MacRumors

Apple has posted a new iPhone developer agreement as previously promised. One of the developer agreements has been posted publicly, though another is only available to registered developers. The new agreement appears to limit what is considered "confidential information" primarily to Apple's pre-release software:

You agree that any Apple pre-release software (including related documentation and materials) and any information disclosed by Apple to you in connection with Apple Events or Paid Content (defined below) will be considered and referred to as Apple Confidential Information.

Apple also restricts "Apple Events" and "Paid Content" which appears to include premium content such as WWDC (which has always been under Non Disclosure). The change is intended to allow the publication of iPhone tutorials, books and collaboration that had previously been restricted by Apple's original agreement.

Meanwhile there have been some mixed reports that Apple has already seeded iPhone 2.2 Firmware Beta 2. If not available now, it appears the update will be available soon for iPhone developers.

iPhone 2.2 Beta 1 had included frameworks for a number of new features including Google Street View and Japanese Emoji icons.

Update: Apple also opened official developer forums at http://devforums.apple.com/.

Apple has started developer seeding and testing of the next update to their Mac OS X operating system. Mac OS X 10.5.6 (9G21) was seeded to developers this morning and offers the usual laundry list of bug fixes and improvements across a variety of services.

The new update appears to move notebook trackpad preferences into its own preference pane in the control panel, just like on new laptops. However, the update does not bring the newly-introduced 4-finger multi-touch gestures to existing Apple multi-touch laptops.

There are also no hints or indications of Blu-ray support. While there were some early rumors that 10.5.6 might incorporate Blu-Ray support, recent comments by Apple executives indicate support is not coming soon.

Recently leaked roadmaps from VR-Zone indicate that Intel will be updating their mobile processors in Q2 2009. Digitimes pinpoints the updates for April.

The company will launch two processors along with the new platform, the Core 2 Duo T9900 and P8800.

These new processors will top out at 3.06GHz and likely be suitable for use in Apple's notebook line. The current MacBook Pro tops out at 2.8GHz.

However, shortly after their release, Intel will be migrating from the Montevina platform to Calpella in Q3 2009. This shift marks the move to the Nehalem (Core i7) based architecture which we've previously described. Nehalem is said to represent a major jump in performance due to many underlying changes in technology.

Gizmodo spoke with NVIDIA representatives who confirmed a few interesting tidbits about the NVIDIA chipsets and GPUs that are found in the new MacBook Pro.

First of all, the new MacBook Pros are capable of switching from discrete to integrated GPUs "on-the-fly" without logging out. This should not come as much of a surprise, as there exists support for this real-time switching in Windows. So if and when Apple updates the drivers for the MacBook Pro, on-the-fly could be enabled. The benefit to this, of course, is when you move from word processing to playing a game, the GPU could switch from one to the other automatically without requiring a log-out.

More interesting, however, is the that the NVIDIA chipsets are capable of running both integrated and discrete GPUs simultaneously which would offer a large performance boost. There had been some debate about this capability before. Some of the confusion lies in NVIDIA's naming convention.

NVIDIA advertises two features under the marketing name "Hybrid SLI". The two features are:

Hybrid Power - which allows your to switch from one GPU to the other for better performance vs battery life. Apple's MacBook Pros do support this feature but presently require you to log out.
GeForce Boost - this is the feature that allows both GPUs to run simultaneously to provide even better performance (and presumably, even less battery life).

According to this most recent statement by NVIDIA representatives, the MacBook Pro's hardware is capable of both, but will need specific software support to be written by Apple.

Finally, NVIDIA confirms another interesting tidbit that had been circulating already. These new chipsets officially support 8GB of RAM. Prior to this, it appears MacBook Pros were limited to 4GB of RAM. This would be a welcome change for those who use their MacBook Pros for memory intensive tasks. This being said, we haven't yet heard of anyone who has successfully installed 8GB of RAM in their new MacBook Pro.

A NYTimes blog article by John Markoff (via AppleInsider) claims that Apple may already be testing a netbook-sized device. Markoff recaps Jobs' statements from yesterday's financial conference but adds this tidbit in an update to the article:

That would seem to confirm findings that a search engine company shared with me on condition that I not reveal its name: The company spotted Web visits from an unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Is it the iPhone 3.0 or the NetMac 1.0?

We're not sure what to make of this information. Had it was presented by someone other than the New York Times' John Markoff, we may have simply dismissed it.

Web user-agent identifications are easy to falsify. In fact, in many browsers users can enter whatever identifying string they would like. Similarly, display resolution is a self reported Javascript statistic from the user's browser.

No specific information is provided by Markoff and a quick perusal of our own web logs have not revealed anything noteworthy. Still, it would not be surprising that unannounced Apple products would be tested on live websites, though it's unclear how much identifying information Apple would include in such a device.

During yesterday's conference call, Apple revealed that iPhone was responsible for 39% of the company's revenues in Q4 2008. Due to Apple's decision to report iPhone earnings as subscription revenue over 24 months, however, these numbers are not reflected in the $1.14 billion net profit and $7.9 billion in revenue reported yesterday. If they had been included, this would represent an additional $3.8 billion in revenue and an additional $1.3 billion in net income.

As noted by many, the size of this number is remarkable for a product that has been on the market for only 15 months. Steve Jobs highlighted the significance of the numbers by putting Apple's iPhone sales into perspective:

- Apple sold more iPhones than RIM sold Blackberries in Q4 2008
- In terms of revenue, Apple is now #3 amongst mobile phone vendors behind Nokia and Samsung and beating out Sony Ericsson which falls at #4.

When questioned about Apple's plans for the future in face of increasing iPhone competition, Jobs suggested that they would continue to aggressively price the iPhone and make ongoing improvements:

Well, I think we have to be the best and I think we have to not leave a price umbrella underneath us, and we are working very hard to fulfill both of those goals.

Apple seeded a new version of QuickTime 7.6 to developers yesterday. The latest build is available for Mac OS X and Windows and asks developers to test AAC encoding/playback, Multichannel encoding, Apple Lossless playback/encoding as well as MPEG-1 playback/encoding.

With recent news that the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros appear to have hardware based H.264 decoding, readers are going to be naturally interested to see if the latest QuickTime beta might include such support for older Macs.

The latest seed, however, shows no drop in CPU usage when decoding 1080p QuickTime streams on a previous generation MacBook Pro. It's still not clear if Apple will incorporate support for H.264 hardware decoding on older Macs, many of which contain GPUs capable of some level of H.264 support.

AT&T today posted their 3Q earnings with strong wireless division gains lead by 2.4 million iPhone 3G activations in the quarter, 40% of which were new AT&T subscribers. Adjusted earnings dipped slightly due to the subsidies placed on the iPhone 3G and hurricane related expenses.

AT&T highly values iPhone and other smartphone subscribers due to their lucrative data plans that have "significantly higher [average revenue per user] and lower churn than postpaid subscriber average."

Yesterday Apple reported that they had sold the 10 millionth iPhone last quarter. This beat Apple's self-imposed goal of reaching this milestone by the end of calendar year 2008.

Steve Jobs was present at today's financial results conference call and answered questions during the Q&A session.

One interesting topic that came up was questions about Apple's interest in the low-cost netbook category of platform. Jobs made it clear that Apple chooses not to target the low-cost notebook market and believes it is a nascent category that will evolve.

Most interesting, however, was that Jobs hinted that if the category does evolve, Apple has "some pretty interesting ideas" about it. Jobs makes it clear that Apple is not going to be competing in this market at this time.

Apple has revealed that the company has met its self-imposed goal of selling 10 million iPhones in calendar 2008.

Steve Jobs first described the goal in January 2007 when he introduced the iPhone. The 10 million iPhone sales represented 1% of mobile phones sold at that time.

With today's financial results, Apple revealed that the iPhone 3G had sold 6,892,000 units this quarter alone, and when combined with previous and current iPhone sales apparently add up to over 10 million with two more months to go.

Apple announced their financial results today for the 4th quarter of fiscal 2008 . Apple posted revenue of $7.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion, or $1.26 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $6.22 billion and net quarterly profit of $904 million, or $1.01 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.7 percent, up from 33.6 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 41 percent of the quarter's revenue.

Apple shipped 2,611,000 Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing 21 percent unit growth and 17 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 11,052,000 iPods during the quarter, representing eight percent unit growth and three percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 6,892,000 compared to 1,119,000 in the year-ago-quarter.

"Apple just reported one of the best quarters in its history, with a spectacular performance by the iPhone -- we sold more phones than RIM," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We don't yet know how this economic downturn will affect Apple. But we're armed with the strongest product line in our history, the most talented employees and the best customers in our industry. And $25 billion of cash safely in the bank with zero debt."

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q4 2008 financial results conference call at a 2:00 p.m. PDT.

Conference Call Highlights- Record breaking: more Macs than in any other quarter in Apple's history. More iPhones than in all previous quarters combined. More revenue and earnings than any previous September quarter.
- iPhone unit sales grew significantly. If iPhone results were not deferred (subscription accounting), it would have represented 39% of Apple's revenue for the quarter.
- Sold nearly 6.9 million iPhones during September quarter. With more than 2 months to go, have already surpassed 10 million iPhone sales in calendar 2008.
- In more than 70 countries by the end of the December quarter. 3100 points of iPhone distribution in the U.S. Over 30,000 points of distribution around the world.
- 21% year-over-year growth for Mac sales, beating industry growth
- Despite growth, believe purchase delays due to speculation and budget constraints
- Sold over 11 million iPods, new record for a non-holiday quarter.
- iTunes Store had a good quarter. Over 65 million iTunes customer accounts. Over 8.5 million music titles. Pleased with fall lineup including HD shows from major networks.
- Apple retail had strong results. Over half of Macs sold were to customers who had never owned a Mac before. 247 stores by end of quarter.
- Better than expected gross margins due to better component prices and software sales.
- Outlook for next quarter: "best products we've ever shipped". Very confident in business. Prudent predictions for December quarter. Revenue target between $9-10 billion.
- Steve Jobs speaking at conference call. Talks about impact of subscription reporting on financial results. Non GAAP financial results will be reported alongside GAAP reporting to show the average investor the impact of the iPhone.
- Jobs: Apple beat RIM. RIM 6.7 million Blackberries, Apple sold 6.9 million iPhones.
- Jobs: Measured by revenue, Apple has the world's 3rd largest mobile phone supplier. Nokia and Samsung are #1 and #2. Apple at #3. Sony Ericsson at #4.
- Jobs: Who knows what the future results will be due to economic slow down, but not bad for being in market for so short a period of time.
- Jobs: App Store. 200 millionth application will be downloaded tomorrow. Rate of new applications being submitted is increasing every week. Competitors are scrambling to copy the App Store, but it's not that easy to do. All of this in 102 days.
- Jobs: New MacBook and MacBook Pro. Notebooks comprise 2/3 of the Macs they sell. Best products they've ever created. Customers already love them. Anxious to see the demand trajectory. Unibody precision would normally cost hundreds of dollars by themselves. LED Backlights, GPU. New notebooks are the greenest products Apple has ever offered.
- Jobs: The economy. We are not economists. But: we have the best customers in the world. Smartest, product aware customers in the market. They have chosen Apple's quality products. While they may postpone purchases, they are unlikely to abandon Apple's products. More likely to delay than switch. We still have a minority marketshare of the PC market. While we may not appeal to every prospective customer, the percentage of new customers we have to attract is relatively small to significantly impact our revenues. Feel very good about Apple's product lineup. We have the most talented designers in the world. None of our competitors can deliver productt in this class. $25 billion dollars and zero debt. We can continue to invest in R&D.
- Summary: strongest Apple products, most talented employees, best customers and $25 billion in the bank.

Q/A

- Q: Why is there just a disparity between results and next quarter guidance? A: Slow period in October, but a lot of prudence is built in.
- Q: Thoughts on share repurchasing? A: I think this economic downturn will represent some extraordinary opportunities for companies that have cash. We are very comfortable with our cash position in the bank.
- Q: How much more expensive of the unibody aluminum shell? A: Many new technologies and features besides just the unibody. As said in the last call, these new products will have high cost at first and will come down over time.
- Q: Can you comment about the pricing of the Mac line? And thoughts about netbooks? A: This particular downturn is not creating a market of cheaper computers. That market has existed. There are parts of that market we choose not to play in. We choose to be in certain segments of the market, and choose not to be in certain segments. Will the downturn drive customers to different cheaper products? I'd be surprised if that happened in large numbers. I think there are a tremendous number of customers that we don't have that would like to and can afford to buy Apple products. We'll see what the ratio of those two are, but we're not tremendously worried. The netbook: not a lot of them getting sold, one of our entrants into that category is the iPhone. Browsing, connectivity, etc... the iPhone is a pretty good solution to that. We'll see how the netbook evolves, and we have some pretty interesting ideas if it does evolve.
- Q: Factors impacting on Mac sales? A: K-12 budget constraints resulted in 7% contraction, customers were delaying purchases due to rumors about the new portables, but saw a considerable rebound in sales.
- Q: In 2009, with more competition, how do you think of your roadmap? A: We have to be the best, and I think we have to not leave a price umbrella underneath us, and we are working hard to fulfill both of those goals. Great partner in AT&T, together, I think we're both very committed at making the iPhone a great value for customers next year and beyond.
- Q: Cheaper Macs? A: We chose not to server a certain customer base. We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk. Our DNA will not allow us to ship that. We can continue to deliver value to customers we do choose to serve.
- Q: How are you thinking about Apple TV and digital living room opportunity? A: I think the whole category is still a hobby right now. And I don't think anyone's succeeded yet. Given the economic conditions, I continue to believe it will be a hobby in 2009.
- Q: Tablet and touchscreens? When you look at tablet computing, does that get to be a more attractive opportunity? A: I think we have such creative people that are looking at a lot of things, but can't talk about products we're working on.

Gizmodo believes that the Mac mini may have already been discontinued by Apple. According to the site's European retailer sources, Apple has stopped orders for the low end Mac and has reportedly told the retailers not to expect any more.

The Mac mini may be pronounced dead as soon as today's Apple earnings conference call, as two major retailers in Europe have confirmed to me that they can't order any more of the little computers. While this could signal an updated model coming in, they have been told by Apple to expect no more of it. Their impression is thatonce againthe Mac Mini may be dead dead DEAD for real, even while you can still order it at the Apple Store.

Rumors of the demise of the Mac mini started circulating back in May, 2007, though the most recent reports have claimed that Apple was still working on revising it.

Apple will be reporting their Q4 2008 financial results today, and could reveal more during their conference call.

NVIDIA announced yesterday the GeForce 9400 and 9300 motherboard GPUs which offer desktop equivalents to the NVIDIA mobile chips adopted by Apple in their new notebooks:

These new mGPUs give NVIDIA a big advantage over other integrated graphics chips, said Dr. Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research. By doing so much parallel processing on a single chip, they can accelerate the new visual computing applications people are getting, and at a reasonable price. The GeForce 9400 and 9300 mGPUs set a new standard for what users should expect from todays more mainstream desktop systems.

It's not clear if this technology would find any use in future Apple Macs. Apple has traditionally based their iMac around the same chips and technology that power their notebook computers, while using server-class technology in their Mac Pros. In the past, Apple has not used Intel's "desktop" offerings.