I just launched iCal (by accident!) and was greeted with the dialog box above, asking if I’d like to upgrade to the new MobileMe Calendar beta. Um. Okay. I went through the upgrade, which launched Safari and had me log into my MobileMe account, only to get a server error and a request to try again. Second time was the charm, though, and all my events were updated and I now have the shiny new — clearly iPad-inspired — MobileMe Calendar Beta at my beck and call.

For the MobileMe Mail Beta, I requested an invitation and received an email confirmation, so this was different. Anyone else getting “invited” into the MobileMe calendar beta this way?

Update: I received an email notification for the beta a few minutes later with instructions to log into MobileMe on the web to begin the upgrade procedure. I guess iCal was just a second upgrade vector. Still, a nice surprise.

More screenshots after the break.

MobileMe Calendar Beta upgrades being offered via iCal is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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According to Apple’s Q3 2010 conference call today, they’ve officially passed the monstrous 100,000,000 iOS devices sold milestone. At the iOS 4 sneak preview event on April 8, Steve Jobs revealed Apple had sold 50 million iPhones and 35 million iPod touches. On April 20, Apple announced 8.7 million iPhones sold in Q2. So, if we include those in the 50 million number, add the 8.4 million sold in Q3, that’s 58.4 million iPhones alongside 3.3 million iPads, leaving room for 38.3 million or so iPod touches.

To put the iPad numbers in perspective, Apple sold 3.3 million of them in their debut quarter, and they sold 3.5 million Macs during the same period — their best Mac quarter ever.

And while not all of these devices are still actively being used, theoretically each and every one of them can run most of the 225,000 iPhone apps on the iTunes App Store (iPad runs them boxed or pixel doubled), making a ginormous target for developers.

Those numbers will no doubt increase next year, perhaps adding an iOS Apple TV, an iOS layer on Mac to replace Front Row and Dashboard, and only Steve Jobs knows (and teases) what else.

Any wonder WWDC 2010 focused so much on iOS?

Apple’s sold 100,000,000 iOS devices and counting is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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During Apple’s Q3 2010 conference call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer revealed that Apple’s massive North Carolina data center is on schedule and should go online in 2011. Oppenheimer didn’t reveal what the data center would be used for but rumors persist of an iTunes.com streaming music, TV, and movie service.

With 100,000,000 iOS devices sold to date, additional rumors of an iOS Apple TV, and countless desktop iTunes installs on the market, pushing that much content would certainly need a world-class data center.

If this year’s iPod touch event in September doesn’t offer any clues, maybe next year’s iPad event will?

Apple’s massive North Carolina data center to go online next year is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Along with 8.4 million iPhones (of which 1.7 million were iPhone 4) and 3.3 million iPads reported during their Q3 2010 conference call, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook repeatedly pointed out Apple is selling units just as fast as they can produce them.

For iPhone 4, Cook said the demand was stunning. He said he wanted to be clear: Apple is selling every iPhone 4 they can make and dismissed rumors Apple was purposefully constraining supply to create artificial buzz. He said Apple would like to fill every order they get as quickly as they can. And again, iPhone growth was particularly strong in Europe, Asia, and Japan.

In terms of the iPad, Apple planned for 1 million a month in iPad production capacity — when some critics said they wouldn’t sell 1 million in a year — did that, and are still doing it. They’re increasing capacity as fast as they can to meet the demand. Cook also said they weren’t seeing the usual early adopter curve with high initial sales that taper off quickly, and that iPad might be hitting mainstream adoption rates faster than any product he knows of. So far, it’s not cannibalizing other Apple products like Mac or iPod touch either — though it’s too soon to tell if there will be a halo that actually increases adoption of those products.

Apple selling iPhone 4 and iPad as fast as they can make them is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Follow along with TiPb as we listen to and comment on Apple’s Q3 2010 financial results conference call. We’re not live-blogging this, just posting highlights so you’ll need to refresh from time to time to see new notes.

If you want to listen while you read, head on over to Apple.com for the audio stream.

Now on with the highlights:

• Waiting on additional participants to show up
• Starting now, IR person reading safe harbor provision
• Tim Cook (henceforth TC), Peter Oppenheimer (OP) on tap, no Steve Jobs announced
• OP: introducing results, began shipping iPad in 10 countries, launched iPhone 4, shipped iOS 4, new record for Mac sales
• OP: Highest revenue ever 15.7 million, 4.23 margin, 3.25 net income, EPS 3.51
• OP: Mac sales. Short version — they did very well.
• OP: 9.4 million iPods. Declining. iPod touch 48% growth. Mix-shift to iPod touch 12% up, revenue growth 4% up. Share over 70%. Top selling MP3 sale, gaining share.
• OP: iTunes exceeded 1 billion dollars. App Store 225,000 apps, 11,000 just for iPad. 5 billion apps downloaded.
• OP: iPhone 8.4 million, 1.7 million iPhone 4 in 5 countries. 61% year-over-year growth. Customers loving new features, FaceTime, Retina Display, glass and stainless steel
• OP: 5.53 billion for ancillary sales, up over 70%.
• OP: 154 carriers in over 80 countries, Asia, Europe, Japan increasing
• OP: Over 100,000,000 iOS devices sold. iOS 4 very favorable, people loving new features.
• OP: iPad off to good start. 3.27 million iPads sold in 10 countries. 9 additional countries on July 23.
• OP: Apple retail still growing.
• OP: [Talking financial details about why their usual conservative numbers were exceeded. Again. Seriously]
• OP: 48 billion on hand, up 4 billion. Still preserving capital, short dated, high quality investments
• OP: Outlook to Q4. Offering free cases to all customers who purchased iPhone 4 until Sept. 30. Deferring revenue on those cases. Should cost 175 million.
• OP: Expect 18 billion, 35% gross margin in Q4. Sequential decline due to higher mix of iPhone 4 and iPad which have higher cost structures, also free cases. Back to school promotions as well.
• OP: In closing, they’re thrilled!
• Now starting Q&A
• Q: What are you hearing from corporations, adoption?
• TC: iPhone now in 80% of Fortune 100 piloting or deploying, 60% of Fortune 500. 400 higher ed institutions as well. iOS 4 was a help.
• TC: iPad in first 90 days. 50% of Fortune 100 testing or deploying. Incredible.
• OP: Higher iPhone and accessory sales than they anticipated.
• Q: Supply/demand breakdown, constraints?
• TC: iPod, none. iPad and iPhone are different, both iPad and iPhone 4 had backlog couldn’t fill, still selling as fast as they can make them. High demand is never a problem. Planning 1 million a month capacity was a bold move, analysts predicted 1 million in sales for years. Did that in 1 month, still doing that. Apple is increasing capacity as fast as they can. Confident they will be able to do it.
• TC: Just started ramping iPhone 4 in June. Limited days, only 4 days in Q.
• TC: greatly reduced iPhone 3GS sales around June 7. Didn’t launch iPhone 4, new 3GS on June 24. Result was significantly lower sales after June 7 until June 24.
• TC: 250,000 more units if they’d held inventory flat.
• Q: Why are there supply problems? Rumors Apple does that on purpose.
• TC: Would rather market move quickly to new products. How they want to manage it. Don’t purposefully create shortages for buzz. Not their objective. Would like to fill every order as quickly as they can. Demand for iPhone 4 absolutely stunning.
• TC: Returns for antenna issue are very small.
• TC: Pleasantly surprised how fast iPad has gotten going. Much faster to 1 million than iPod. Not following typical new product curve where it takes a long time to go mainstream after early adoption.
• OP: Won’t reveal iPod Wi-Fi vs. 3G split, but demand for all of them have been amazing. Average $640.
• Q: Will iPad cannibalize other product lines? Any thoughts?
• TC: Discuss it internally, only selling 3 months. To early to tell. Thrilled they recorded best Mac quarter ever even with iPad sales. Jaw dropper.
• Q: iAds business?
• OP: Just launched in July. Will learn a lot this calendar year. No further specifics.
• Q: Datacenter coming along?
• OP: On schedule. Everything going fine. Expect to complete by end of calendar year.
• Q: Cannibalization of iPad on iPod touch?
• OP: iPod ASPs down $7, driven by start of back to school promotion, stronger US dollar. Mix up on iPod touch.
• Q: Impact of bumper give-away?
• OP: Will need to defer revenue for iPhone 4 they sell where they’ve not delivered bumpers, not heard from customers wanting to place order. Revenue accrual with no cost, will expense cost when shipped to customers.
• Q: Android shipments increasing, competition to iPhone family?
• TC: Haven’t seen Android results, sum of several companies. iPhone up 61% despite drawdowns and transition, growing faster than market.
• Q: Competing tablets, 3G subsidies coming fall, impact?
• TC: Selling every unit they can make, looks good in every country they’ve launched it in. Anecdotally growing faster than early adopter, faster than any product he knows of. Doesn’t know what competition will do. Everyone working on something. Apple extremely happy with position and business model. Affordable rate structure, starts at $15, no commitment, aggressive device pricing. Yes, someone could jack up rate plans, subsidize. Not sure people will want another contract. If someone tries it, both learn.
• Q: iPhone software developers have complained not about App Store rules but about arbitrary nature. Apple done anything?
• OP: Always looking to make developers happy, 225K apps, 5 billion downloads, 1 billion in payments to devs, iAds a second stream. Care deeply. Want to have great apps. Success is unparalleled.
• TC: Vast majority of apps approved within 7 days. Many that aren’t have bugs, re-submitted, approved. Want to ensure pornography, graphic scenes don’t come on platform. Not everyone agrees, but that’s how they’re doing it.
• Q: Dev concern misplaced?
• TC: Value their concerns, modify when appropriate. Won’t say every concern misplaced. Value their feedback.
• Q: Move to mobility?
• TC: Long run, will see portables grow.
• Q: FaceTime, industry standard, how will it role out? Windows, Mac?
• TC: Sticking to financials for today.
• Q: iPhone strong in Asia, Europe, Japan. Why not North America?
• TC: Not law of large numbers. Phone market will increasingly become smartphone market. Steve said that long ago. Lots of domestic, Americas opportunities. Mac, iPhone, or iPad growing faster internationally. See that in revenues as well. Perspective, Americas growing 40% so this is huge number, just international numbers are killer.
• Q: iPhone growth has come from broader carrier distribution. Broaden within countries, emerging markets like China, India, pre-paid?
• TC: Extraordinary opportunity. Mac as example, AsiaPC Mac grew 73%, phenomenal. In China, grew 144%. Korea, 184%. HK almost 200%. Even in difficult economy like Spain, grew 59%.
• TC: iPhone space doing well in all key markets, expanding that, learning what they learned with exclusive deals, looking market by market, opening Spain up. Will go from exclusive in Spain to 3. More countries remaining. Increased distribution, market, move to smartphone. All in iPhone favor. Sees enormous opportunity. Biggest challenge is determining which to deploy resources.
• Q: Will there be iPad halo?
• TC: Agrees, most people external to Apple focus on cannibalization, internally focus on synergy between. iPod historically people at Apple felt iPod created halo for Mac. Will see about iPad, doesn’t want to predict it. Mac share still low. Still enormous opportunity to grow. Might be some synergy. iDevices -> Mac, iPad < -> iPhone. This is where it’s great to have lower share. If iPad cannibalizes PCs, fantastic for Apple. Big market.
• Q: Impact of wage hikes from sub-contractors?
• TC: Don’t want to get into terms of commercial agreements, competitive info.
• Q: Expand carriers to tap domestic demand, or enough with AT&T?
• TC: Very happy to be partner with AT&T. Been first class partner, pioneered smartphone growth from network POV in US. That’s all.
• OP: Best iPhone they’ve ever shipped, higher cost structure.
• Q: Gap iPhone, iPad supply and demand? How many units?
• TC: Don’t know. Only know if you have enough supply. Don’t have it.
• That’s all folks!

Apple Q3 2010 financial results conference call is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple has just reported their Q3 2010 financial results and — wow — record revenue of $15.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion. 8.4 million iPhones (61% growth over the year-ago quarter), 9.41 million iPods (8% decline), 3.27 million iPads (first quarter of sales).

"It was a phenomenal quarter that exceeded our expectations all around, including the most successful product launch in Apple's history with iPhone 4," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "iPad is off to a terrific start, more people are buying Macs than ever before, and we have amazing new products still to come this year."

"We're really pleased to have generated over $4 billion of cash during the quarter," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO. "Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2010, we expect revenue of about $18 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $3.44"

The results themselves are from a period before the “antennagate” issues — only 4 days of iPhone 4 sales in the quarter — but the Q&A after the conference call will likely address at least some of it, especially as it relates to projections for next quarter earnings.

The audio stream will be available via Apple.com starting 5pm ET.

[Apple PR]

Apple Q3 2010 financial results – 8.4 million iPhones, 9.4 million iPods, 3.3 million iPads is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Following their iPhone 4 press conference last Friday, Apple showed for the first time their massive $100 million dollar antenna design and test labs both on the web at apple.com, and to select members of the media. The images look like something out of science fiction, of Charles Xavier’s Cerebro and the StarGate recreated in blue foam. There are 4 facilities with 17 antenna characterization (anechoic) chambers put together to test everything from 2G and 3G cell networks to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.

Apple’s site says:

Apple engineers tested iPhone 4 in a variety of scenarios, environments, and conditions in order to gauge performance. They spent thousands of hours in cities in the U.S. and throughout the world testing iPhone 4 call quality, dropped-call performance, call origination and termination, and in-service time. They tested iPhone 4 while stationary, at high and low speeds, and in urban, dense urban, and highway environments. In low-coverage areas and good-coverage areas, during peak and off-peak hours — iPhone 4 was field-tested in nearly every possible coverage scenario across different vendor and carrier equipment all over the world.

Josh Topolsky of Engadget says:

And we get it — there have been people out there suggesting that Apple simply didn’t test their phone before letting it out into the market. Or that they were so bone-headed that they only tested it in those special cases made for bringing the phone to bars, so of course they didn’t see the antenna issue. But let’s be honest — this is a multi-billion dollar company that’s been making wireless devices for a long, long time. This isn’t their first phone, it’s their fourth, and though there have been reception issues with the previous models, nothing suggests that Apple isn’t doing its due diligence on these phones. The truth is, we didn’t need the tour to understand that, but it’s possible some people do.

John Paczkowski of Digital Daily says:

[Ruben Caballero, a Senior Director of Engineering responsible for antenna design] said the iPhone 4 spent 2 years in those labs before it was released to the public. 2 years. The company tested the hell out of the device and any suggestion that it didn't is ludicrous. Apple was clearly well aware that the iPhone 4 can suffer some signal degradation when held a certain way, but in its eyes that's the original sin with which ALL cell phones are born. Let he who is without sin cast the first phone, right?

MG Siegler of TechCrunch says:

No matter what your take is on the iPhone 4 antenna — my take is here: it's real, but not a big deal — there is no question that Apple spends a huge amount of time and money testing these devices. And the fact that the thing people will care most about in this whole 1,200-word post is the passing mention that the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 may have been in one of these rooms, says just about all you need to say about the state of the iPhone.

So our take away is this: Apple has put hundreds of millions of dollars and years of effort into building, staffing, and using a state of the art antenna reception facility. They want to create the best phones in the world, not just the best digital devices. Of course they knew there was a single death-touch point of attenuation on iPhone 4 but decided the benefits of overall better reception, longer battery life, and innovating in the antenna space (which is always a step-forward, step-back game) was worth the trade-off. But they utterly failed to properly prepare users and especially the media for the implications of that trade-off, and then reacted poorly when that lack of prep-time came back to bite them. (Including trying to switch the discussion from specific death-touch to industry-wide death-grip).

The confluence of that technological trade-off, failure to set expectations, and the media frenzy that’s followed has created a huge rift in popular perception probably best exemplified by Consumer Reports — the crux upon which a lot of “antennagate” hinges — not recommending iPhone 4 despite rating it the best smartphone on the planet.

It would almost be comedic if it wasn’t so absurd.

Apple shows off $100 million antenna design and test labs is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Today MOG (Music on the Go) [iTunes Link - free download] has been released into the App Store. For $10/per month you will get access to over 8 million songs with the ability to store the MP3 files (up to 320Kbps) directly on your iPhone/iPod touch to listen to them whenever and wherever you want. Keep in mind this is purely an app that allows you to store the music locally on your iOS device and not actually keep or transfer the files.

Unlike some of the streaming music apps such as Pandora, with MOG you get ad-free music from favorite artists with no limit on the number of consecutive tracks by a single artist. The one big pitfall is the current lack of multi-tasking support. On a positive note we were promised that this will be added within a few weeks time period.

Be sure to check out the video after the the break and if you give MOG’s free three-day, no commitment trial a go let us know what you think in the comments below!

MOG music app for iPhone/iPod touch launches in App Store is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

That Magic Trackpad/Magic Slate that we expected to be announced back at WWDC finally seems to have gotten the green light from the FCC and received approval. As Engadget points out, Apple generally keeps all of their device filings with the FCC locked down and with this filing being released there is great possibility we may see this new device hit the stores later this week.

This new Magic Trackpad/Magic Slate has long been rumored to be a large, flat surface with iPhone/iPad-like capacitive multitouch input to the Mac. Possibly supporting the full range of gestures that the iPhone and iPad currently support. If you look at page 45 of the FCC test report you will see the device is described as a “Bluetooth Trackpad”. Something even more telling about the test report is the fact it was completed back in October of 2009.

Why would Apple be holding this device back on us for almost a year now?

[Engadget]

Apple’s Magic Trackpad/Magic Slate gets approved by FCC? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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The TiPb forums are naturally a great place to talk, commiserate, celebrate, get help, and offer advice to your fellow iPhone users. In order to create a new thread of your own or reply to any of the existing threads, you must be a registered member. Becoming a member is easy and free so if you haven't already head on over and register now!

• With all of this antenna talk going around we are going to revisit the iPhone 4 Reception Issue thread. Has this issue been blown out of proportion or is it really a major concern?

• Need a place to show off some of those high quality photos you have taken with your iPhone 4? This is the place to do it: Show off your iPhone 4 pictures here.

• How many of you know someone or you yourself actually have returned their iPhone 4?

• We all know not to expect iOS 4 for iPad until sometime this fall but will it bring any special unique features to iPad?

• For those of you who are interested in jailbreaking your iPhone, what do you think the future of the jailbreak holds? Is it coming to an end or will it continue on stronger than ever?

See you in the forums!

iPhone 4 antenna, Pictures, iPhone 4 returns, iOS 4 and iPad, Future of the jailbreak – From the Forums is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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