be available via a live audio webcast.

Apple's most significant product announcement of the quarter came on October 14th in a notebook media event. The event saw the introduction of the new unibody MacBook and 15" MacBook Pro, as well as minor updates to the 17" MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. Apple also introduced the new 24" LED Cinema Display with built-in iSight and Mini DisplayPort connectivity.

For the quarter, analysts are predicting net earnings of $1.38 per share on revenue of roughly $9.75 billion, near the high end of Apple's guidance of $1.06-$1.35 profit on $9.0-$10.0 billion of revenue. Apple's year-ago results for the first quarter of 2008 included net earnings of $1.76 per share on revenue of $9.6 billion.

Circuit City announced today that it is seeking bankruptcy court approval to liquidate its U.S. assets including the shutdown of its remaining U.S. stores. The company has already received approval from four companies to start the liquidation process.

"We are extremely disappointed by this outcome. The company had been in continuous negotiations regarding a going concern transaction. Regrettably for the more than 30,000 employees of Circuit City and our loyal customers, we were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders to structure a going-concern transaction in the limited timeframe available, and so this is the only possible path for our company," said James A. Marcum, vice chairman and acting president and chief executive officer for Circuit City Stores, Inc.

If approved, the company would hold a liquidation sale Saturday, January 17th, through March 31st at all U.S. retail locations.

Circuit City is the second largest U.S. consumer electronics retailer behind Best Buy. While Circuit City does not sell Apple computers or iPhones, they do sell iPods and a variety of 3rd party accessories in addition to other electronics gear.

Update: Circuit City has posted a FAQ to their website. Up until today Circuit City has employed 34,000 people in the U.S.

A banner on Apple's front page proclaims that the App Store has surpassed 15,000 available applications and 500 million downloads. The milestones come just over six months after the App Store's debut.

Apple last reported on December 5th, 2008 that they had surpassed 10,000 available applications and 300 million downloads, and the latest numbers demonstrate a significant acceleration in downloads when compared to previous milestone announcements.

Tom's Hardware reports that the expected Mac mini refresh will be coming in March and will be based on NVIDIA's new Ion platform utilizing Intel's dual-core 1.6 GHz Atom 330 processor. The Ion platform, announced in mid-December, also utilizes the GeForce 9400M integrated graphics found in the current MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

An Nvidia partner confirmed to us that Apple was the first to receive samples of Nvidia's Ion platform, which we covered extensively during CES. In fact, Apple received prototype units long before Nvidia partners who opted to work on Ion. We're told that some partners still only have blue prints of Ion.

The source also revealed that the new Mac mini should be released around the time of the CeBIT computer expo beginning March 3rd in Hanover, Germany. No pricing information has been revealed, but Tom's Hardware believes that the new Mac mini will be priced in the same $500-$700 range as the current model. They also believe that the use of this platform will enable Apple to reduce the size of the already-diminutive Mac mini.

Evidence found in OS X configuration files in mid-December has pointed to the use of NVIDIA chipsets in upcoming Mac mini and iMac revisions, but this is the first indication that Apple plans to use Intel's low-power Atom processor instead of the larger Core 2 processors found in Apple's notebook computers and the current Mac mini.

AppleInsider dredged up 6 month old trademark applications by Apple indicating that they were seeking trademark protection for the term "OS X" without the word "Mac" preceding it.

The Cupertino-based company initially filed for its trademark in Trinidad and Tobago less than a week after the June 2008 conference, where lobby banners first indicated a split where Apple would distinguish between OS X Leopard, the version of its operating system for traditional computers, and OS X iPhone, the modified platform that supports both its namesake cellphone and the iPod touch.

The filing is not particularly revealing as it's been clear since WWDC that Apple has been separating out OS X into "OS X Leopard" and "OS X iPhone". It simply reinforces the fact that Apple has applications for OS X outside of the Mac platform.

The U.S. trademark for the "OS X" term was filed in November 2008.

The New York Times reports that the health issues that have resulted in Steve Jobs taking a medical leave of absence from his role as Apple's CEO stem from a problem with food absorption and not from a recurrence of cancer.

Two people who are familiar with Mr. Jobs's current medical treatment said he was not suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but a condition that was preventing his body from absorbing food. Doctors have also advised him to cut down on stress, which may be making the problem worse, these people said.

Jobs underwent surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004, and he claimed as recently as July 2008 that he remained cancer-free. Concerns about Jobs' health were revived in mid-December when Apple announced that he would not present at Macworld Expo in San Francisco in early January, but he officially announced on the eve of Macworld that his health concerns were due to a "hormone imbalance".

After hours trading in Apple's stock was temporarily halted as the news was being released, and the share price temporarily dropped 10-12% upon resumption of trading before settling at an approximately 7% decline from the close of regular trading earlier in the day.

Gartner has released a preliminary report on U.S. and worldwide PC shipments for the fourth quarter of 2008. The report places Apple in fourth place in U.S market share at 8.0%, up from 6.7% in the fourth quarter of 2007, but down from 9.5% in the third quarter of 2008. The sequential decline in Apple's market share was not entirely unexpected, as Apple's traditionally strong performance in the back-to-school third quarter typically results in a drop in market share for the fourth quarter of each calendar year.

Apple's computer shipments, which had been growing 30-40% year-over-year according to Gartner's data, grew only 8.3% over fourth quarter of 2007 shipment numbers. Despite the slower growth rate, Apple continued to outperform the industry as a whole, which saw a significant decline in US shipments of 10.1% over the fourth quarter of 2007. Apple's growth, however, was outpaced by that of Acer, which saw a year-over-year increase of 55.4%, enough to take over the third place position formerly held by Apple. Gartner attributes Acer's recent market share success to their focus on the booming low-cost mini-notebook segment.

IDC also released a similar report today yielding comparable results. According to IDC, Apple's fourth quarter market share ranked fourth at 7.2%, while computer shipments grew 7.5% over 4Q 2007. IDC also released US market share data for calendar year 2008, where Apple placed fourth with a 7.7% market share, up from 6.2% in calendar year 2007. Apple's yearly growth rate of 25.7% far exceeded the industry-wide US growth rate of 2.4%.

Apple remained unable to break into the top five vendors for worldwide market share in either set of data, as Toshiba held down the fifth spot for both the fourth quarter of 2008 and calendar year 2008 at approximately 4.5%.

Multiple news sources have reported that Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence until the end of June. Tim Cook will be taking over day to day operations of Apple.

Apple has published a letter Jobs sent to Apple employees.

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple's day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Tim Cook was previously profiled as a possible replacement for Steve Jobs.

Over the past 24 hours, Apple has begun to approve 3rd party web browsing applications for the iPhone. A number of new web browsing apps have suddenly appeared with original submission dates ranging as far back as October.

While Apple has made no official acknowledgements, it appears these applications were likely in a special queue awaiting for approval. We had seen a similar "group" delays with other categories of apps. The most notable example involved flatulence applications such as Pull My Finger and iFart Mobile. Once Apple decided to allow the category within the App Store, a backlog of apps quickly appeared.

Web browsing applications were previously charged with "duplicating functionality" of other iPhone apps and was felt to be the reason why Opera would never be approved by Apple.

A partial list of these new applications include:

- Edge Browser (Free) - No loss of screen real estate to the address or navigation bars.
- Incognito ($1.99) - Now you can browse without leaving a history of any kind.
- WebMate:Tabbed Browser ($0.99) - Web Mate simplifies browsing by queuing up all the links you click on, then allowing you to view them one by one when you're ready.
- Shaking Web ($1.99) - adds a sophisticated algorithm to compensate for small hand shaking to allow for easier reading.

This could open the door for mobile versions of prominent web browsers such as Opera and Firefox, though there remain other SDK restrictions that could prevent full-featured versions of those browsers from appearing. Still, Apple appears to be loosening some early restrictions they had applied to the App Store approval process.

Last year, Apple announced that they will be releasing the next major revision of Mac OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard) in 2009. The focus of Snow Leopard has been on performance and quality of the underlying codebase rather than introducing new end-user features.

Based on our sources, however, Apple will apparently use Snow Leopard's release to tweak the overall user interface for Mac OS X and unify it across applications. Exact details of the theme changes have not been made public, as the current developer seeds for Snow Leopard still retain Apple's existing Aqua theme. The new theme will likely involve tweaks to the existing design and perhaps a "flattening" of Aqua in-line with Apple's iTunes and iPhoto interface elements.

The codename for the new interface is said to be "Marble" -- though that seems likely to be an internal codename only. John Gruber had also hinted at such changes in a pre-Macworld prediction piece and had independently heard the codename "Marble".

Apple's Snow Leopard is rumored to be released as early as the first quarter of 2009.

According to the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), Apple's Mini DisplayPort will be included in the upcoming DisplayPort 1.2 specification and will allow other manufacturers to incorporate the ports into their products.

The tiny port is to be included in the upcoming DisplayPort 1.2 specification, the standard's overseer, Vesa, said last week. The digital monitor link tech is to get stereoscopic display support too.

Apple introduced the miniaturized port as part of their new MacBooks and MacBook Pros and expects to adopt it in all future products. Apple offered the mini DisplayPort as a no-fee license to third parties while the specification was undergoing approval by VESA.

The incorporation of the design into the official DisplayPort spec should alleviate any concerns that Apple had too much ownership over the technology.

Open source programmer Brian Mastenbrook has discovered a security flaw in the way that Safari handles RSS feeds. The vulnerability, which affects both Mac and Windows versions of Safari, could allow a malicious website to gain access to sensitive user data.

I have discovered that Apple's Safari browser is vulnerable to an attack that allows a malicious web site to read files on a user's hard drive without user intervention. This can be used to gain access to sensitive information stored on the user's computer, such as emails, passwords, or cookies that could be used to gain access to the user's accounts on some web sites. The vulnerability has been acknowledged by Apple.

Mastenbrook reports that all OS X 10.5 Leopard users, regardless of whether they use Safari or RSS feeds, should protect themselves by choosing an application other than Safari for reading RSS feeds, an option available in the "RSS" tab of Safari's Preferences. Safari for Windows users should utilize a different browser until Apple issues a patch. Mastenbrook, who has received credit from Apple for reporting a number of security issues over the past year, says that Apple has not given a timeframe for a fix.

DigiTimes highlights a report from Taiwan's Economic Daily News stating that two chip manufacturers, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and United Microelectronics Corporation, are expected to receive chip orders for Apple's rumored iPhone nano. The report states that orders would likely come in March, leading to a June release of the iPhone nano at the earliest.

Meanwhile, American Technology Research analyst Brian Marshall believes that the iPhone nano will not initially be launched in the United States. According to Marshall, wireless industry insiders have confirmed that the device is not yet being tested by AT&T, suggesting that US customers will face an indefinite wait for the new device. Marshall also speculates that China may be an ideal market for the iPhone nano's initial release.

"Obviously, the best-case scenario here would be a China launch (~600mil+ wireless subscribers total in the country), but we have no definitive knowledge of this and are working on identifying the local of launch and other pertinent details," he said.

The rumored iPhone nano has been the subject of considerable discussion since mid-December, when iDealsChina published details of the device based on a silicone skin produced by case manufacturer XSKN. Vaja quickly followed suit by adding an entry for "iPhone nano" to their list of case offerings. While these developments led to speculation that the iPhone nano would be released at last week's Macworld Expo, some analysts tempered expectations with information that, while the device is on the way, it would not be ready for a Macworld introduction.