I'm assuming they are at least meeting market predictions with respect to income growth.

A few things which may hurt them:
1.) The rumors of the 3G iPhone hurting current iPhone sales
2.) They have been cutting corners on some "budget" items when Mac is supposed to be the upper echelon of computing. For example the use of 6-bit TN TFT panels in the 20" iMac when the old iMac was 8-bit S-IPS.
3.) The "Newer & Slower" Macbooks and MBPs.

For the premium we pay for the Mac name, we should be getting 120Hz 10-bit LCD Panels. Oh well, Money is king and Profit is his Prophet.

More important than the Mac name....the Mac OS. But yeah, I agree with the cheaping out.

The new MB/MBPs aren't slower than the previous generation at the same price point.

Apple will post gross revenue between $6.95 and $7.05 Billions.

They will beat consensus and they will guide nearly 30% growth year over year for their third quarter. MSNBC and other sucky financial news sources will report that "Apple warns of a slowdown". The next day, their stock will plummet a minimum of 10 points on the news. People will sell their stock and people associated with the news sources will buy stock rebounding the stock's losses within 5 days.

From the benchmarks I saw, some are and some aren't. The biggest problem was the drop in cache on the lower end MBP's and the MB's. The higher end processors increased the cache from the previous iteration. With no real price change (with the exception of the remote debacle) its actually half-true and half-false. While the lower end processors suffered in some areas (and had some gains as well) the higher-ends saw some nice gains but nothing dramatic. Albeit the true power of the Penryns won't be noticed until the platform gets the upgrade. I have an older 17" MBP and then I bought the latest 17" MBP and with the exception that I got 4Gb of ram on the new one and my old one has only 2GB - they didn't get *that* much of a bump. It's basically what you do with it, which will dictate any increase or decrease in speed. However, overall it almost evens out. The main benefit s of the new MBP were the LED backlit 1920x1200 screen and the true multi-touch pad. The screen makes it worth it. It's really beautiful to watch 1080p videos on. I really like the new screen.


The OS is supposedly cheaper than the "Microsoft tax" on PC's. Not that I own a 20" iMac or anything. I have two Mac minis and two MBPs.

Yeah, I wasn't really talking about a higher cost of the OS per unit....I meant that when you buy a Mac, you don't buy it for cooler case with comparable hardware, you buy it for the Mac OS, which is infinitely more usable.

I see what you are getting at, and you are right if you look at exactly the same speed processors, the newer ones with 3MB L2 and the older ones with 4MB L2. But Intel didn't price them the chips to move laterally in speed and Apple didn't put them in their MBs that way.

The late 2007 MB release had 2.0 and 2.2GHz chips and the current MBs have 2.1 and 2.4GHz; and Intel priced these faster GHz chips exactly the same chip-over-chip. MacWorld's benchmarking show a noticeable speed increase, though I don't think the gap is as much as previous chip releases due to the lower L2 in some Penryn chips.

SPEEDMARK 5 RESULTS:

Early 2008 Model 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo 196
Late 2007 Model . 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo 179

Early 2008 Model 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo 180
Late 2007 Model . 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo 167
(source)

Regarding sales slumping before 3G launch:

A lot of us - nerdy enough to read AppleInsider - forget that most people don't read it. They don't know there's a new iPhone coming out.

I've stood near the iPhones in the store and listened to prospective buyers. They're more interested in getting a pink iPhone than a 3G one.

That said, I have to say I'm shocked by the number of people who've reportedly hacked their phone. While it's not technically difficult there is an element of risk. Maybe the bulk of iPhone buyers ARE nerds?

I just bought a 4 GB SanDisk USB flash drive for $29. You can figure out the $profit$ Apple is making on its iPods and iPhones, not to mention the $profit$ it is already making on Mac computers.

Time to open the hat business again, as the sky will be sure to fall.